1. Listen beyond the point where you think you understand

Listening is probably the communication skill we overestimate most. We know that listening is important, so we nod, maintain eye contact and wait politely while the other person speaks. The problem is what happens inside our heads. Somewhere halfway through their explanation, we believe we have understood. From then onwards, we are no longer discovering what they think. We are preparing what we want to say about it.

This becomes particularly obvious when we disagree. Imagine a colleague tells you that a deadline is unrealistic. You know the deadline cannot move, so your mind immediately starts collecting reasons why it has to stay. If you respond at that point, you may have a perfectly reasonable argument, but you still don’t know what “unrealistic” actually means. Perhaps there aren’t enough people. Perhaps another department hasn’t delivered something. Perhaps Friday is possible, but only by compromising quality. Perhaps there is a solution neither of you can see yet.

So stay there for another moment.

Real listening requires us to tolerate the small discomfort of not immediately contributing. Instead of preparing your answer, try to understand the world from which the other person’s statement makes sense. A useful test is whether you could describe their position in a way they would recognise as accurate. “Let me see if I’ve understood you correctly. The problem isn’t really Friday. You’re worried that we’ll only make Friday by dropping the testing. Is that right?”

If they say yes, you now have something useful to work with. If they say no, even better: you have discovered that you hadn’t understood them yet.

Listening doesn’t mean agreeing. You can understand someone perfectly well and still reach a completely different conclusion. But at least you know what you are disagreeing with.

2. Ask before your brain fills in the gaps

Human beings don’t particularly like incomplete stories. When information is missing, our brains are remarkably willing to provide it.

Your colleague hasn’t answered your message. She is ignoring you. Your manager was unusually short with you this morning. Something is wrong. Someone doesn’t contribute during a meeting. Clearly, they aren’t interested.

Perhaps.

But perhaps your colleague is dealing with a customer problem, your manager has just received some terrible news and the quiet person in the meeting is thinking carefully before speaking.

We create stories incredibly quickly and then react to those stories as though they were facts. This is where a good question can save an astonishing amount of unnecessary trouble.

• “What do you mean by that?”
• “What’s your main concern?”
• “What would need to happen for this to work?”
• “I have the impression you’re not convinced. Am I reading that correctly?”

Questions are especially useful when you notice yourself becoming certain about somebody else’s motives. Whenever the voice in your head says, “He only says that because…” or “She obviously thinks…”, become slightly suspicious of yourself. You might be completely right. But ask.

This becomes even more powerful in leadership. Imagine somebody comes into your office with a problem. You understand it immediately and know exactly what they should do. Giving them the answer feels efficient, and for the next five minutes it probably is.

Next time, try asking: “What do you think we should do?”

You may have to endure a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. Let it happen. When managers answer every question, people become very good at bringing questions to managers. When managers create space for thinking, people gradually become better at finding answers.

3. Make your message clear enough to act on

There is a wonderful contradiction in professional communication. The more uncomfortable the message, the more words we sometimes use to hide it.

“I was just wondering whether perhaps we might want to reconsider some aspects of the current approach going forward.”

What does that mean? Do you want to change the approach or not?

Clarity can feel uncomfortable because it exposes us. “I disagree” is much harder to hide behind than three paragraphs of diplomatic language. But clear does not mean brutal. You can say, “I don’t think this is working, and I’d like us to look at another approach” without attacking anyone. You can say, “I can’t deliver this by Thursday at the quality we agreed” without writing an essay explaining why you are still a good person.

The important distinction is between making a message softer and making it vague. Respect should change how you deliver a difficult message. It shouldn’t make the message disappear.

Before an important conversation, ask yourself what the other person should know, decide or do afterwards. If you can’t answer that clearly, you probably aren’t ready to communicate yet. And once you have explained it, don’t rely on “Did you understand?” Most people will simply say yes.

Ask instead: “What are you taking away from this?” or “So, what do you see as the next step?”

The difference between what you believe you communicated and what another person actually understood can be surprisingly educational.

4. Notice the conversation happening beyond the words

People communicate with much more than language. The pace changes. Someone who was leaning forward sits back. A person who had been contributing suddenly becomes silent. A voice becomes faster or quieter. Energy disappears from the room.

The mistake is turning this into simplistic body-language decoding. Crossed arms don’t automatically mean someone is defensive. Looking away doesn’t prove dishonesty. Human beings are considerably more complicated than that.

What I find much more useful is noticing change.

Imagine someone has been relaxed and talking openly for twenty minutes. You mention a particular topic and suddenly they sit back, become quieter and start giving short answers. Now I’m interested. Something changed.

You don’t know why, so don’t invent the explanation. Bring your observation carefully into the conversation: “You became much quieter when we started talking about the new responsibilities. What’s going through your mind?”

Now you don’t need to be a mind reader. You can simply ask.

The same principle becomes very interesting when you turn it towards yourself. What happens when somebody challenges you? Do you speak faster? Become louder? Start explaining more? Interrupt? Stop asking questions? Most of us have patterns under pressure, and they are often invisible precisely because they happen automatically.

