Championship Body Language | Josiah Igono, Erik Averill | Athlete CEO: Peak Performance #49
Enjoy the Athlete CEO podcast? Leave us a 5-star rating & review to help others like you discover the show!
Episode Summary
Your presence is everything – it dictates your performance, how you’re viewed, how other respond to you, and even how you feel about yourself.
Our brains are wired to protect and to predict, so the way we comport ourselves – whether it’s on the mound, in the boardroom, or in daily interactions – makes a difference in how others will respond, think, and feel.
As athletes, the truth is that we want to have a dominant presence on the field. We want to be confident and take up space. We want to be big. This comes from a confidence that you can actually do what you set out to do – beat your opponent and win.
Ultimately, as Josiah shares in this episode, confidence begins by adopting championship body language as there is a measurable reaction occurring at a neurochemical level. In today’s episode, Josiah and Erik discuss this concept and the science that ties confidence and body language together.
Episode Highlights:
(1:12) What is championship body language?
(2:21) The science behind presence
(3:33) The difference between having a strong presence and being domineering
(5:28) Being a dominant athlete
(6:37) Your reaction as an athlete to committing an error on the field
(9:50) Where to find the best research on body language
(10:49) Having confidence in your teammates and coaches
(15:09) Is it in you?
Stay Connected
All Things Performance: Podcast | Courses
Josiah Igono: LinkedIn | Twitter
AWM Capital: IG | LinkedIn | Facebook | AWMCap.com
+ Read the Transcript
Erik Averill (00:21): Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Athlete CEO Podcast. I'm your host, Erik Averill. I'm the co-founder of AWM, where we're on a mission to help our clients unlock the full potential of their wealth for maximum impact. One of our core beliefs at AWM is that the greatest driver of your net worth is actually your human capital, that the best investment you can make is in yourself. And so once a month, we sit down with our resident performance coach, Josiah Igono, who is the founder of All Things Performance. We have absolutely enjoyed our conversations over the past couple of months and excited to jump into a topic today that I have heard for many, many years from you, championship body language. What do you got for us, Jo?
Josiah Igono (01:12): Well, man, thanks again for having me. Championship body language, your presence, man, your presence is everything. Your presence dictates your performance. And so how an individual, whether that's an athlete, whether that's a businessman or woman, whether that's a parent or a teacher in the classroom, how you comport yourself, your presence dictates how you are viewed and, ultimately, dictates how you perform.
Erik Averill (01:39): It's interesting. I was with you this past January, which in 2020 feels like an eternity ago, but we were talking about some of the science behind presentation. That, it was something staggering, like 60% of what matters is the way that you're coming off from a presentation standpoint. Before the words I even speak. Not only the way in which I'm presenting myself, so the way I look, but then the tone of my voice and the smallest thing. It doesn't mean that it's insignificant, our words, but that presence. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what exactly is championship body language?
Josiah Igono (02:21): Absolutely. Our brains are remarkable. We have been wired with an organ that is actually making decisions before we make decisions. When I see somebody coming at me, when I walk into a room, when I am in an unknown environment, my brain is calculating the situation and is trying to make decisions as far as who can I trust? Who's dangerous? Our brains are doing two primary things. Number one, it is trying to protect us, right? Our brain wants to protect us from hurt, harm and danger. That's its number one responsibility.
Josiah Igono (02:59): Number two, our brains are wired to predict. We love looking at patterns. Our brains love looking for patterns. Who do I know in this room? I don't know you. I don't know you. I know you, you and you. You are a threat until otherwise. When it comes to establishing presence, whether you're a pitcher on the mound, whether you're a teacher in the classroom or whether you're giving a presentation that could change the trajectory of your company, it is very important that you command presence, because the individuals in that room are trying to figure out if they can trust you.
Erik Averill (03:33): One of the things that I'm thinking about is we focus a lot, both in our professional life and in our personal life, of how are we showing up for those people that we're interacting with? What is it that we want them to feel? Not only to try and maybe convince them to do business with us, but how do I want my children to perceive the way in which they interact with me? How does my spouse receive the way in which I care and love her? Can you talk about what are some of the things that make us have this incredible presence that isn't necessarily domineering? Can you just talk about the different approaches? Because I imagine at different times you want your body language to communicate different things.
Josiah Igono (04:29): Absolutely. That's a great question. What I'll do is, I'll start off with a performance-based lens. Then if you want to take it in another direction, we can do that. I work with athletes. I work with a ton of athletes. I think it was Dr. James Loehr, he said something, he goes, "There is the performer. And then there's the person." Guess what? The person is always there. As a performer, as a professional athlete, as a collegiate athlete, we are putting on the uniform. We're putting on the hat. We're putting on the equipment to go and perform. We have to separate ourselves sometimes from this reality. We are, in essence, geared towards putting on the best performance as possible. We are going to try and make as many free throws as we can, score as many touchdowns as we can and throw as many strikes as we can. That is what we do. That's what we get paid to do.
