2.

The Ultimate Performance-Enhancing Drug

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Rudyard Kipling

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A new performance drug is now being used in the development of England’s elite cricket players and coaches. It has been said that it is the most powerful drug known to mankind. The performance edges that can be achieved from skilful and consistent use of this drug include: increasing self-esteem, creating a dramatic boost in confidence, reframing and transforming meaning, and changes in behaviours and attitudes. The ‘health warning’ that accompanies this powerful drug is the fact that it is in abundance, has no monetary cost, and many people simply are not aware of its existence or power! Therefore, it can easily be misused and is often abused.

Most people are unaware of its existence. Individuals often suffer untold damage without knowing what or who the culprit is until it’s too late, and this makes it even more dangerous. Even after the cause (careless use) and effect have been recognized and understood, it can potentially take years to repair the damage. Sadly, in many cases the individual never fully recovers from its misuse, and it can destroy self-esteem, shatter confidence and severely limit performance potential, particularly when the performance involves making decisions.

I wrote this in the summer of 2009 for the ECB’s coaching magazine On the Up, when I became heavily involved with their Level Four Cricket Coaching Programme, under the headline: ‘The Most Powerful Performance Drug Now Being Used in English Cricket’. The drug is language, and the irony is that the media – particularly the headline writers – are among its greatest manipulators and misusers.

The impact of language is far-reaching and its effects can be felt, often subconsciously, throughout any situation we face involving pressure. It can be damaging and disruptive to performance or it can dramatically improve it, but, sadly, the skill of using language effectively is largely ignored in the world of sports coaching.

Language is of vital importance to the Pressure Principle, in that it is crucial to the effectiveness of the other seven components. We have already discussed anxiety and the need to transform its negative impact into excitement, and later chapters will examine the importance of types and methods of learning and practice, of behaviour and environment. But what informs all of these is the language that goes into them, that reinforces them and allows you to tap into your subconscious effectively for a great performance. If the other chapters fuel the engine of your great performance, language is the oil to keep things running smoothly. And, as anyone who has failed to keep the oil in their car topped up knows, the engine just won’t work without it.

One industry where the importance of language is certainly not lost on anyone is advertising. Large businesses are prepared to pump millions into advertising their products and huge campaigns often hinge on one carefully crafted slogan. Advertisers use persuasive language, emotive words and all sorts of linguistic tricks to attract us, particularly on a subconscious level; after all, which of us doesn’t imagine themselves to be immune to the power of advertising? Consider the groundbreaking ‘Think small’ VW Beetle adverts of the 1950s, Apple’s ‘Think different’ or any number of equally memorable slogans (‘For mash get Smash’; ‘Anytime, anyplace, anywhere – that’s Martini’). Some are cute and catchy, but something beyond that is going on. This language is geared to appeal to us, to provoke a reaction and response and, ultimately, to change our behaviour. Sound familiar? It’s really not that different from what we aim to achieve when coaching or managing people.

How, then, can we gauge the impact of language when it operates on such a subconscious level? In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes an experiment by John Bargh, an American psychologist, in which he looked at the subconscious influence of language and its impact on attitude and behaviour. He gave two groups of New York students a different set of scrambled-sentence tests – a series of mixed-up sentences which have to be reordered to make proper sentences. The first group had sentences containing words such as ‘aggressively’, ‘bold’, ‘rude’, ‘bother’, ‘disturb’, ‘intrude’ and ‘infringe’ scattered throughout. The other group received words such as ‘respect’, ‘considerate’, ‘appreciate’, ‘patiently’, ‘yield’, ‘polite’ and ‘courteous’. In neither case was the bias so obvious as to make the students conscious of what was happening, as that would negate the power of the experiment. After completing the test, the students were asked to hand them in at an office, where the intended recipient was deliberately engaged in deep conversation with someone else, keeping the students waiting.

The aim of the experiment was to see whether the two groups reacted differently to the delay. Bargh expected the ‘aggressively primed’ students to interrupt slightly earlier than the passive group; in fact, the difference was much more pronounced: the first group interrupted on average after five minutes, but 82 per cent of the second group didn’t interrupt at all.

Reframing

I believe that language can influence and create an attitude and can help you reframe your perception of what you experience. Take a very simple example: are you a glass-half-full or half-empty type? The common attitude is that to see the glass half full is more positive than seeing it half empty. To put it another way, half full is what you have got and half empty is what you are missing. Reframing is simply taking a situation and changing the way you look at it, by changing the frame of reference around a statement without changing the facts. By using different words you can change the meaning and, as a result, change how you feel.

The ability to reframe a situation will support your effort to feel excited rather than anxious. Here are some simple examples of how to use language to change the way you see things:

Standing in the tunnel with the rest of your team, just before running out in front of a big crowd:

Anxious: Oh, dear. I hope I don’t make a mistake and have the crowd turn on me.

Excited: What a buzz – there isn’t one person out there who doesn’t wish they were in my shoes right now.

You are in the office corridor, waiting to make a presentation to a client:

Anxious: I hate doing these things – if I mess up, what on earth will they think of me?

Excited: They don’t know me. I will have impressive posture and look them straight in the eyes – they’re people too, just like me.

Going into an appraisal with your manager:

Anxious: I hope I don’t get any criticism; I hate it when they pick holes in my work.

Excited: It will be great to hear how I can still improve. I have tried to cover everything, but I may well have missed out something.

Your choice of language gives you the ability to reframe your situation or, to be more precise, reframe your perception of the situation. This and your command posture are the fundamental tools that will enable you to shift from a state of anxiety (the C-shape column) to excitement (the J-shape column).

Maddening Men: The Misuse of Language

Effective use of language can influence and inform an attitude of performance improvement, and a collective attitude in turn creates a culture – be it among a sports squad, a team in your business or even in the family. For a golfer, this culture must be created by his team around him – his coaches, caddie and management. I have been really fortunate when working with Padraig Harrington and Luke Donald that they had superb caddies – Ronan Flood and John McLaren, respectively. We worked as a unit to produce a team culture and help each other find the right buttons to push.

While it is easy to see how a collective attitude can create a culture within a group, in my experience it is harder to appreciate just how important language skills are in creating the right attitude. Language can be a tool both for good and ill, and it’s often easier to be aware of its misuse than it is to see how effective it can be, especially in the sporting world. Some of the most passionately delivered misuses of language are bellowed from the touchline at the weekend in all levels of sport – be it a Premier League football fixture or a youth game of cricket on the village green:

‘No missed tackles!’

