Michael Jor­dan’s daugh­ter Jas­mine said the for­mer Chica­go Bulls great was deeply con­cerned about what the pub­lic would think of his ac­tions when they saw The Last Dance. Mat­ter of fact, he even con­sid­ered against re­leas­ing the se­ries.

"He was con­cerned about the per­cep­tion," she con­tin­ues. "He was con­cerned that peo­ple weren't go­ing to un­der­stand these were sac­ri­fices. And he had to be that brute team­mate or ask that much from every­body else to be­come great."

"He's not just beat­ing up Steve Kerr, beat­ing up Ron Harp­er and con­stant­ly com­ing at Charles Oak­ley be­cause it's fun," she ex­plained. "He's do­ing it be­cause he knows their po­ten­tial and he's try­ing to pull it out." Jor­dan thought view­ers may not un­der­stand the tough love he gave his team­mates.

We know that com­mu­ni­ca­tion is one of the most im­por­tant skills in our every­day lives. In to­day’s busy world, every­one is in a hur­ry. We hard­ly pay at­ten­tion or take the time to un­der­stand peo­ple close to us. We make su­per­fi­cial judg­ments with­out mak­ing the re­al ef­fort to un­der­stand the rea­son be­hind peo­ple’s ac­tions. Some­times we all have this same ap­proach with our col­leagues, loved ones, fam­i­ly mem­bers and team­mates. Un­der­stand­ing the mind of oth­ers means get­ting their per­spec­tive, in­stead of tak­ing their per­spec­tive. We make judg­ments very eas­i­ly but some­times need to look deep­er to see why cer­tain ac­tions were tak­en or words com­mu­ni­cat­ed.

I re­mem­ber a train­ing ses­sion with the Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the 2013 Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States when then di­rec­tor of foot­ball Leo Been­hakker was shout­ing to the play­ers dur­ing a scrim­mage. "You can talk with your eyes. You don't have to talk with bloody Eng­lish but just with your eyes."

It was his way of say­ing to Kevin Moli­no who was po­si­tioned near him that there was a bet­ter method to com­mu­ni­cate with his team­mate dur­ing the play in­stead of risk­ing the team­mate be­ing un­able to hear his words or the op­po­nent pick­ing up his in­struc­tion. How Been­hakker spoke, one would eas­i­ly as­sume his tone was an an­gry one but it was not.

Been­hakker would lat­er say to me, "It is more or less the same his­to­ry es­pe­cial­ly with the younger guys like Jo­evin Jones and Moli­no and this cat­e­go­ry. I had the same ex­pe­ri­ence in 2005,2006. You can see that they have a lot of tal­ent but they still make too many mis­takes. I think they can be much bet­ter. They have qual­i­ty and po­ten­tial." In oth­er words, he felt he had to use a strong ap­proach to get more out of them and it was ev­i­dent in the way he con­stant­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed with them re­gard­less of whether his body lan­guage and tone may have sug­gest­ed oth­er­wise to some.

In sport, specif­i­cal­ly about in­ter­ac­tion among team­mates and coach­es, this is an un­der­ly­ing chal­lenge. And it’s the same for those in oth­er as­pects of life, be it away from the sport­ing are­na as well. Un­der­stand­ing oth­ers is more than just sens­ing oth­er peo­ple’s feel­ings and emo­tions. It al­so means tak­ing a gen­uine in­ter­est in them and their con­cerns.

Con­trary to pop­u­lar opin­ion, hu­man be­ings don't re­sist change. We all, how­ev­er, re­sist be­ing changed. It is im­por­tant to un­der­stand who you are try­ing to in­flu­ence. Coach­es most times spend the time to get to un­der­stand their play­ers or ath­letes and like­wise team­mates must do the same for those around them. It is said that there is a uni­ver­sal scale of in­flu­ence. Those three cat­e­gories that peo­ple fall in­to in­clude 1.Some­one who you look up to. 2.Some­one who sees them­selves the same as you and third­ly some­one that looks up to you.

We all look up to we look up to pro­fes­sion­al and am­a­teur ath­letes alike. We ad­mire them for their ex­tra­or­di­nary phys­i­cal at­trib­ut­es and are amazed by their abil­i­ty to stretch the lim­its of the hu­man body. What most peo­ple over­look is the fact that these in­di­vid­u­als are not born with the phys­i­cal prowess and men­tal re­silience they lat­er dis­play. There is a tremen­dous amount of prepa­ra­tion, skill de­vel­op­ment and com­mu­ni­ca­tion that goes in­to all of this.

Sport and per­for­mance psy­chol­o­gists play a key role here as they are ex­perts in help­ing ath­letes and pro­fes­sion­als over­come prob­lems that im­pede per­for­mance. But ath­letes aren’t the on­ly clients. Con­sid­er the rigours of per­form­ing surgery, for ex­am­ple. Doc­tors may need help in gain­ing the con­fi­dence to re­turn to the op­er­at­ing room af­ter los­ing a pa­tient. Ac­tors or en­ter­tain­ers may need sup­port get­ting back on stage fol­low­ing a poor re­ac­tion from fans.

It’s could be a hard skill to mas­ter. But take the time and ef­fort to im­prove in this area. It will al­low you to achieve the most im­por­tant goal in al­most any life which is con­nect­ing, deeply and hon­est­ly, to the oth­er hu­man be­ings around us. It helps us to keep push­ing lim­its, to un­der­stand oth­ers’ be­liefs, feel­ings, ex­pe­ri­ences and in­ten­tions. In the end, there ought to be ben­e­fits for every­one con­cerned.

Ed­i­tor's Note:

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia and cur­rent­ly a CON­CA­CAF Com­pe­ti­tions Me­dia Of­fi­cer. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion.