More Than a High-Five: What Touch, Connection, and the NBA Can Teach Us About Leadership

Technology is learning how to simulate touch. Leaders are still the only ones who can create connection.

We live in a world designed to help us accomplish more without physically being there. We meet virtually, lead remotely, communicate through screens, train in simulations, and build relationships through messages, emails, and video calls. Technology has given us extraordinary ways to connect, but there is one part of the human experience it has historically struggled to replicate: touch.

That is where haptics enters the conversation.

What Is Haptics?

Simply put, haptics is the science and technology of creating or communicating through the sense of touch. If your phone vibrates in your hand, your smartwatch taps your wrist, a vehicle alerts you through the steering wheel, or a simulator allows you to feel resistance or movement, you’re experiencing haptic feedback.

Most of us interact with some form of haptic technology regularly without giving it much thought. Yet researchers and innovators are moving well beyond the familiar vibration of a phone or watch. Advances in haptics are exploring how sensations such as pressure, resistance, texture, and movement can become part of digital and simulated experiences.

The possibilities are fascinating, particularly in areas such as professional training, healthcare, accessibility, education, virtual reality, and other environments where physical interaction can be an important part of learning and performance.

We Experience the World Through More Than Words

Much of leadership focuses on communication: the conversation, the presentation, the briefing, the email, the message. Yet human beings experience their environments through far more than language. We notice tone, facial expression, physical surroundings, movement, distance, and countless other signals that shape how an interaction feels.

Touch is part of that experience. It can communicate reassurance, connection, presence, urgency, or awareness without requiring a single word. And research suggests that those small moments of physical connection may matter more to teamwork and performance than we realize.

That brings me to a study I find particularly interesting.

In 2010, Michael W. Kraus, Cassey Huang, and Dacher Keltner published a study in Emotion titled Tactile Communication, Cooperation, and Performance: An Ethological Study of the NBA. The researchers observed players from all 30 NBA teams during the 2008–2009 regular season and examined whether early-season physical touch was related to later individual and team performance.

The researchers weren’t simply asking whether high-fives make people better basketball players. They were exploring a larger question:

Could physical touch be one visible signal of cooperation, connection, and trust within a team?

The answer was intriguing.

The NBA Study: What They Actually Found

The researchers coded 294 players and observed one game for each team during the first two months of the season. They focused on intentional celebratory touch between teammates rather than incidental contact that happens during play.

They counted behaviors such as high fives, fist bumps, chest bumps, hugs, pats, and other forms of celebratory contact. The amount of touch was surprisingly small. Yet those brief moments were associated with something much bigger.

Teams whose players demonstrated more early-season touch tended to perform better later in the season. The relationship remained even after the researchers accounted for factors including player status, preseason expectations, and early-season performance.

At the team level, the researchers also found that cooperative behaviors between teammates helped explain the relationship between touch and performance. In other words, the study was not really about high-fives. It was about what those high-fives may have represented.

There is an important distinction here. This was an observational study, so it does not prove that a high-five causes better performance. We should be careful not to turn a correlation into a prescription.

But the finding is still worth paying attention to.

From a Vibration to an Immersive Experience

The simplest examples of haptics are already part of everyday life:

• Your phone vibrates when a message arrives
• A smartwatch taps your wrist to get your attention
• Some vehicles use vibrations in the steering wheel or seat to alert drivers to potential danger
• Gaming controllers respond physically to what is happening on the screen

These signals are effective because they communicate information through another sensory pathway. We don’t necessarily need to stop, read something, or consciously process another verbal instruction. We feel the signal and respond.

More sophisticated haptic systems take that concept considerably further. Researchers are developing ways to recreate sensations such as force, resistance, texture, and movement within digital or simulated environments. That opens interesting possibilities for any profession in which people must learn not only what to do, but how it feels to do it.

For leaders in public safety and other high-pressure professions, that distinction could become increasingly important.

But there is another side to the conversation. While technology is learning how to simulate touch, human beings are still responsible for creating the kind of connection that technology cannot manufacture.