‘No dropped passes!’

‘Don’t lose concentration!’

‘Make sure you don’t get out too early!’

‘Don’t bowl short of a length!’

‘Don’t drop the crosses coming over!’

‘Don’t let him run round you!’

These are all, of course, examples of the ‘Don’t Miss!’ mindset from Chapter 1, in which the power of thinking about what not to do pollutes the brain with the idea of missing, filling it with that which you want to avoid. If you have a coach or a manager telling you what not to do, they are planting the idea in the exact same way. Language is so powerful that even a hint of what you are trying to avoid can be fateful, as demonstrated by John Bargh’s experiment. Even when the words are being used as something not to do, our brains take it on board and we’re subconsciously drawn to this very thing. As a well-worn example, how about I ask you not to think of a purple elephant. OK? What are you not thinking about now?

When someone on the golf course tells you, ‘This is a simple par three, but you don’t want to go right because there’s water there and you don’t want to go in the water,’ it is said helpfully. But guess where the first shot goes? The water becomes a magnet to the ball, as your brain is full of thoughts of what not to do and what to avoid.

Conscious thought of what you want to do, supported by basic mental cues on how physically to do it – the process – is a much more effective and productive mindset. Where language becomes important is in communicating – whether as a manager, coach or caddie – in a way that highlights the effective aspects of the process, as in Table 2.

A lot of coaches might say, ‘But the players know what I mean.’ I don’t doubt for a second that they do, but it’s more about the mental image you’re projecting through your choice of words. If you say ‘No dropped passes’, the player’s brain will conjure up an image of a dropped pass and then adjust to see it as something not to do. Wouldn’t it make sense to project only the image of what you want to achieve into the player’s mind?

Let’s imagine an advertising creative, Alastair. He has been briefed to produce something brilliantly innovative and original, but the deadline is looming and he’s drawn a blank. The pressure is really on and he’s summoned to his manager’s office for what he hopes will be an inspirational pep talk. Instead, he gets, ‘I want something on my desk by 5 p.m. – and make sure it’s nothing like our biggest rival’s campaign for a similar brand!’ Alastair, the adrenaline pumping, returns to his desk. Can you rush creativity? he thinks, rather preciously. And then he sits down and thinks some more about the idea. With the clock ticking and his stress levels rising, all Alastair can see in his mind is the rival’s ad – what he shouldn’t be doing. He comes up with some hurried ideas, but then starts to realize that every one is a reaction to the rival idea – using what he’s not to do as a starting point. He tears them all up and starts again, but the clock is ticking … If only his manager hadn’t planted that seed.

Table 2 Turning negative statements into effective ones

Negative Effective
No missed tackles! (rugby) See right into the player’s navel and get as low as his waist and run through his stomach.
No dropped passes! (rugby, netball, basketball) Hands out to meet every ball early. When you are passing, see the ball to the target.
Don’t lose concentration! Commentate on what you see and what you are doing in the game, always keep talking.
Don’t bowl short of a length! Make sure you really see the smallest precise target on the pitch and keep it in your mind’s eye.
Make sure you don’t get out too early! (cricket) Stay nice and big and dominate each ball, keeping your head still.
Don’t drop the crosses coming in! (football goalkeeper) Watch the ball all the way into your hands – up to the point that you can read the logo on the ball.
Don’t let an opponent run round you! Stay on your opponent’s right side and force them to the touchline.

When I was coaching at Bath RFC, the captain, Stuart Hooper, would give a pep talk to his teammates just before the team took to the field. From my vantage point in the corner, I would listen to a passionate speech peppered with colourful expletives and plenty of what not to do: No missed tackles! No dropped passes! No regrets!

After sitting through a couple of his pre-match fire-ups I took Stuart – who possesses an outstanding work ethic and a real willingness to learn and improve – for a coffee and a chat. I pressed upon him the importance of painting pictures with language so that the players were left in no doubt as to what they were supposed to be doing, without clouding their minds with negatives that would affect their thought process when the pressure was on.

Stuart made a real effort to take my advice on board. His use of language improved markedly during the next few matches and we continued to concentrate on this aspect of his game leadership. As a result of our work together, his own performance levels on the field improved dramatically, as he was spending a considerable amount of time thinking through exactly what he was saying – always in a ‘how to’ form.

‘How to’ language is a vital component when examining performance and looking at opportunities to improve. Rather than putting the responsibility on the players to work out what to do from what they have been told to avoid, it is more effective to get straight to the point and have them work through exactly what it is that they need to achieve. The ‘how to’ in each situation will vary – it could be a slight adjustment to the way a player strikes the ball or a different way to make a point during a sales meeting – but the important thing is that it will be giving someone the opportunity to do something well rather than not to do something badly. ‘How to’ language, of course, doesn’t mean explaining the entire activity step by step; rather it should comprise little cues to remind the player of stages in the process, such as, ‘That was a great hit and your posture was upright and powerful during impact.’

Adopting ‘how to’ language isn’t easy, particularly if we have for so long been unknowingly careless – and coaches or managers are also susceptible to the effects of pressure, which can inhibit our ability to use language as effectively as we might like. It’s often easy to forget that those in charge are just as open as we are to anxiety and problems caused by pressure, and their sometimes unhelpful instructions are as a result of this.

Let’s consider some of these overused generalities which are often delivered with such feeling that they sound impressive … until you look at what they actually mean. Ask yourself how precisely these nuggets of wisdom might inspire anyone to improve their performance. I’m sure you can come up with many similar examples from your own experience.

Get stuck in! One of the most popular generalities in sport and business, which is often used when the coach or manager thinks effort is lacking. The question is, once given this instruction, what exactly should be done to improve performance? Go and pick a fight?

How about encouragingly shouting the main process that will help the players improve their performance instead? To a defender in football, it could be: ‘Stay goal side and force him to the touchline.’ On the rugby pitch it could be: ‘Hands out – meet the ball early!’ In the office, it could be: ‘You’re doing great. If we concentrate on this aspect we could nail this by the end of the day!’

