The beliefs of a coach have become a recent internet hit after being posted on a Facebook page with some 24 million visits in one day.

Interestingly, the social media post was new but not the video, for that dates back a year ago to April 2016. That it did not escape the British press is probably no surprise for it poses many questions with The Times asking: ‘Is body language more important than talent?’

Before we examine that question, who is the coach?

He is Geno Auriemma, a coach with a serious record of building performance and achievement. He has led three US women’s basketball teams to Olympic Gold medals in 2000, 2012 and 2016. In the day-job he is in charge of the most successful women’s college basketball team in the US - the Connecticut Huskies - where he has been the coach for thirty-two years. Currently the team are on a 111-game winning streak and bidding for a fifth in-a-row national title having won the national title a total of eleven times and the divisional championship twenty-three times.

What has attracted people to his video interview is his no-nonsense approach to dealing with young athletes who he believes are more focused upon themselves rather than on the team. What did he say?

“So, on our team, we put a huge premium on body language. And if your body language is bad, you will never get in the game. Ever. I don’t care how good you are…” and continues, “…I’d rather lose than watch kids play the way some kids play. I’d rather lose. And they’re allowed to get away with just ‘whatever’ and they’re always thinking about themselves. Me, me, me, me.” He concludes by saying, “So when I look at my team, they know this. When I watch a game film, I’m checking on the bench. If somebody doesn’t care, if somebody’s not engaged, they will never get in the game. Ever.”

In the early years of human evolution the only form of communication between individuals was by gestures, facial expression, and non-verbal behaviour thus meaning that the ability to read a person’s thinking through body language was one of the earliest developed skills of human kind and central to survival.

It is interesting that despite the development of the sciences of anthropology and psychology in the early twentieth century that it was no until the early 1950s that earnest research into body language begun. The two leading researchers in this field, Ray Bindwhistle in 1952 and Albert Mehrabian in 1971, both concluded from their work that body language contributes between 60%-80% of every human communication with no subsequent research changing this.

Our attitude, derived from our beliefs, is expressed through our behaviour with our body language being the biggest clue, and the first impression that others will focus upon, to the detriment of what we may be saying. Indeed, so finely developed are our abilities to read another person’s body language that we are constantly scanning to test the congruence or incongruence between what the body language of another tells us and the verbal content or tone of the rest of the communication.

Bindwhistle and Mehrabian’s research had suggested that it may take someone between 30 seconds to 4 minutes to form an impression of a stranger. A series of experiments by psychologists, Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov in 2006, found that it can take as little as a tenth of a second to form an impression of a stranger from their face, and that longer exposures did not significantly alter the impression already formed. This means that we can detect the attitude, whether it is positive or negative, of someone else very quickly.

In last week’s blog (3rd April 2017) we saw that the past performance director of British cycling, Sir David Brailsford, looked for attitude over talent in recruiting for the team. We now have Auriemma not just supporting that view but significantly drawing attention to the importance of body language (do watch his body language in the video).

They understand that to achieve high performance requires people who are engaged through a positive attitude and that when it comes to performance there is nothing ‘soft’ about it.

As Andy Tennant, a member of British Cycling’s track team who just missed out on selection for the 2012 and 2016 Olympic team says: “We’re here to perform and win medals. We’re not here to be everyone’s friend and have a cosy coffee morning.”

Too few leaders and organisations understand that if they want top performance they need talent with positive attitude and that means going for body language over skills.