Haptics, Training, and Performance Under Pressure

We train because we understand that the first time someone encounters a difficult situation should not be when the consequences are highest. Effective preparation builds knowledge, develops skills, strengthens confidence, and creates experiences people can draw upon when pressure rises.

Haptic technology adds another potential dimension to that preparation. Instead of only seeing or hearing what is happening in a simulation, participants may be able to physically interact with elements of the environment. As simulation becomes more immersive, training can potentially move closer to the sensory experience of real-world performance.

Performance under pressure is shaped long before the pressure arrives.

That connects directly to something I frequently discuss in my work. And performance isn’t shaped only by what we train people to do. It is also shaped by how people experience the team around them while they are learning, practicing, struggling, and performing.

The NBA research offers an interesting lens for that idea. The physical touches were brief. The potential impact was connected to something larger: cooperation between people.

Technology can help us create increasingly sophisticated environments for preparation, practice, and learning. But technology alone will never be the entire answer. We still have to prepare the human being operating within that environment.

What Haptics Can Teach Us About Leadership

Perhaps the most interesting lesson hidden within haptics is also the simplest: what people feel matters.

I don’t mean only physical sensation. Think about that statement from a leadership perspective. What does it feel like to work on your team? What does it feel like when someone makes a mistake? What does it feel like to disagree with leadership, deliver bad news, admit uncertainty, or ask for help?

Those experiences shape organizational culture long before they appear on an engagement survey or performance report.

We tend to evaluate leadership through outcomes such as productivity, performance, readiness, and results. Those measures are important, but underneath every measurable outcome is a human experience. People remember whether they felt heard. They remember whether they felt respected. They remember whether they could speak honestly without fear of humiliation or retaliation. They remember the leaders who were genuinely present during difficult moments.

They also remember the small moments that communicate, without a formal announcement, that they belong.

What Technology Can Do

• Reproduce sensation through another sensory pathway
• Make simulation more immersive and realistic
• Communicate urgency without words
• Move training closer to real-world performance
• Generate a response in seconds

What Only People Can Do

• Acknowledge someone’s effort
• Look up from the screen
• Ask a real question and listen to the answer
• Celebrate a win, and check in after a difficult call
• Say, I’ve got you
• Create space for someone to speak before you solve the problem

These are forms of human connection too. Strong leaders pay attention to both the measurable outcome and the human experience that helped create it.

Technology Can Simulate Touch. It Cannot Manufacture Connection.

As technology becomes more integrated into our workplaces and lives, I believe genuine human presence will become more valuable, not less.

We can create increasingly realistic virtual environments. Devices can reproduce sensations. Wearables can communicate information without words. Artificial intelligence can generate responses in seconds. None of that eliminates our fundamental need to feel seen, heard, understood, and connected to other people.

People know when you’re listening. They recognize when you’re distracted or simply waiting for your turn to speak. They also recognize when someone sees them as a person rather than a position, title, or performance metric.

Presence doesn’t require having the perfect answer. Sometimes it means sitting with someone long enough to understand the question. Sometimes it means noticing what isn’t being said. Sometimes it means creating enough space for another person to think, reflect, and respond honestly.

Technology can enhance those interactions, but it cannot replace our responsibility to show up for them.

Keeping Leadership Human in a High-Tech World

I’m fascinated by where haptic technology is going. Its potential applications in training, accessibility, healthcare, communication, and immersive experiences give us plenty of reasons to pay attention.

But perhaps one of its most valuable lessons has nothing to do with the sophistication of the technology itself. Haptics reminds us that human beings don’t simply process information. We experience it. We are sensory, emotional, and relational beings. We learn through experience, respond to our environments, and grow through meaningful connection with other people.

The NBA research adds another layer to that reminder: connection can show up in remarkably small moments, and those moments may be part of the social fabric that allows teams to cooperate and perform.

As technology becomes increasingly capable of recreating pieces of the physical world, leaders have an opportunity—and a responsibility—to protect what technology cannot manufacture: trust, empathy, presence, and authentic human connection.

Innovation should help us become more capable. It should improve how we prepare, communicate, learn, and perform. But as we embrace what technology makes possible, we should also remain intentional about preserving what makes leadership deeply human.