Keep your eye on the ball! This is a classic. In his book The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey gives a great example. Imagine you’re playing a game of tennis and it’s just not your day: the net feels much higher than normal and the court on the other side of it seems much smaller than your side. You swing and miss at a couple of shots and then you receive that priceless piece of advice: ‘Keep your eye on the ball.’ Now, with renewed vigour you really watch the ball as your opponent serves. You watch it as they toss it up, you watch it as they swing their racket towards it and it comes off the strings like a laser, you watch it as it bounces in your service box and comes towards you – and you watch it as you take your racquet back and swing at it and miss. You are still watching it as it pings off the chain-link fence behind you. What went wrong? You kept your eye on the ball. You did exactly what you were told, but there was no ‘how to’ in there. Instead, you could say something like, ‘See the logo on the ball as your racket hits it,’ a much more precise instruction concentrating on a specific part of the process.

Switch on! Let’s really focus! An emotive cry for increased mental application – but what exactly does it mean? How about, instead, ‘Commentate on what you see and do – always keep talking!’ Again, there’s a process to focus on here, a how to switch on and focus, and this match dialogue you open up will help keep you ahead of the game.

A good rule with instructions is ‘if you can’t see it, don’t say it’. If the intention is to get someone to focus and correct a specific part of their process, then say so. An example might be ‘Direct every pass towards the hands.’ So long as the ‘how to’ has been perfected through the techniques described later in the book, the language of any instruction can be appropriately framed to tap into this precisely. When vague generalities are used, people are too often left wondering exactly what they are supposed to do.

Never Say Never Again

Tied in with such sweeping generalities are universal statements, which can be just as unhelpful – and so often deliver a destructive message.

I once had a golf lesson from a coach who was an ex-European Tour professional. There was no question that he knew all about the technical side of things – the swing and the mechanics involved. He changed my grip slightly, which felt awkward at first when I took my club back but, during the downswing, I felt a fresh sensation of freedom towards the ball. After a few mishits, I started to strike the ball really well. An improvement already – fantastic!

He videoed my swing and we watched the footage back, with my swing on one side of the screen and one of the greatest players ever to play the game – Tiger Woods – on the other. He proceeded to explain at some length why, no matter how many balls I went on to hit, I would never have a swing like Tiger’s: I had the wrong body shape, was flexible in the wrong places – on and on he went.

It was hardly news to me that my swing was nothing like that of a fourteen-time major winner, but the universal absolutes with which the message was delivered would have been enough to destroy the confidence of any budding player looking to improve. ‘You will never have a swing like that – it’s impossible with your body and the way it works.’

How is dealing in such unequivocal, universal statements like that going to foster a mindset for anyone to dedicate themselves to improving? With a greater awareness of the impact of his language he could have given me some information that would have encouraged me to continue practising and even return for more lessons. What a difference a statement like this would have made: ‘Tiger is able to get in these positions because he has played golf all his life and works very hard on his mobility. While I don’t expect you to replicate him exactly, if you can move further towards these kinds of positions it will improve your swing path, ball striking and direction.’

When a player I’m coaching uses universals – always, never – I always pick them up on it. It’s vital to make them aware of exactly what they’ve said, what it means and how, if left unchecked, it can sap confidence. Never means not ever; always means every time. These words are almost always the precursors to self-criticism. Here are a few examples:

I always mess these putts up. Does that mean you have missed every single putt you have ever attempted? Golf, perhaps more than most sports, has the ability to engender a fear of missing which can become catastrophic. As we’ve already discussed, these negative thoughts of avoiding missing can pollute our thinking, which, when coupled with an inability to recall an instance of success, hardly makes for the best mindset when trying to nail the putt. Of course, it’s not just golf where this occurs. It could be ‘I always mess job interviews up’ or ‘I always mess up first dates’ – anything. The point is that the universal statement – the always – isn’t allowing for the instances where there has been success and is closing the door on us latching on to a more positive instance to inspire confidence. Clearer thinking about the process, about how best to prepare for the interview and behave during it, would be much easier without the dramatic universal always.

I could do nothing right today – I was awful. Nothing at all? No matter how badly a day has gone, there is always something good to look back on. Say you worked in a bookshop. You might have been late for work because you had trouble getting the kids to school that morning, which resulted in a ticking off from your manager. You were tired all day and things were busy, with a couple of rude, impatient customers, before you picked the kids up and chaos ensued once again at home. You did nothing right? You’re forgetting the smile on your children’s faces when they greeted you at the school gates, the old man you helped order the book he was desperate to get hold of and the amusing chat you had with one of your colleagues on your tea break. It only takes one or two bad incidents to condition our thinking to deal in this kind of negative universal – our brains are negatively biased, after all, as we’ll see later – but the truth is that usually it’s not all bad.

Returning to golf, I watched an interview with Lee Westwood, in which he was responding to the loaded jibe from a reporter along the lines of: ‘Lee, aren’t you disappointed in how you played today with that treble [bogey] on the seventeenth?’

Lee’s reply was great, as he said he was actually pleased with the way he’d played that day, as he was struggling with his hip release in his swing but still managed to get the ball round really well and shoot a good score of sixty-eight.

This illustrates Lee’s ability to compartmentalize his game and, while recognizing that he had one issue, be able to see the good that he was doing. It is such a vital skill in any discipline, and any walk of life, to be able to analyse and separate different aspects of performance, the good and the bad, instead of to catastrophize instinctively and tell yourself it was all bad.

He never gets these kicks on the right-hand side about 15 metres from touch. This was how a reporter criticized Johnny Sexton’s goal kicking after he’d missed a kick from that position when Ireland played New Zealand in Dublin at the end of 2013. A successful kick would have put Ireland in a position to make history by beating the All Blacks for the first time.

I was working with Johnny during the summer of 2014. When his club side, Racing Metro, played Clermont in the French top tier, Johnny had to take a crucial kick on the right-hand side, about ten yards from touch. He never gets these, does he? I’ve never seen a kick hit with such venom – married with a complete control – and it sailed between the posts.

When I’m working with a player and it’s getting frustrating and difficult, slowing down and starting again, players often lose their composure and vent their frustration: ‘I will never get this!’ You will have experienced this yourself when learning a new skill or trying to get the hang of something like riding a bike as a child. You’ll fall off, get going again, fall off, really get going and then … fall off again. ‘I’ll never get this!’

But my response is simply to say: ‘You haven’t got it yet.’ Reset and start again, keep going and you will get better. We don’t deal in universals for the simple reason that we all have the capacity to learn a new skill or improve an existing one – riding a bike, working on your kicking game, getting better at interviews. These are not absolutes – it’s only the language we choose that makes them so.

