The secret to good communication: What we hear matters as much as what we say
“But I explained it clearly!” We have all experienced this in everyday life. As a leader, it can be particularly frustrating when a request, instruction or piece of feedback intended to be clear produces a very different result from the one we had in mind. Yet communication does not end when we finish speaking.
What we intend to say, what we actually say, what the other person hears and what they ultimately understand can be four different things.
We all interpret messages through our own experiences, beliefs, expectations and emotional state. The same sentence may sound like straightforward information to one colleague, criticism to another and an urgent demand to a third.
For a recent client engagement, I designed a development programme to help leaders recognise these often automatic differences in interpretation and experience how attentive listening and thoughtful questions can prevent misunderstandings.
The approach: 90 minutes of learning communication through experience
The 90-minute programme combined an interactive talk with a practical workshop. From the outset, experiential exercises, questions and shared insights helped participants explore communication first-hand.
The programme covered four main areas:
• The four ears of communication
Using Schulz von Thun’s model, we explored how a single sentence can convey factual information, self-revelation, a relationship message and an appeal at the same time. What happens when the speaker and the listener focus on different aspects of that message?
• Internal drivers and automatic responses
How do learned patterns, internal expectations and habitual responses influence our sensitivities and what we hear in a particular sentence?
• Familiar misunderstandings from life at home
Through everyday personal examples, we explored how easily misunderstandings arise, even between people who know each other well — and how these same patterns follow us into the workplace.
• The power of good questions
How can we respond with curiosity rather than assumptions or immediate reactions? How can we check that we are talking about the same thing? And why can a clarifying question sometimes achieve more than a lengthy explanation?
The exercises helped participants see their own communication from a fresh perspective and experience just how differently others might interpret the same situation.
The outcome: “Can the same thing really be understood in so many ways?”
One of the programme’s most powerful moments came when leaders realised that a sentence they considered perfectly clear could mean something quite different to their colleagues.
We do not always hear what the other person intends to communicate. Often, we hear the meaning we assign to their words through our own experiences and internal patterns.
The reverse is also true: as leaders, delivering a message does not tell us what a colleague has understood.
This insight opened up new possibilities.
More explanation is not always needed. Firmer wording is not always the answer. And when someone understands something differently from what we intended, it does not necessarily mean they were not paying attention.
Sometimes our most useful communication tool is a well-judged question.
Learning how to ask good questions was therefore an important part of the programme.
The key takeaway
Effective communication depends on more than what we say or hear. It requires us to notice the gap between what we intended to communicate and what the other person understood.
Closing that gap may call for attention, curiosity and self-awareness rather than another communication technique. It also requires the willingness to recognise that our own interpretation is only one of several possibilities.
Good communication means reaching a shared understanding.
____
If you would like to explore a similar communication programme for your team, with self-awareness at its heart, please get in touch.
Maria Vanyovszki
Comments