Josiah Igono (05:28): From a body language context there, we want to be dominant, period, full stop. We need to be dominant. We need to be big. We need to be powerful. We need to be graceful and we need to take up space. When I look at an athlete, as an opponent, I want to know, are you a threat to me? Are you a threat? Every athlete is thinking that, even though they don't say that. Are you a threat? How's that fastball? You know what I'm saying? Man, that running back is bigger than a bus. You're constantly trying to figure out, is this person a threat? Now, a lot of that has to do with their presence. How do they stand? Are they taking up space? Are they jittery? What are they doing with their hands? What are they doing with their eyes? Are they exposing their neck? Are they doing certain things, like with nervous tells in terms of jitteriness when it comes to their feet and just little subtle nuances and things like that.
Josiah Igono (06:37): From a performance standpoint, we want to be big. We want to take up space. We want to be confident. We want to be fluid. And we want to dominate and impose our will on the opponent. When we do that, we have positive effects. Now, if my opponent sees otherwise, that I'm small, I'm taking up less space, I'm jittery, I'm looking around, I feel fleety, flighty, then all of a sudden the conversation changes. I feel like I can dominate you. This is what's happening on a subconscious or conscious level all the time. One of the things I look for when I evaluate athletes and when I watch athletes perform is what they do immediately following an error, what they do immediately following some type of gaffe, what do they do? Because in those microseconds, those are huge tells to the opponent if there's blood in the water.
Josiah Igono (07:37): You know who the best in, this is my opinion, the best in the world? You know who the best in the world are when it comes to championship body language? Olympic gymnasts and ice skaters. They're the absolute best. What do they do when they fall and they stumble? You never know. What do they do? They get up and they smile. They put their hands up in the air and they're acting like nothing happened. They're acting like nothing happened. But what do we see in the major leagues when guys get bad calls and they strike out or when there's a bad call? What do you see? You see guys giving away their emotions and there's blood in the water. A good opponent sees that and says, "We're going in!"
Erik Averill (08:21): I love it. I'm just retelling times in my life when there was high confidence on the field or going through our client roster list, watching how they perform and apply it in the boardroom and in investment conversations that I have, where we're having founders on a regular basis pitch their businesses. So much of that decision-making truly is subconscious. You're asking me to deploy millions of dollars towards your company. Do I actually believe that you have confidence? Do I trust you? A large part of that is coming from a subconscious presence standpoint, is how do I trust that?
Erik Averill (09:10): It's interesting. You talk a lot about this. In previous episodes you talked about the importance of awareness, of framing, of doing the intentional work of reflection, of asking this question, how did I come off? What was my presence? What was my performance? Because for so many people, and I know me included, there are times that I'm probably sitting, standing in a certain way that communicates the complete wrong message. I walk away being like, "Hey, what just happened?" And I've got no idea. I literally started pretty much already in the negative category.
Josiah Igono (09:50): Those are valid points. That's what happens. The self-awareness piece is very huge. It's interesting, in my opinion, again, this is just my opinion, I think Dr. Amy Cuddy is the foremost expert in this area. Her work on body language is absolutely phenomenal. She has a book called Presence. She has a YouTube video that has been watched millions of times over. If you want further information on body language, she is awesome. I think Allan Pease and his wife have also written a book about body language that is absolutely phenomenal. One of the things that you will find when you start talking about body language is that even on a neurochemical level, things are happening. When you look at people who have dominant body language, they found, the research that has been produced has found that people who have dominant body language, I think it's their resting testosterone levels are actually higher than those who have submissive body language.
Josiah Igono (10:49): What you are doing, again, on this conscious and subconscious level is affecting your performance and it's affecting how other people view you. I've done a lot of research just on confidence and mental toughness and things like that. One of the areas that we've seen in confidence in athletes is their confidence in other teammates. If your confidence... Let me back up, because I'm throwing the word confidence around a lot and I want you guys to track with me. My confidence in you as my teammate is going to affect your confidence in yourself. If I feel that my teammates have high confidence in me, guess what that's going to do to me? It's going to boost my confidence. If I feel like my teammates don't trust in me and they're not confident in me, guess what that's going to do to my confidence? It's going to drop it.