Puzzle Mentality

One facet of performance universal statements can affect most is decision-making. Making effective decisions under pressure is one of the greatest skills anyone can master, as it demonstrates an ability to manage convincingly the effects of pressure and remain mentally sharp, and coaching this skill both in business and on the sports field is a major part of my work with pressure.

All too often, however, the language used by coaches is just too absolute. It’s either the ‘right’ option or the ‘wrong’ one. This can lead to those being coached adopting a ‘puzzle mentality’, whereby they search for the one ‘correct’ option; whereas in reality there are usually lots of options, each with their own advantages and drawbacks.

When I was working towards my masters degree at Bristol University, I looked at the importance of developing problem-solving skills by thinking through and discussing the options available, rather than the simple right-or-wrong mentality. If a teacher, manager or coach is pushing for the ‘right’ decision, it can lead to the use of guesswork rather than initiative, the student simply saying what he or she thinks the teacher wants to hear.

It is far more important that people use their initiative to make decisions, with any debriefing being geared not towards the ‘correctness’ of the decision – an absolute – but towards its efficacy. Was a more effective alternative available? What were the other options? There should be no ‘wrong’ decision – a wrong decision is a guess without reason. By changing the language from absolutes to a continuum of effectiveness we can inspire confidence in people to take more responsibility for their decisions and feel more willing to use their initiative.

‘That’s Great, Everyone’

The final use of universal absolutes will be familiar to anyone who has been through a training session or a meeting where, at the end of it, the person leading the meeting declares: ‘That was great – well done, everyone.’ At the other end of the spectrum, which occurs more frequently in the sporting world than the business world, the coach might declare: ‘That was rubbish. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.’ Neither statement is likely to be entirely accurate.

The first suggests that everything about the meeting, and everyone in it, was of a great standard and it couldn’t have gone smoother. But your experience might have been one of sitting through an interminable Monday-morning meeting, constantly watching the clock and desperate for it to end, or perhaps you were daydreaming about going out for dinner or to the pub after work. In that case, you certainly won’t have put in a ‘great’ performance.

In my experience in sport, it is very unlikely that every player will have performed as well during a training session as such a comment would suggest. A ‘great session’ implies that all players performed to their best, with little room for improvement. Were all the players’ techniques faultless? Were you watching every individual all the time? Of course, sometimes after a lacklustre session or meeting it’s important to gee people up, and some morale-boosting words can be an effective placebo, but more often than not the nondescript universal ‘great’ leads only to complacency. It creates a false sense of achievement. Do this enough and you end up with players who are comfortable with their current level of skill and performance and satisfied with being just good enough. Some coaches, after a chastening defeat on match day, are unable to understand what has gone wrong because they’ve had such a ‘great’ series of sessions on the training pitch that week.

While you may feel guilty, having clock-watched or thought of that cold beer waiting for you after work, ‘That’s great, everyone!’ lets you off the hook. It reinforces the idea that you don’t have to bring your A-game to the meeting and that it’s OK to sleepwalk right through it.

In many people’s workplaces, interminable meetings go on regularly, with a vague sense that they are achieving something, even if no one is quite sure what. Wouldn’t it be more productive to question why you and your colleagues sit around for hours listening to largely irrelevant information? Do we need to discuss every department in every meeting? Would a series of smaller meetings be more effective?

Sports coaches are usually more frank about bad sessions and dishing out criticism compared to the business world. Using precise language improves the level of awareness and quality of feedback and results. Leaving players or team members in no doubt that their effort is recognized but that more is expected where necessary is paramount. In rugby, the day before the second England vs South Africa Test in Bloemfontein in 2000, we had one of our worst training sessions in terms of mistakes. There was no labelling a session like that with the universal tag ‘great’: Martin Johnson, the captain, stated at the end of it, ‘Well, that couldn’t be any fucking worse!’ But in fact it was an effective session in terms of feedback and preparation for an unpredictable event like a rugby international. On match day we beat the Springboks on their own patch for the first time in six years.

It’s Not (Just) What You Say But the Way that You Say It

Words alone, no matter how precise and effective they are at painting the right mental picture for the recipient, are not always enough to get the message across. It is frequently claimed that most communication is non-verbal, not least by those quoting psychologist Albert Mehrabian, who devised the 7 per cent rule which states that words account for only 7 per cent of communication, while 55 per cent is via body language and 38 per cent is through voice tone. In fact, Mehrabian’s work was geared towards expressing attitudes and feelings and has been regularly quoted out of context, questioned and criticized, so we can hardly claim that 93 per cent of all communication is non-verbal.

However, it is unarguably true that, to a greater or lesser extent, body language, tone of voice and other non-verbal indicators do matter when communicating. If the verbal message does not tally with the non-verbal, then its effectiveness can be destroyed. To give an extreme example, if you were to tell someone their work on a project was excellent while you were wearing a smirk and avoiding eye contact, they would be unlikely to believe you and would probably be offended. Similarly, an exhortation to ‘Be more precise and show more enthusiasm on the pitch!’ delivered by someone with a slovenly, untidy appearance, poor posture and a lackadaisical manner – all completely at odds with the verbal message – is unlikely to be taken seriously.

Body language, which is important in helping us make the transition from anxiety to excitement, is equally important when a coach, teacher or manager delivers a message. It’s not called body language for nothing. It must support the tone of voice and the words being uttered to produce a unified, clear communication. It is vital that there is consistency between the message and the manner of its delivery, otherwise its effectiveness will be diminished, or even lost altogether.

Tone of voice – 38 per cent of communication according to Mehrabian’s study – is clearly also vitally important and the message must be delivered with the objective in mind. While I was working in French rugby I was present at a meeting in which a coach was reviewing the previous game on video, pausing the tape whenever there was a mistake and berating the player responsible. At times, such as when the coach was pointing out an attempted tackle that lacked the requisite intensity, the passionate dressing down he delivered was not only well deserved but also correctly communicated – aggressively, to fire the player up so that next time they knew to bring more aggression to their tackling.

However, a kicker missing a penalty then received exactly the same barrage of abuse. While aggression is helpful when tackling, it does not assist a player kicking at goal one iota. Being too aggressive, with the attendant surge of adrenaline, diminishes the control that is essential in place kicking. In this instance the criticism could have been justified, but the delivery was counterproductive. Far better to pass judgement calmly and matter-of-factly, echoing the precise nature of goal kicking rather than the bear-pit mentality required when tackling a sixteen-stone forward.

