Talking It Out

College athletes have already had to deal with their harshest and most blunt critics: their coaches. Through meetings, videos (which highlight failures in unblinking ways that the memory typically edits out), and critiques on the fields, athletes receive more criticism than they would, perhaps, like. But that constant onslaught of critique and improvement has a positive effect: One-on-one meetings and individual film sessions make athletes thick-skinned individuals.

In a recent survey, researchers found that 55% of employees said their most recent performance review had been unfair or inaccurate, and 25% of employees said that they dread these evaluations more than anything else in their working lives.

On the other end…

…the same researchers asked senior HR executives about their most difficult challenge, and 63% of the executives who were interviewed cited employee inability or unwillingness to have difficult feedback conversations.

Clearly, the feeling is mutual.

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Receiving and using constructive criticism in a positive way is a skill with which student-athletes have had years of practice. We’ve learned how to take negative feedback, turn it into positive improvement, and even use it to foster and maintain positive relationships with our coaches, professors, teammates, and classmates, helping to ensure that we’re all on the same page.

Yet still the fear of embarrassing yourself in front of your classmates, teammates, professors, and coworkers is one that forces many students to stay quiet in class, even though they are curious about or don’t understand something. Athletes have learned the hard way that asking a “stupid” question looks better on them than, let’s say, showing up late to the bus for an away game.

According to a 2014 study published by Management Science, people who seek advice are likely to be viewed as more competent by the people they are asking.

Remember, when you ask someone a question, you are gaining something… not losing something.

Research shows that asking for help or clarification is something that most employees avoid. Former NYU women’s soccer player, Melissa Menta, has seen this firsthand in her position in player marketing at the NFL. She said that she sees her coworkers struggle to handle criticism because they’ve never been exposed to it before.

Melissa’s experience as a student-athlete has caused her to be a better communicator and a more effective worker, because she is unafraid to ask what is expected of her when she is unsure. Many students shy away from answering and asking questions in class because they are afraid of giving a “dumb” answer or asking a “stupid” question.

Athletes are not afraid to speak up because they learn very quickly that there’s no such thing as a dumb question. Can you imagine an athlete stepping onto the field without knowing what the game plan is?

What these two aspects of sports and business boil down to, really, is communication. The first aspect — criticism — is about receiving communication and using it constructively. The second aspect — clarification — is about receiving communication and interpreting it correctly. Both of these skills are vital in both sports and the workforce.

Athletes are seasoned communicators because of their time spent in a team environment. My own experience as a student-athlete taught me this specific value. I would have rather asked my coach for the fifth time what time the bus leaves (and risk being viewed as an idiot) than miss the bus because I heard his announcement incorrectly. When I am unsure of what is expected of me, I have been taught to ask; it is the only way to ensure that my team stays on the same page and plays as a unit. If we had different ideas of what our game plan was for that day and half of us were wrong, we wouldn’t get anywhere (and we’d anger our coach in the process).

Many people shy away from acknowledging that they’re unsure what to do, because they are afraid that their boss or teacher might think that they weren’t paying attention. Student-athletes, by contrast, are prepared to seek clarification by asking a question, because they know that reaching out to someone in advance is more favorable than guessing…and then suffering the consequences of getting it wrong. This attribute is a product of playing a team sport. Game plans are only executed when each member of the team does what is expected of them, and when everyone has a different idea of what the game plan is, things will go wrong.

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Business Insider recently published an article about most employees’ widespread fear of looking dumb, and as it turns out, many people like to “save face” by pretending that they are following along with a presentation or discussion, even when they really aren’t.

Paula Pant, founder of Afford Anything, a financial advice website, offered up an example of a conversation she had with her friend after a business meeting. After the conclusion of the meeting, Paula asked her friend what she learned from it:

Friend: “Um … I couldn’t understand half the words they used.”
Paula: “Well, did you ask?”
Friend: “Ask what?”
Paula: “Did you ask what those words meant?”
Friend: “I didn’t want to waste their time asking dumb questions.”

What Paula’s friend really meant to say was that she was scared of being perceived as “dumb.” Paula’s personal experience with this shows that the willingness to “save face” is so deeply embedded in our culture that no one is able to see the irony: Our fear of looking dumb prevents us from learning.

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In order to succeed in both our sports and our academics, we have to be on the same page as our coaches and our professors, and this requires communication. Giving professors plenty of notice that you’ll be missing class (or asking permission to make up a quiz) is crucial. If you know you’ll be missing a Friday class, you learn quickly not to wait until Thursday to tell them. You might do that the first few times, but it will become clear that professors have lives too, which means . . . they don’t check their email every 10 seconds.

The responsibility of staying on top of your schoolwork is yours, and if you don’t communicate, it won’t happen. As athletes, we either learn how to foster an open and communicative relationship with all of our professors, or we don’t graduate. It’s that simple, because athletes are held to the same standard as regular students. Athletes are not automatically guaranteed extra time to hand in assignments just because they are traveling, nor do they get extra time to make up exams.

I had a handful of friends who were traveling for athletic competition and had to miss class on an exam day. In one instance, a professor was kind enough to let my teammates have the exam proctored on the road. But in another instance, there was a miscommunication of some sort and two of them received zeros on their exam. If you think I’m exaggerating, I am not. They legitimately received a 0% score on a midterm.

A midterm.

They learned to communicate better after that.


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Communications specialist Sina Lockley questions why companies are willing to spend large sums of money on external communication and relations but don’t put in the same effort to internal communication, even though the benefits of creating a positive company culture far outweigh the liabilities.

Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and author of Reclaiming Conversation,proposes that young adults wearing headphones and adults overusing email both stem from our collective fear of conversation. Our avoidance of messy and meaningful conversations is what Turkle believes has created the feeling of being “alone together”: “We are together, but each of us is in our own bubble, furiously connected to keyboards and tiny touch screens,” Turkle says in a 2012 New York Times article. Our physical “being” with one another and our connection to technological devices allows us to navigate our attention as we please, but that isn’t always good.

In the workplace, this issue is seen during board meetings when executives send and receive text messages while someone is giving a presentation. HR executives reported in a recent study by the Deloitte University Press that they “consider culture and engagement to be their #1 challenge.” It’s no wonder this is a challenge when the fear of communication and conversation is so deeply rooted within individuals. Turkle suggests that we think about the one similarity between an employee arriving to work and a college student arriving to class: headphones. They each work in a shared space but in their own respective bubbles: They are alone together.