Josiah Igono (11:44): Same thing with coaches. If I feel like my coaches trust me and they have my back and that they're confident in me, guess what happens to my confidence? It goes up the roof. And you know what one of the preeminent areas that determines all that? Your body language. It's just like when you start hearing teammates and coaches say, "Man, this kid has bad body language, man. He looks lost out there. He looks like he's searching." That's not good. The easy fix is to understand what Dr. Cuddy says, she calls them power poses. Get in power poses. Take up space. Make sure that you calm down your hands, your feet. You can do certain things that are not only going to boost up your confidence level, but the confidence of the individuals around you.
Erik Averill (12:37): Super helpful. Thank you for sharing those resources. For the audience, we'll make sure that all of those are in the show notes. You can head over to athleteceo.com to access those along with all the other resources that Josiah has shared with us. Of course, those are completely free that you can access. But just want to make sure in case you don't have that journal and that pen that we've talked about, you should be carrying around, don't worry about if you're driving, just head over to athleteceo.com to get those show notes.
Erik Averill (13:09): One of the things that's interesting you're talking about on that body language, that there are these poses that you can get into. It really strikes me of how simple of a skill and a habit to develop. This is a real practical takeaway. We spend so much time as athletes at a gym or a nutritionist or trying to do some recovery thing. We go through all these crazy things to try to optimize, to be ready. Yet we never think about the way that we carry our physical presence. Or, from an investor standpoint, I think about my job is to, I am trusted by families to manage their net worth. Trust is multifaceted. It's integrity. It's intent. It's competencies. It's track record. But a big part of it is it's providing peace of mind and confidence. Even us as advisors, to be able to do our best work, to develop that trust with our clients, we should be very cognizant of this.
Josiah Igono (14:19): Absolutely. I do want to say this, because you bring up a very valid point. I spoke about the performance context. Now, I want to speak about the everyday context. If I know that I know that you know what it is that you're talking about, I'm going to trust you. I think it was Gatorade, and I'm sorry I'm going to steal Gatorade's thunder a little bit, they had that slogan a couple of years ago. They were like, "Is it in you?" My thing is, my question to you, the audience, is, "Is it in you?" Is it in you? Have you studied your trade craft? Have you studied your position? Have you taken on and reflected and gotten it inside you to a point that when you talk about it, people are like, "Man, that dude knows what he's talking about! She knows what she's talking about!"
Josiah Igono (15:09): One of the best compliments that I ever get is, "Man, Joe, I've heard all these other different mental skills and performance psychology people, but man, with you, it's just different, man. It's just like you're speaking to my heart." What I would say is that oftentimes these topics that I talk about, that I'm passionate about, I've been looking at them, studying them, reading them, sitting on them, marinating on them for years, for years. It's in my blood. So when you ask me certain things, I'm going to just spout off. I'm going to tell you X, Y, Z and then come around until you A, B, C, one, two, three with all the bullet points in between, because it's in me. And so when somebody can feel and they know that it's in you, their confidence goes through the roof in you. Or, they get scared, because as an opponent, because you know they're like, "Crap, this dude knows he's exposed." This guy's about to expose me. They know.
Josiah Igono (16:05): And so for me, that's my question to the audience, is it in you? Is it in you? Is it in your blood yet? Because when it is, it just comes off different. It just comes off different at a subconscious level. Remember, our brains are trying to do two things. They're trying to protect ourselves from danger, whether that's an external threat, a person, place, animal, whatever it is. And it's trying to predict. When our brains are at a level where we can do that comfortably, man, it translates very well to not only protecting ourselves from nonsense, but also priming ourselves to be in a position to perform at a high level.
Erik Averill (16:47): Yeah, whoa, you got me fired up there. The thing I love about it is what you're not saying. We didn't use the word ethics, but unfortunately there are people that are going to try and take these type of things to manipulate, to fraud people when they're actually not experts. They're going to talk about these things or present themselves in a certain way like, "You should give me your respect." But we'll sniff that stuff out. Because the subconscious, if I truly have that confidence in that master of the craft, and I think that goes back to set your intention, know what you want to be known for. Know what type of mission and impact that you're on. Cancel out the noise. Reflect, what did I do well? You know, did well, do better. I love that framework, because it's nothing less than yes, changing your championship body language. But so much of that comes from, have you put the work in?
Erik Averill (17:48): Have you done the hard work when nobody else is watching, when everybody else is at home enjoying XYZ? That's the confidence and that you don't even have to think about your body language in that standpoint. Now, you're making small adjustments. I love that because on this podcast, our community is... We're the best in the world at what we do. Whatever our given craft is, that's the inspiration of saying these skillsets we're talking about, they're not trying to manipulate and deceive people. It's actually saying we're eking out the last 1%, because we've done the hard work. We've climbed the peak to figure out and say, "How do we get that last one?" So I just love these skillset conversations. For our audience, hopefully you found this completely helpful. Championship body language, check out those resources that Josiah had shared with us. And until next time, stay humble, stay hungry and always be a pro.