I have also been present at some inspirational team meetings over the last twenty years. Right up among them would be Jim Telfer’s address to the British Lions prior to playing Orange Free State in South Africa in 1997 and Ian McGeechan’s to the team prior to the series-clinching Test in Durban a few days later. They were the perfect marriage of the three aspects of communication – words, body language and tone of voice – which felt like much more than the sum of their parts: the posture; the passion; the explicit desire; eye contact; enthusiasm. It was incredible just being in those rooms – and, as the results went on to prove, they were highly effective pieces of oratory.

It is through unifying the verbal and the non-verbal – in marrying these two facets so that they deliver the same message – that we can produce clear and, when the occasion demands it, inspirational communication. If you say the right thing to your employees but you deliver it with soppy negativity, then your message will be partly or entirely lost. You need to have consistency in your intentions and your delivery, so that your choice of words, the tone of your voice and your body language are working together to produce clear, unified instruction. Only then will you be able to convey your message as effectively as you would like.

Of course, consistency alone isn’t enough if the message is wrong in the first place, and choosing the right message is the crux of using effective, powerful language.

When Too Much Positive Can Become a Negative

So far we have chiefly covered the misuse of language, the what not to do, but language used skilfully can be a powerful performance enhancer. Just as the advertising industry uses precise, powerful language to try to change the way we look at things and our behaviour as consumers, so managers, coaches and teachers should be doing the same to affect the attitude and behaviour of those we work with.

The most natural form of language use that springs to mind is ‘Be positive!’ But being positive in our language use simply isn’t enough – it’s too weak. Positivity alone lends itself to too many sweeping generalities and universal statements – ‘That’s great/fantastic/excellent, well done!’ – without providing a platform for improvement. Of course, positivity has its place, and achieving targets and the like should be met with positive language, but I prefer to think of effective language use as being productive language:

NEGATIVE POSITIVE PRODUCTIVE
(What to avoid) (Nice, but where’s the direction?) (Specific how to)

Where this ‘positive’ language becomes particularly problematic is when its recipient can see straight through it. Too many hollow, sweeping statements are given out by managers and coaches under the assumption that negative is bad so positive must be good. ‘Positive’ is a hugely overused word in our vocabulary and it is too often used to disguise a lack of precision or specific direction. How can it be positive language when it’s failing to have a positive effect?

I once stood watching a US PGA golf coach whose stock positive phrase was ‘Nice swing,’ or ‘Nice job,’ followed by the player’s name. My issue with this was that he wasn’t stating why it was a nice swing and consequently what the player would need to do to repeat it. When I watched another coach with a European Tour player, he gave out the same – ‘Nice swing’ – but when I spoke to the player afterwards, he was livid, saying he was ‘swinging like shit’ and was becoming increasingly irritated and distracted by the coach’s empty positivity.

So, what kind of language might induce a more useful and performance-improving state? Here is an example from rugby goal kicking:

The first step is to have a powerful ‘how to’ statement, like the ‘how to’ language we discussed earlier:

Big posture, crush the inside quarter [of the ball] and accelerate over the far peg [on the tee].

The second step is to say vividly what happens when it’s right:

See the ball cannon off your foot up the line to the middle of the posts. Make this mental rehearsal as vivid as possible; feel the ball off the foot, see the exact flight of the ball splitting the uprights with a slow controlled spin.

Having practised within a structured regime, the player knows what a good kick is – how it feels to match their intentions exactly.

The third step should conjure up the requisite emotional state:

Show with your body language [posture] that you expect to match your intention exactly. Adopt a state of controlled aggressive inevitability towards your intention.

The correct emotional state for a task varies depending on the activity – kicking at goal in rugby would require a mindset different from, say, taking the microphone at a karaoke night when your natural instinct is to hide in the corner – and it is the precise use of language that will best conjure up the right feeling. As anyone in advertising knows, emotive words such as ‘explode’, ‘coiled’, ‘crush’, ‘spring’, ‘aggressive’, ‘controlled’, ‘icy’ or ‘flow’ can all help to develop the most productive mindset for pressure situations.

Effective language enables us to zone in on precise thoughts, feelings and actions that can help us match our intentions and be successful when the pressure is on. It’s not just what you do, but how you need to feel to be able to do it; if we want to change our actions then we need to change the thoughts and feelings that produce them.

You might be sitting in the corner at a works karaoke night – to you, the worst kind of team bonding imaginable. You’re waiting for the ground to swallow you up, when your boss hands you the mic and says, ‘It’s your turn. Get up there and sing.’ This is hardly the kind of call to arms that’s going to have you getting up to belt out a pop classic. But suppose instead your boss had called you over to the stage, thrust the mic into your hands and ordered you to, ‘Get up there and own that song – I want to see you smash it!’ That’s the kind of powerful, emotive language that will have you either running for the exit door or have you bounding up to the stage ready to bring the house down.

Similarly, a simple goal-kicking coaching instruction – ‘When you kick, do your best to hit the ball on the inside quarter panel’ – is technically correct, but ‘Try to dominate the ball and crush the inside quarter’ is more likely to produce the desired result. The words ‘dominate’ and ‘crush’ imply that you must get your body over the ball and hit down on it. It’s a shorter, more potent and more effective statement; in the case of language, less is usually more.

You Talking to Me?

Thinking things through beforehand, consciously and intentionally in more productive terms, much like I described Stuart Hooper doing earlier before he addressed his teammates, can help stimulate what I call ‘self-talk’. Self-talk can affect thoughts, which in turn can determine your feelings about something and ultimately have an impact on behaviour.

While I’m not suggesting you lock yourself in an empty room and start talking to yourself, I do believe that conscious, intentional and productive thinking – the self-talk – can help to effectively ‘brainwash’ you into changing your thinking so that you know exactly what you are going to do and how you are going to do it.

The powerful language cues we use when learning new skills or thinking things through in advance can be cemented in the mind through practice, repetition or, as for Stuart Hooper, through repetition to others (his teammates), so that they can be easily recalled in a tense, pressured environment such as a rugby match.