Awareness gives you another choice.

5. Be confident enough not to need certainty

I like people who have opinions. Working with someone who refuses to take a position until everybody else has spoken can be exhausting.

But there is a difference between having a strong position and needing that position to survive the conversation.

You can say, “I think we should do this.” And then genuinely ask, “What am I missing?” Those two things belong together more comfortably than we sometimes imagine.

In fact, I tend to trust someone’s confidence more when they don’t need to pretend certainty. A leader who says, “Based on what we know today, this is the decision I’m making. If the information changes, we’ll reconsider” isn’t weak. They are making a distinction between judgement and fact.

The opposite extremes both create problems. Some people soften every opinion until it almost disappears: “I may be completely wrong, and this is only an idea, but perhaps…” Others present every thought with such certainty that people gradually stop challenging them.

Neither produces particularly good conversations.

Confidence in communication means making your position visible without requiring everyone else’s position to disappear.

6. Make complexity understandable

People who know a lot about something often struggle to explain it simply. They see all the nuances, exceptions and dependencies, so when somebody asks a straightforward question, they receive the entire landscape.

Five minutes later, they regret asking.

Communication isn’t the transfer of everything you know. It is the transfer of what the other person needs in order to understand, decide or act.

This means the same subject may need very different communication depending on who is sitting opposite you. A board may need the decision, implications and risk. The project team needs considerably more detail. A customer may care about the outcome rather than the internal machinery producing it.

This is particularly obvious with email. You receive a message with nine paragraphs, two attachments and a detailed history of how we arrived here. Somewhere near the bottom is the actual question.

Before sending something similar, ask yourself: What do I want this person to know, decide or do? If you can’t answer in one sentence, the recipient probably won’t be able to either.

Sometimes three paragraphs should become three sentences. Sometimes a fifteen-email thread should become a five-minute conversation. Sometimes the complexity genuinely matters.

The skill is knowing which situation you are in.

7. Communicate with the person actually in front of you

One of the things you learn quickly when working across countries and cultures is that your normal way of communicating is exactly that: your normal way. It is not the normal way.

Some people want the conclusion immediately. Others want to understand how you arrived there. Some think aloud and develop their ideas while talking. Others need silence before they know what they think. Some people experience direct disagreement as refreshing and efficient; others experience exactly the same behaviour as unnecessarily confrontational.

Then add hierarchy, profession, personality, age, language and the emotional state of the person on that particular Tuesday afternoon.

Communication becomes situational.

Adapting doesn’t mean performing a different personality for everyone you meet. It means accepting that successful communication is measured partly at the receiving end. If I explain something in a way that makes perfect sense to me but leaves you completely confused, I have expressed myself successfully. I haven’t communicated successfully.

Before an important conversation, spend a moment thinking about the person rather than only your message. What do they already know? What matters to them? What are they likely to question? How much detail do they need? Do they tend to decide quickly or need time?

Then make one deliberate adjustment.

8. Make disagreement safe enough to be useful

There is a strange thing that can happen as you become more senior: people start agreeing with you more often. Very flattering. But potentially very dangerous.

Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety has helped establish how important it is for people to feel able to speak up, ask questions, acknowledge mistakes and raise concerns without excessive interpersonal risk. For leaders, there is a wonderfully practical lesson in this: telling people you want honesty matters considerably less than what you do when honesty arrives.

Imagine presenting a plan and asking, “Any concerns?”

Someone raises one.

You immediately spend five minutes explaining why the concern isn’t valid.

Perhaps you’re right. But everyone else in the room has just learned something about the cost of answering your question.

If you want people to disagree with you, become interested in how you receive disagreement. Stay curious for a little longer. Ask for an example. Try to understand what they are seeing. You can still disagree afterwards.

A team in which nobody disagrees isn’t necessarily aligned. Sometimes it is simply quiet.

9. Learn to pause when your emotions want to answer for you

Most of us have received an email we should not have answered immediately.

I certainly have. You read it, feel the irritation arrive and suddenly become capable of producing an exceptionally articulate response explaining exactly why the other person is wrong. The first draft can feel wonderful.

Sending it is another matter.

The same happens in conversations. Someone challenges you publicly. A criticism feels unfair. A person touches exactly the point you are sensitive about. Before you have consciously decided what you want to say, your response is already halfway out.

Strong emotion isn’t the problem. It is information. Something matters to you. The problem begins when emotion becomes the only person making the decision.

A pause gives you back some choice. Sometimes it is three seconds. Sometimes you say, “I want to think about that before I answer.” Sometimes you leave the email in drafts and look at it tomorrow.

Use that space to ask yourself what you actually want to achieve. Do you want the satisfaction of proving somebody wrong, or do you want the problem solved? Do you want to release your irritation, or do you still need a workable relationship tomorrow?

This may be the point where communication and self-leadership come closest together. You cannot control what somebody says to you. You can become considerably better at deciding what happens next.