Why exaggerating a behaviour can help you change it

A client of mine recently travelled to Japan and noticed something intriguing on the railway.

Drivers and platform staff appeared to be performing a series of highly deliberate rituals: pointing towards signals, sweeping their hands along platforms and calling out what they could see.

To an unfamiliar observer, the gestures can look unnecessary, and almost theatrical. In fact, they are part of a Japanese safety practice known as shisa kanko, usually translated as 'pointing and calling'.

Instead of merely noticing that a signal is green, a driver points towards it and says its status aloud. The process engages movement, sight, speech and hearing, turning a routine mental check into an observable physical action.

There is good evidence behind it. Research by Japan’s Railway Technical Research Institute found that combining pointing and calling substantially reduced errors during a simple confirmation task. By making attention active rather than assumed, the system helps interrupt distraction and automatic behaviour.

It also reminded me of something we regularly do in communication coaching.

Pressure makes our habits harder to see

When people communicate under pressure, they often revert to deeply ingrained behaviours.

They may speak too quickly, stop breathing properly, rush to fill silences, over-explain, shrink physically or become unusually forceful. The difficulty is that they are rarely conscious of doing any of it.

If I simply tell someone to 'slow down' or 'project confidence', the instruction may make intellectual sense. But intellectual understanding does not tend to change behaviour; particularly when the pressure returns.

So, in coaching sessions, we sometimes exaggerate the very behaviour we want to explore.

Someone who speaks quickly might be asked to deliver a sentence at a comically accelerated pace, then repeat it almost absurdly slowly. Someone who habitually makes themselves smaller might deliberately adopt an exaggerated low-status posture before experimenting with its physical opposite. A client who fears silence may be asked to leave pauses that feel uncomfortably long.

These exercises can initially feel artificial. That is part of the point.

Exaggeration brings an unconscious habit into conscious awareness. It allows someone to experience the behaviour physically, recognise its effects and discover that they have more choices than they realised.

The body can teach the brain

We often treat communication as though it happens entirely in the mind.

We tell ourselves to be confident, remain calm, listen carefully or think clearly. Yet under pressure, those instructions can disappear remarkably quickly.

A physical action is harder to lose.

Planting both feet before answering a difficult question, allowing yourself one full, deliberate breath, visibly turning towards the person speaking or silently identifying your first point before beginning; these are small actions, but they can act as solid anchors.

Like pointing and calling, they interrupt autopilot.

The objective is not to turn a presentation or meeting into an elaborate performance. Nor is it to create a rigid collection of gestures that someone must remember perfectly. It is to use the body to heighten awareness until a more helpful response becomes available.

Practise big, perform naturally

Actors understand this principle well.

In rehearsal, we sometimes explore choices at a scale we would never use in performance. We exaggerate a character’s status, movement, intention or emotional state; not because the final performance should be enormous, but because the contrast helps us locate the truth.

If every rehearsal remains polite, restrained and realistic, we may never discover the full range of possibilities.

Communication coaching can work in the same way.

If your natural tendency under pressure is to disappear, briefly practise taking up too much space. If you rush, explore slowness so extreme that it feels faintly ridiculous. If you over-explain, force yourself to answer in one sentence. If you freeze when challenged, rehearse an intentionally long pause before responding.

You are not trying to replace one extreme with another. You are expanding your range.

Once you have experienced both ends of the scale, you are better able to find the point that feels credible, comfortable and effective.

Create your own pointing-and-calling ritual

Before your next high-pressure conversation, choose one behaviour that tends to become automatic.

Then give yourself a simple, physical interruption:

If you rush, breathe out fully before answering.

If you ramble, quietly identify your single main point.

If you become defensive, place both feet on the floor and ask one question.

If your attention fragments, turn towards the speaker and listen for their final sentence.

If you make yourself smaller, settle into the chair and allow your shoulders to open.

The action should be uncomplicated and easy to repeat. Its purpose is not to make you self-conscious, but to return you to the present moment.

The Japanese railway ritual contains a useful lesson for communication: awareness is not always produced by thinking harder. Sometimes we need to make the invisible visible.

A movement, a pause or an exaggerated rehearsal can show us what pressure normally conceals.

What initially feels artificial may be precisely what helps us become more natural.

Communication coaching is an effective way to uncover the habits which limit us. And to find authentic alternatives.

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