A really good example of self-talk is used by driving instructors. Anyone who has learned to drive will never forget the phrase ‘Mirror, signal, manoeuvre’ – three words that contain a wealth of information for the learner driver. Mirror – to check your mirrors for any vehicles or pedestrians in the way – signal – doing this in good time to make your intentions clear to other road users – and the manoeuvre – safely using the steering, speed and position of the car to enter a traffic stream, navigate a roundabout or junction or change lanes on a motorway. While this may become second nature to experienced drivers, for learners it can be an invaluable aid in pressure situations such as driving on a busy road or, indeed, taking a driving test. That ‘Mirror, signal, manoeuvre’ self-talk is their cue to carry out the sequence they’ve practised many times and lends some order and clarity to their minds when the pressure bites – all through three simple words.

We created a simple self-talk phrase for the players leading up to the Rugby World Cup in 2003: ‘Crossbar, touchlines, crossbar.’ Every time a player turned to face the opposition the idea was that he would scan the crossbar joining posts at the end of the field; the touchline on one side of the pitch, then the other touchline, and then crossbar again. Why would this help? Under pressure, players are often drawn into looking at the opposition players rather than the space on the field. When a player looks to the touchline, he will see the space outside the last man, which is particularly relevant when teams condense to only using half the width of the pitch. A simple self-talk of ‘Crossbar, touchlines, crossbar’ prompts the player to run through a routine to help them identify space on the pitch.

Affirmative Action

There is no substitute for powerful, productive ‘how to’ language, both as a means of coaching and in self-talk, to help foster the right mindset for performing under pressure. Language is the oil in the engine of a great performance and it directly affects every other aspect of the Pressure Principle. Perhaps the most important use of language, the distillation of its power, comes in its smallest bundle: the affirmation.

Self-help gurus use them and advertising companies certainly use them; affirmations are short, potent statements that, despite their size, are able to unlock a great deal of meaning – literal, emotional and physical – from our minds. A handful of words with all that power.

It is a similar principle that I try to apply in writing affirmations for the players I coach: precise, tailored and personal notes, produced after I have worked with them for a while and have a grasp of what makes them tick and what they need to do to improve. It is imperative that the language is productive and not merely glibly positive.

I tend to produce two types of affirmations for players: one for a specific event, match or round, designed to evoke the confidence that a successful outcome will be secured if certain processes are followed; the other focuses on a more general approach to improve all-round performance and attitude in training, practice and performance.

I put the following together for a golfer who was determined to improve but needed to be tougher in his practice and more aggressive in his play:

The first point is a factual statement of who he is without slipping into ‘absolute’ language. One of the best is a fact, while being the best – well, there can be only one. The next parts ensure that his main obstacle, which we’d identified together, is covered and then identify the keys to his most effective mindset. The aim is to conclude that, if he adheres to the process and practice, he will improve. He went on to become the world’s number one golfer.

Here is another general one, which I put together for a member of the victorious British and Irish Lions squad during their tour of Australia in 2013. He was a right-footed kicker already improving and getting tougher on himself in training, practising right at the edge of his ability and working tirelessly on his left-footed kicking:

The structure is similar to that of the golfer’s. Firstly, there is a statement about himself and his situation. He then reaffirms his commitment to training in the ugly zone (see Chapter 3) and why it is essential for him, acknowledging that it will be tough but eventually rewarding through improved performances.

Here is another affirmation for an international rugby player who is a forward and wanted to improve several areas of his game. This one is short and to the point:

Again, it is the same basic structure with the challenge interwoven within the statements. It’s not a case of just writing a few sentences and then hoping everything will be fine; it’s writing them, reading them, keeping them somewhere special (the golfer had his in his scorecard holder) and living them. There will always be conditions to improvement and those are the things that the player has to change. Feeling good about yourself is a good framework to start with, then you have to commit. When I work with someone over a period of time, we regularly review their affirmations together and update when necessary to keep the challenge fresh.

The second type of affirmation, to promote and support the right mindset prior to the event, is much easier to produce when I have been working with a player or team for a good length of time, getting to know what really makes them tick as they labour to succeed.

Prior to the 2003 Rugby World Cup in Australia, it was easy to create some really powerful affirmations for the team, as the majority of them had been together as a unit for the past four years of training camps, Test matches and tours abroad. I also spent a great deal of time seeing players individually or in small groups with their club sides. Being so familiar with the work they’d put in and having got to know many of them personally, I was able to put together affirmations that emphasized what needed to be at the forefront of their minds if they were to achieve their potential on the field. I’d usually put them together and give them to the player the day before a match, so I could include anything specific to the opposition.

When putting together these affirmations, the principles are similar to the more general ones – written in the present tense and using powerful, emotive and, hopefully, inspirational language – but tailored for the specific situation. It is vital that there is an element of ‘if I do this, I will get that’. The following affirmation was for one of the backs, who had a great deal of responsibility for managing the game and was also the goal kicker, prior to the biggest game of his life: the World Cup final.

In the following affirmation, written for a back-row player whose job was to disrupt the opposition with his power and aggression, the player and I agreed that a vivid description of what to do and how that would feel, both physically and emotionally, would give him the best chance of performing well:

As with the previous pre-game affirmation, I set the scene with some powerful language, but I also included some process conditions – in other words, ‘I will have a great performance if I do X, Y and Z.’

With golfers we’d have a routine. After they’d done their physical warm-up, we’d head to the driving range where, depending on the player, they would hit different shots, going through their clubs to achieve distances. We would then go to the short-game area for chips and bunker shots and then to the putting green, which is usually a short walk from the first tee. At this point I would pass them their written affirmation, which would hopefully capture the moment and inspire the player to perform at their best when it really mattered. Sometimes it’s based on history, sometimes the previous round or tournament, or something they’ve been specifically working on. I try to inspire a bit of a fire-up, a bit of ‘Wow!’ and a reminder of the process and their proven ability.

At the start of Chapter 1, we saw a snippet from Luke Donald’s affirmation at the Dubai World Championship and here is one for another golfer, prior to the last round of a tournament:

The aim of this was to make clear the importance of his posture – the process – and inspire a sense of inevitability about a great performance – an arrogant sense of destiny. I wanted him to be very aware of all the high-quality, hard work he’d put in and, as so much of that was around his pre-shot routine, I wanted him to recognize and derive confidence from this – which would feed into the rest of his game.

