I hear some version of this from leaders more often than you’d expect:
“I explained it. I was clear. I don’t understand why this keeps happening.”
And most of the time, they’re right. The explanation was clear, and the words made sense. If you looked at the message itself, there’s nothing confusing about it. That’s what makes it so challenging when situations still don’t play out as expected, especially inside a team that’s otherwise capable and engaged.
So, the conclusion becomes that people weren’t listening.
That’s usually not what’s going on.
In most workplaces, communication problems don’t come from people ignoring directions. They come from how messages are interpreted once they leave the sender. Tone, timing, silence, and past experience all influence what people think a message means, even when the words themselves are clear.
What people bring into the conversation
People don’t show up to work conversations – or any conversations – as blank slates. They bring their past with them. Previous managers. Previous workplaces. Previous life experiences. Moments where certain tones meant trouble or where silence meant something wasn’t okay. All of that quietly shapes how instructions, feedback, and updates are received.
A short message can feel efficient to the sender, but to someone else, it can feel like pressure. Or disappointment. Or a signal that something’s wrong. A question might feel genuinely curious to one person and like a test to another. Silence might feel reassuring, or it might feel uncomfortable, depending on what someone has learned to expect.
None of this is intentional. It’s how people make sense of uncertainty. You’ve probably seen it in your own relationships. I know I have! I can think of a dozen times I told my husband one thing, and he heard something completely different. I know I was clear in my head as to what I meant – why didn’t he hear me?
Where meaning is made
When something isn’t fully spelled out, our brains don’t leave that space open. We fill it. We rely on patterns that have helped us avoid risk or embarrassment before, even if they don’t necessarily apply in the moment.
I’ve seen this happen inside teams that were doing good work and had good intentions across the board. A leader believed they were being direct and respectful. The team, meanwhile, spent time reading tone, anticipating reactions, and trying to avoid mistakes that were never even in the picture. The leader felt ignored, and the team felt on edge. Both reactions made sense to the people having them.
That’s where most communication breakdowns live. Not in effort. Not in intent. But in the space between what was said and what people believed it meant.
Saying the quiet part out loud
The fix usually isn’t more explanation or a complete overhaul of how you communicate as a leader. It’s reducing the amount of interpretation people have to do on their own.
Sometimes that means saying things you’ve been assuming don’t need to be said. Like letting people know that when you’re brief, it usually means you’re busy, not unhappy. Or being clear about when something is exploratory instead of urgent. Naming priorities instead of assuming everyone sees the same hierarchy of importance.
It can also mean being explicit about expectations. What “done” actually looks like. Who owns what. When something needs attention and when it doesn’t. These small clarifications reduce friction because they remove guesswork from the process.
What changes when we don’t have to guess
When people don’t have to read between the lines, a transformation happens. They stop replaying messages in their heads. They stop bracing for meaning that isn’t there. The work feels lighter, not because expectations disappeared, but because they’re visible and shared.
Your team isn’t ignoring you.
They’re responding to the meaning they’ve made from what they hear.
When you make that meaning clearer, communication inside your organization starts to work the way you thought it already was.
If this feels familiar and you’re seeing it play out inside your own team, I’m always happy to talk it through.
