You got me
Elite teams don’t just talk more than everyone else. They talk differently — and the difference is what makes them elite.
The World Cup was so inspiring for me. Meaning, you might be hearing a bunch of soccer stories and metaphors for the next few months :) You’re welcome. 😆
Back in my playing days, I remember the most used phrase on every team I was on — from grade school (I wrote about that team hereand here), through travel, high school, and on to Division 1 in college.
That phrase was:
“YOU GOT ME”
Gosh, I must have said those words thousands of times a season.
And if you watched the World Cup — really watched — you probably noticed something:
The best teams never stop talking.
You may not be able to hear them on TV, but when you’re on the field (or close to it), the game is one big conversation.
None of it is formal. But every couple of seconds:
“Man on.”
“Time.”
“Turn.”
“Watch your back.”
“Leave it.”
“Keeper.”
“I’ve got ball.”
“You got me.”
To someone in the stands, it might sound like noise. Or go unnoticed entirely.
But it’s the whole game.
It’s how elite teams move faster than everyone else.
Because the game moves too quickly for any one person to see everything.
Your teammate can’t see what’s behind them. So you become their eyes.
You help them make sense of their environment.
You warn them about what’s coming.
You remind them they’re not alone.
That’s what communication is for. 🙃
Sound familiar?
It’s not to control people, fix people, save, judge, or direct people.
It’s to increase their awareness, increase their options, increase their confidence and increase their capability to perform, to rise to meet the moment.
You can’t fix someone mid-sprint
There’s something that struck me every time I watched a World Cup game:
When someone made a mistake — what happened?
Did anyone stop to coach them in the middle of play? Did anyone yell, or question the decision?
Have you ever heard, mid-run:
“Why would you make that pass?”
“Give me the ball next time.”
“You did that wrong.”
Never. 😂
Instead, someone runs over, a hand on the shoulder, a clap, a nod.
“You’re good.”
“Next time.”
“You got me.”
“Unlucky.”
“Let’s go.”
Why?
Because they know something we leaders forget the moment the work stops being physical.
You cannot fix someone in the middle of the play.
The game is still happening. The moment requires support, not correction.
Because soccer is physical, everyone understands this instinctively. No one believes they can change a teammate while she’s sprinting.
Yet when the work becomes intellectual, we convince ourselves that’s exactly the job.
We interrupt. We correct. We solve. We rescue. We micromanage. We stop the play to explain the play.
It sounds insane when I put it that way, doesn’t it?!
But as a conversation expert who’s spent over 14,000 hours with leaders, here’s what I see: in the moment, correction lands as threat. Every. Single. Time.
When someone is braced for impact, they don’t absorb information — they defend. This is true even if the information is “right.” And this is not intentional, it’s biological.
So the feedback we’re so sure is helpful arrives at precisely the moment the person is least able to use it.
🤯
PS That’s the Fixing trap (the first of five). It’s the most well-intentioned way leaders make things worse.
Reading what isn’t said
And there’s something that runs even deeper than words. Rewatch the France vs England game…
The best teammates are constantly reading signals most people miss.
A slight lean forward. A glance over a shoulder. A defender losing balance. The way someone’s body opens before making a run.
For example, I knew, just by the way my teammate Jackie accelerated, she was about to break away.
I knew, by Shannon’s brief glance, a cross was coming.
I can still see and feel these cues in my body, 20+ years later.
What’s my point?
The words mattered. But sometimes all I had was body language — and often, it mattered more.
Elite communication isn’t just listening to what’s said. It’s seeing what’s about to happen.
It’s noticing that someone looks confused, frustrated, checked out.
It’s noticing that someone is holding a thought they haven’t said out loud — and making room for it.
When work becomes intellectual instead of physical, this is the first thing to go.
You stare at your screen, keep your video off, gather in a way that you can’t see the faces in the room, rendering these cues (or should I say clues) useless.
And then you wonder why it feels like you get blindsided by issues…
Support isn’t the reward. It’s the condition.
There’s one more pattern I’ve never forgotten:
When someone missed a shot, lost the ball, read the field wrong…
Everyone already knew they felt terrible. No one needed to pile on the guilt.
Instead, someone always said: “next time.”
The conversation about what actually happened? That comes later. Maybe at halftime. But probably not until practice or watching film.
Curiosity has its place. But support comes first — and not because you want to be “nice”…
It’s because a person who feels supported can hear you.
A person who feels exposed cannot.
Support isn’t the reward for high performance.
It’s the condition that makes high performance possible.
That’s the gap in so many workplaces.
We’ve built entire systems around feedback, accountability, performance, transparency. And they still fail 🙄
We’ve built almost nothing around helping people see what they can’t see.
Warning them. Encouraging them. Being available. Modeling the accountability, honesty, care and support that we want to inspire from them. (Ahem: The part that makes feedback, ownership, performance and transparency actually work.🤓)
Everyone has blind spots. Everyone has moments where they can’t see what’s coming. Everyone performs better knowing someone has their back.
So today: find one person. On your team, or in your family.
Look them in the eye and say three words:
“You got me.”
They will do more for trust, confidence and capability than an hour of perfectly delivered feedback ever will.
You got me,
Elisabeth
P.S. If this resonated, read these two others about how sports can help inform culture: here and here - Underdogs for the win! 🙃⚽