Your Own Affirmations

These affirmations aren’t only the preserve of sports stars – we can all write our own and enjoy similarly powerful results, if we do them right. To ensure that your affirmations are effective, several protocols must be followed. They should be personal, written in the present tense and proactive. All the statements should be phrased positively – what you want to do rather than what you want to avoid – in strong, vivid, productive language. No wishy-washy hollow positives, please. While there is no ‘I’ in team, your affirmations should be packed full of them: all statements should be in the first person. They’re about you as an individual: your performance; your actions; your feelings. And they should only be about yourself. The only person you are competing with is yourself – your previous performance levels and attitude.

Your affirmations should include accurate and realistically achievable goals that you are working towards. You should talk about accomplishments and goals in the present tense – right now – rather than sometime in the future. The language should be such that, like advertising slogans, it conjures up strong images, feelings and emotions: love, joy, pride, excitement, success – descriptive, action words.

If you were writing a trailer for a Hollywood action film, what kind of language would you use to try to attract an audience? Words such as ‘exciting’, ‘thrilling’ and ‘daring’ spring to mind, and it is this kind of language that belongs in your own affirmations to bring them to life. However, there is a caveat to all this: your affirmations must be realistic and grounded in fact. You are not going to be on the verge of victory every time you perform, so the challenge must be relevant and realistic to you. While I have written affirmations for men about to play in a World Cup final or for a golfer about to play a round that could make him world number one, I’ve also written them for those looking to improve their score or hone a particular skill in an environment more relevant to them. Your event-specific affirmations could be before you deliver an important speech, before an interview or even before a particularly tough day at work, and your more general ones could be about improving your performance in meetings or asserting yourself at work – asking for a pay rise more frequently or making sure you leave on time more regularly. The point is that the goals should be realistic and identify processes that will improve your performance.

Also, grounding them in fact means that everything you put into your affirmation must be true. There’d be no point saying ‘I’ve practised hard with great commitment’ if it isn’t true, any more than it would be for any of the people I’ve mentioned previously. It would be like building a castle on quicksand. If something isn’t true then it has no place in an affirmation: we can convince ourselves of many things, but not if we know them to be categorically false.

I have listed some short statements below and given examples of how to bring them alive through powerful language:

Statement Affirmation
I really work hard when I practise. I work with a burning desire and intensity to continually improve.
I concentrate on my posture. I work on creating a magnificent command posture; the greater the occasion, the bigger I am.
I try to look for the detail when I … When I see the detail, my process is magnificently strong and I am wonderfully resilient.
I try to keep control when I play. When I set my command posture I take control of the toughest situations.
I hope I can cope with this important event – I have practised hard. I have prepared harder than I could have thought possible; I am excited and so ready for this.
Visualize. I see every vivid detail.
I am ready. I have power in abundance; my posture gives me absolute control.

These are just examples of how I would approach a general affirmation and I would obviously tailor the language for whoever I was coaching. When doing your own, either for yourself or for someone you are managing or coaching, it is up to you to choose the right language to get the best results. I understand that it can be a bit difficult to grasp at first, and that using this powerful, productive language might make you feel a bit embarrassed or as though you’re treading in ‘American self-help’ territory. Remember, no one else – aside from yourself and either your manager or someone you’re managing – is going to read it, so any self-consciousness about using language that might make you uncomfortable if it were read to a room should be put to one side. This is a very personal thing and should be treated as such. You are writing something to yourself, to fill your mind with images and feelings that will help you perform at the next level to where you are now.

Even the process of writing affirmations is beneficial in itself. There is real value in spending the time to sit down, think about and then write down what it is that you want to achieve, in a ‘how to’ format and with powerful, motivational language.

I have constructed a few basic guidelines for your own affirmations, which could be adapted for sport, business – or anything you want:

Outside my coaching in the sporting world, I have been working with a salesman in a German sports car dealership. He is not very confident in creating rapport with new customers and is always anxious about completing a sale – the point at which his job is at its most pressured. He becomes hurried, as he’s so keen to make the sale that he forgets parts of the process and jumps to the outcome. Here is an affirmation we put together:

The most important point for the salesman to emphasize to himself is his need to stop and reset before going calmly through the steps to secure a sale. In this affirmation is another tip that you could take into your own. Here, we’ve taken his negative thoughts (about his anxiety at making a sale) and changed them into a more positive light – a glass is half-full approach – but equally there is a ‘how to’ attached to it and a sense of inevitability: ‘If I do this, I will get that.’ You could do the same with your own negative or self-doubting thoughts, reframing the language and adding a powerful ‘how to’.

In most working environments there is a system of appraisals. Some of those working for particularly good companies might find themselves with a list of goals that they constantly have to work towards, providing regular feedback to their managers who review their progress as they go. Those are the lucky ones.

Many others simply agree to their goals, sign them off and then forget about them until the next appraisal a year down the line. Wouldn’t it be a better idea to agree to a set of self-improving and skill-developing goals, producing affirmations together to go with them that you could keep to hand and refer to at the start of each day, updating them as you go along? They would, of course, need to adhere to my protocols of being achievable (at your margin – just one more …), building on existing work and ability, emotional (how you will feel) and, vitally, couched in powerful, productive language. Rather than having a set of woolly, indeterminate goals sitting in an unopened folder in a filing cabinet, wouldn’t it be better to have a series of empowering statements to help you build towards these targets and make them feel a bit more visceral and real?

Better than Before: The No Limits Mindset

Friday, 19 March 2010: the day before England played France. Jonny Wilkinson hadn’t made the team and would be on the bench for the Test and we were working together on the training ground at the Pennyhill Park Hotel, near Bagshot, Surrey. Because of the severe knee injury he had suffered, we had remodelled his kicking technique to avoid any hyperextension (when the leg extends beyond being straight). Out there in the cold, with him practising his technique despite not making the team, he gave it his all. Having been involved in over 160 international rugby Test matches and witnessed the ‘Why bother, I’m on the bench?’ mentality, I know for a fact that a lesser player would not have been so committed.

We tackled the last session as if he was just starting, not an ounce of effort lacking, and we went through the narrow-angle goal kicking, in which he would take kicks at goal from just inside the touchline and about five yards from the try line: a kick of about thirty yards at a target about a yard wide, at best. He took eight kicks – four from the left, four from the right – and made seven out of eight – with the one that missed hitting the post. It was a sensational display.

