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The meeting went well.
The decision was made.
Everybody agreed.
Then everybody went off and did something different.
How does that happen?
Nobody was trying to be difficult. Nobody ignored the conversation. Nobody walked out thinking, I have absolutely no idea what we just decided.
Quite the opposite. Everybody thought they understood. And that may be exactly where the problem began. Because people can hear the same conversation without creating the same meaning.
I’ve heard some version of that sentence more times than I can count. Maybe you have too. A team spends an hour discussing a problem. There’s debate. There are questions. Eventually, everyone seems to come together. The meeting ends.
Then a week later: “Wait. I thought we were doing X.” Someone else says: “No. I thought we decided Y.” And someone sitting across the table says: “I didn’t think we had made a decision yet.”
Three people. Same meeting. Three different understandings of what happened.
And here’s what makes this interesting: They may all have been listening. They may all have heard exactly the same words. They may all genuinely believe their interpretation is the right one. That’s the part we often miss. We tend to think that if everyone heard the same thing, everyone received the same message. But they didn’t receive a message. They created meaning from one. And those meanings aren't always the same.
We Use Language Like This All Day Long. Think about how often somebody at work says: “Let’s move quickly.” What does quickly mean? Today? This week? Before everything else you’re working on? Or simply faster than we originally planned?
Or: “Make this a priority.” Does that mean do this first? Does it mean this is important? Does it mean drop everything else? Or does it mean make sure this doesn’t get forgotten?
How about: “Keep me in the loop.” Tell me everything? Send me the occasional update? Copy me on the emails? Let me know only if something goes wrong?
And one of my favorites: “Take ownership.” To one leader that may mean, Make the decisions yourself. To an employee it may mean, Keep the project moving, but check with me before making any major decisions. Both people leave the conversation thinking the expectation was clear. Until it isn't.
A 2024 study published in Scientific Reports examined how people interpret instructions when the meaning isn't entirely clear. Researchers found that listeners used their understanding of what the speaker could see and know to help interpret the message. In other words, we don't simply receive words. We use context and our understanding of the other person to figure out what those words mean. And that helps explain why the same words don't always create the same understanding.
Agreement on the words isn’t necessarily agreement on the meaning.
That is what I call the Interpretation Blind Spot.
It happens when people hear the same communication but create different meanings from it and nobody realizes those meanings are different. The False Belief is: “If we heard the same thing, we understood the same thing.” We didn't necessarily. Because communication doesn't travel directly from my brain into yours.
I choose words. You hear them. Then you make sense of those words using everything you bring to the conversation: your experience, expectations, priorities, knowledge, assumptions, and understanding of the situation. So do I.
Most of the time, that happens so naturally that neither of us notices we're doing it. And that's why an Interpretation Blind Spot can be so difficult to see. Different interpretations don't feel different until something forces us to compare them. Usually, that's the work.
Imagine a leader says: “I'd like a draft by Friday.” One employee hears: I need to give her something polished enough to review Friday morning. Another hears: She wants to see where I'm headed sometime before I leave Friday. Neither interpretation is ridiculous.
Now imagine nobody discovers the difference until 4:30 Friday afternoon. Or a leadership team agrees:
“We need to improve the customer experience.” Operations hears faster response times. Sales hears more flexibility. Finance hears fewer billing problems. Customer service hears more authority to solve problems without approval.
Everyone supports the decision. Everyone leaves ready to act. They just aren't acting on the same decision.
A 2024 study examined 48 teams in 13 manufacturing companies and found that teams with more closely aligned understandings of their work were better able to coordinate their problem-solving efforts. The researchers call these shared understandings shared mental models. I think that's an interesting way to look at what happens after a meeting. It's not enough for everyone to agree that something needs to happen. They need a shared understanding of what they're actually going to do.
Otherwise, everyone can be working hard without necessarily working toward the same result.
That's when an Interpretation Blind Spot becomes a business problem. Work gets duplicated. Priorities compete. Deadlines get missed. People become frustrated with one another. And eventually somebody says: “But that's not what we agreed to.”
Maybe it wasn't. Or maybe you agreed to the same words without ever discovering whether you agreed on what those words meant. By then, the organization isn't trying to understand the conversation anymore. It's dealing with what happened because people understood the conversation differently.
And once again, the misunderstanding itself may have been incredibly inexpensive to fix. But not discovering it wasn't.
You know what I've had to stop assuming? That because something means one thing to me, it means the same thing to everybody else. That's harder than it sounds. Because when I say something like “Let's get this done quickly,” I know exactly what I mean. The meaning feels obvious. To me. And that's the problem.
The person speaking has access to the meaning in their head. Everybody else only has access to the words. That changes the responsibility of the communicator.
Instead of asking: “Did I say what I meant?” I need to become curious about: “What meaning did other people create?”
That's a very different communication habit. Because now I'm not checking whether you heard my words. I'm discovering what those words became after you heard them.
