Watch a professional baseball game and you’ll see the managers and coaches engaged in some very strange hand movements. They might touch their nose, swipe the bill of a cap, and then tug on their ear.
To the uninitiated, coaches can appear to be swatting flies or scratching a hard-to-reach itch. But what is really going on is an instruction to players about how to handle the situation confronting them. These movements are signals with a precise meaning known only to those on the team.
Delivering messages using gestures and distinctive movements is a clever way to communicate with teammates without flagging to others what is being said.
Tight-knit teams and partnerships can benefit from the same kind of communication device. Letting others know what you would like them to do without saying so can come in handy in many settings. Having a pre-determined gesture that denotes how a colleague or partner should handle a situation or alter their approach can be tremendously powerful.
Colleagues sometimes talk too much or too little, oversell and advocate too strongly, interrupt and talk over others, disclose too much information, begin to agree without the partner’s consent, engage too seriously or not seriously enough, fail to relinquish the floor, or get too emotional.
What if a tug on the ear could send a message to a trusted colleague to correct themselves without signaling this to others? The power of hand signals is not just for baseball managers. Good leaders can use them in the same way.
Effective signals between colleagues or partners don’t have to cover more than one or two messages. Reserve them for those infractions that are common patterns for a given individual.
Think about what common message you would like to send to colleagues during presentations without interrupting them or saying it out loud in front of the audience. What gesture would send a noticeable but hidden message?
Signals should be simple and undetectable. You might be surprised at how many top sales teams, high-powered partners and trusted colleagues already use them to suggest a course of action or to curtail a problematic behavior.
Whatever you would like to say but can’t in a group setting is ideal for a well-designed and agreed-upon hand signal. Just remember, no one is supposed to detect the signal except the intended party. Did you just touch your nose twice?