Jonny came off the bench with less than twenty minutes to go in the match, with England down by five points. Within five minutes they were awarded a penalty around the halfway line, near the touchline – a kick of well over fifty-five yards. Jonny nailed it and for the rest of the game France closed their play down to run down the clock and hang on for the final whistle – always fearful of another Wilkinson penalty.

Fast forward a year to 2011, when we were working together at Twickenham on the ‘day off’ in the lead-up to one of the Six Nations games. After a particularly taxing practice, in which his technique was fully put to the test, he proceeded to kick ten drop goals in a row, from over forty-five yards out, off my passing. Remarkable enough in itself, but he’d kicked them from alternate feet – left foot, right foot, left foot – and made all ten. Better than before, I thought to myself. He really is a lot better than before.

‘Better than before’ became our adopted mantra after his injury and I firmly believe that the Jonny Wilkinson of 2011 was better than the 2003 model. I’d even go so far as to say that the Jonny Wilkinson of 2014 was better still, a more complete kicker and player, not to mention captain of double Heineken Cup winners and Top 14 champions Toulon.

Injury is a very real risk for players across all sports and serious injury is particularly prevalent in the likes of football and rugby, where physical contact is permissible. So many players who suffer a severe injury – knee surgery, a broken leg, the list goes on – talk about getting back to the position they were in prior to the injury. ‘Back to before’ is their mantra. But I feel this is far too limiting, with getting ‘back to before’ setting that standard as your ceiling for improvement, and indeed it can become an almost illusory status, this ‘before’, that many can feel they’ll never really achieve.

As time moves on we all develop, and for an elite sportsman or woman that should mean a continual commitment to improvement, just as it should for anyone in anything they do. Our maturity and our understanding of what we do should always be growing, and being injured is no excuse for stagnation. That is not to underestimate exactly what a performer has to do to come back from an injury: there are long, lonely hours in the gym, with physiotherapists and doctors, away from the buzz and camaraderie of teammates, the adulation of supporters and the sheer, irreplaceable thrill of playing a sport you love and excel at. A top-level career in sport is often not a long one and substantial time out because of injury can significantly eat into this and certainly play on an athlete’s mind.

But, as hard as it is, this time out should be used to continue a player’s development. If they can’t play, they can still look at their game and what they can do to improve it. If they can’t exercise on an injured leg, perhaps they could use the time to develop strength and fitness in other muscle groups. The experience of injury and being away from the game can help them grow as people. And, on the road to recovery, if they’re physically unable to do exactly what they could before, then they can look at adapting to this, at acquiring new skills to compensate and to progress, with the idea that you can come back better than before.

Of course, it’s very sad to watch some players return from injury with their capacities clearly reduced. You tend to see it most in players with great pace whose injuries slow them down and they’re unable to find ways to compensate. The former England and Liverpool footballer Michael Owen springs to mind – his pace helped scorch the image of his World Cup 1998 goal against Argentina into the international sporting consciousness, but as injuries reduced his pace and became so recurrent, it sadly became the symbol of his career rather than the beginning of it. With Jonny, it was a case of adapting his technique so that he didn’t hyperextend his leg and, allied to his incredible work ethic and desire, he was able to come back better than before.

Here is an affirmation for another international rugby player, who had broken his wrist and was faced with a considerable time out of the game:

This player was determined to take advantage of the break to work on areas that he otherwise would not have had the time to if he was playing. Together, we emphasized the desire to return better than before, which is also cloaked in the phrase ‘I am only scratching the surface of my potential’.

We all have setbacks in our own lives and it’s important to take a similar approach to them. The nearest comparison to a long break through injury I can think of is probably enforced unemployment, for example if you’ve been made redundant through work. This kind of break is obviously filled with financial worries that a wealthy professional sports star wouldn’t be affected by, but the similar feelings of being isolated from your erstwhile colleagues and the worry about getting back to where you were before are all there. It may be that you will need to adapt too, not to a new method of kicking but to different financial circumstances or even a new career path, so it’s equally important to have the perspective that things can be better than before. Simply trying to get ‘back to before’ can be elusive and difficult to achieve, certainly in the current economic climate, and being aware of the need to adapt, to accept that things may need to be different from before, is important. Being unemployed can be a lonely and dispiriting period in anyone’s life, and this mantra of ‘better than before’, like the glass is half full, can be an important one to adopt.

‘Better than before’ is, of course, part of the no-limits mindset that I feel is essential for anyone – a top-level athlete, a first-jobber keen to climb the ladder or even an old hand at coaching – to adopt if they want to improve their performance. The no-limits mindset says that, no matter who you are, whatever your standard, everyone is capable of improving from where they are right now. No limits is all about improving upon yourself – not anyone else – and being the best that you can allow yourself to be.

When performers are described as ‘special’ or ‘naturally gifted’ we take this for granted, without stopping to think about the hours they have spent learning and practising ‘special’ skills by continually improving at the margins of their own performance. Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably the greatest footballer in the world, may have all sorts of natural genetic gifts, but he has also continually improved by pushing himself to be the best. The stories of his hard work on the training ground – stories that seem to be consistent with almost every one of the very top players in any sport – back this up and I can state categorically that the best players I have coached, the likes of Jonny Wilkinson, have worked tirelessly at pushing their own margins. Even now, at his peak, do you really think Cristiano Ronaldo doesn’t believe he can get better?

It’s this attitude, this mindset, that I strive to embed in every person I coach, be it the German car salesman, a professional golfer, a sixteen-year-old student desperate to improve her posture or a manager at the end of his career who has been there and done it all. I still believe anyone, no matter who, can get better – that there really are no limits to personal progression. Of course, this mindset needs to be created with the right language, which embeds the idea that we can improve as long as we work as hard as possible to achieve it – a continual step up on our previous selves. Performing under pressure is a skill and, like any skill, it can be learned and improved.

Through this no limits mindset, informed by no-limits language, a commitment to continual improvement can be attained. When the going gets tough and the pressure is really on, it can help bring perspective, to look at things with the desire to still do your best. There is no question in my mind that, no matter how dire a situation may be – missing the cut in a professional tournament, losing a match, facing a setback in your career – the commitment, discipline and tenacity to arrest the downward slide and finish by scoring a ‘consolation’ goal, moving marginally up the leader board or putting in that extra effort at work, even when it seems futile, can create a mental momentum which keeps the ‘better than before’ belief about yourself alive.