After an important decision, ask: “What does each person believe we just decided?” Notice what that question doesn't ask. It doesn't ask: “Does everybody understand?” It doesn't ask: “Are we all on the same page?” And it doesn't ask: “Any questions?”
All three can produce a reassuring yes, a few nodding heads, or complete silence. None of them necessarily tells you what people actually understood.
Instead, find out. What did we decide? What happens next? Who is responsible for what? What does success look like? When does this need to happen?
You aren't asking because you expect people to be confused. You're asking because different interpretations can exist without anybody feeling confused. That's the blind spot.
The Decision Replay
At the end of your next important decision-making conversation, ask the people there: “Before we leave, what does each of us believe we just decided?”
Then listen. Don't listen for people to repeat your exact words. Listen for meaning. Are they describing the same decision? The same priorities? The same responsibilities? The same next steps? The same timing? If they are, terrific. You now have evidence that shared understanding was created. If they aren't, something even more valuable just happened.
You discovered the misunderstanding while everyone was still in the room. Nobody has done the wrong work yet. No deadline has been missed. No customer has been disappointed. No one has spent three days heading in the wrong direction. You can fix it now. That's the opportunity.
A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis examined 36 experiments involving more than 6,000 participants to explore whether team development activities could improve shared mental models.
The research suggests that shared understanding is something teams can work on deliberately, although the researchers also cautioned that the overall evidence was uncertain. That's an encouraging possibility. We don't have to leave shared understanding to chance. We can make a habit of finding out what people believe was decided before they leave the room.
You’ll Start Hearing Interpretation Blind Spots Everywhere. Once you begin listening for them, ordinary workplace phrases start sounding different. “ASAP.” How soon is that? “Keep it simple.” What does simple look like? “Use your judgment.” How much authority does that actually give me? “I want you to take the lead.” What decisions can I make without you? “Let's revisit this later.” When is later—and who is responsible for bringing it back? “We need better communication.” Better how?
None of these phrases is inherently bad. The problem is assuming they carry one universal meaning. They don't. And the more important the work, the more dangerous that assumption becomes.
The Interpretation Blind Spot is only one of six places where misunderstanding tends to hide:
Together, these are the six Communication Blind Spots. And they all have something in common: The problem can exist before anybody knows there is a problem. That's why learning to discover them matters.
Before your next important meeting ends, try these three questions:
Don't answer the questions for the group. Listen to their answers. You're not testing people. You're looking for differences. Because the moment you discover two people interpreted something differently, you've found something incredibly useful: a misunderstanding before it had a chance to become a business problem.
Want to Discover Where Misunderstanding May Be Hiding in Your Organization?
The Complimentary Communication Blind Spot Scan is a short 12-question scan designed to help you identify signs of the six Communication Blind Spots in your organization. In just two minutes, you'll start to uncover where misunderstanding may be hiding and which blind spots deserve a closer look.
What is the Interpretation Blind Spot?
The Interpretation Blind Spot™ occurs when people hear the same communication but create different meanings from it without realizing their interpretations are different.
Why do people interpret the same message differently?
People don't process communication in exactly the same way. We make meaning based on our experiences, expectations, assumptions, priorities, knowledge, and understanding of the situation. Two people can therefore hear the same words and reasonably interpret them differently.
How can a team agree and still misunderstand each other?
People may agree with the words being used without checking what those words mean to each person. A team can agree that something is “urgent,” for example, while having very different ideas about when it needs to be completed.
How can leaders prevent different interpretations?
You probably can't prevent people from interpreting communication. That's what human beings do. The better goal is to discover different interpretations early by asking people what they believe was decided, what happens next, who is responsible, and what success looks like.
Why isn't it enough for the leader to summarize the decision?
Because the leader's summary tells you what the leader intended. It doesn't reveal what everyone else understood. If you want to discover different interpretations, you need to hear the meaning other people created.
What should I ask instead of “Does everybody understand?”
Try asking: “What does each person believe we just decided?” That gives you evidence of what people actually understood rather than asking them to evaluate whether they think they understood correctly.
I'll be writing more about the communication problems that often go unnoticed, including:
If you've ever heard someone say, “That's not what I thought we decided,” stay tuned. There's a lot more hiding underneath that sentence.
Think about the last important decision your team made. You probably remember what was decided. But here's a different question: What do the other people in the room believe was decided? Not what you told them. Not what you meant. Not what you assume they understood.
What meaning did they actually create? There's only one way to know. Discover it. Because agreement isn't everybody hearing the same words. Agreement is discovering whether those words created the same meaning.
And if they didn't? That's not bad news. You've just discovered something while it's still inexpensive to fix. That's the opportunity behind the Communication Blind Spot System:
Discover your blind spots before you discover the damage.
Take the Complimentary Communication Blind Spot Scan™ →
Charlie Krebs
Creator of the Communication Blind Spot System™
CharlieKrebs.com
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charlie@charliekrebs.com
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