Want next week's winning lottery numbers?
Ask a sports pundit.
If they can tell you exactly what an athlete is thinking from 80 metres away and three camera angles, six random numbers shouldn't be much of a challenge.
One of the more unusual bits of advice I give sports clients is this:
Watch your chosen sport with the sound off every now and then.
Not because all commentators are poor. Far from it. Some offer excellent tactical insight and explain the game brilliantly.
Others seem to have developed the remarkable ability to read minds.
"He's thinking about that mistake."
"She's lost confidence."
"The pressure has got to him."
Really?
How do you know?
Unless the production team forgot to mention the commentator is also a qualified mind reader, they're making an educated guess. Sometimes they'll be close. Sometimes they'll be miles off.
The problem isn't the commentary.
The problem is when we start believing it.
Entertainment first, psychology second
It's worth remembering what sports broadcasters actually do.
They're not employed to improve an athlete's performance.
They're not there to provide a psychological assessment.
They're there to make sure you don't switch over and watch a documentary about steam trains.
Drama keeps people watching.
Certainty keeps people engaged.
"He's completely lost it."
"This is all mental now."
"He's bottled it."
It's a much better television script than:
"There are probably several factors influencing performance and, if I'm honest, we don't really know what he's thinking."
Accurate? Probably.
Exciting? Not so much.
The stories we borrow
Here's where it gets interesting.
Athletes hear these comments too.
They watch the game back.
They listen to respected former players explaining what was supposedly happening inside their heads.
Before long, they begin repeating the same story.
"Maybe I did lose confidence."
"Perhaps everyone could see I was panicking."
A commentator's opinion quietly becomes the athlete's belief.
That's not always harmless.
If someone repeatedly tells you what you're thinking, sooner or later you'll start wondering if they're right.
LinkedIn has its own commentators
Sport isn't unique.
Spend five minutes on LinkedIn and you'll find exactly the same habit.
Apparently, somebody always knows why employees resign.
Why leaders fail.
Why young people won't work.
Why successful people wake up at 4.30 every morning to meditate in an ice bath while reading Marcus Aurelius.
It's all delivered with complete certainty.
Evidence is occasionally invited but rarely attends.
People confidently explain what entire organisations, generations and professions are thinking.
Just like the sports pundit, they don't actually know.
They're creating a story.
The worrying bit is that stories are persuasive.
Our brains love certainty.
"I don't know" is rarely shared thousands of times.
Confidence isn't evidence
Psychologists have known for years that we tend to trust confident people, even when confidence has very little relationship with accuracy.
A confident opinion feels like a fact.
It isn't.
That's why phrases like:
"Everyone thinks..."
"He's clearly..."
"She's obviously..."
should immediately make you a little suspicious.
Those words tell us far more about the speaker than the person they're describing.
So, what should you listen to?
If you're an athlete, pay attention to your coach, your preparation and your own performance.
If you're a business leader, pay attention to evidence, feedback and experience.
If you're scrolling through social media, remember that certainty is often rewarded more generously than accuracy.
The loudest voice in the room isn't necessarily the wisest.
Try this instead
The next time you hear someone confidently explaining what another person is thinking, ask yourself one simple question.
"How could they possibly know?"
Sometimes they'll have good evidence.
Most of the time they'll have a good story.
There's a difference.
It's one worth remembering.
Especially if you're trying to perform under pressure instead of simply commentating from the sidelines.
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