5 traps in your communication that might lead to a misunderstanding.

When it comes to communication, it’s your responsibility to convey what you mean to others. It’s not up to everyone else to read between the lines; they’re not mind readers. If you say one thing but actually mean something else, you can’t be offended when you’re not seen or heard in the way you want to be.

So if you find yourself being misunderstood more often than you’d like, it could be the case that you’re not being as clear with people as you think you are. And that’s okay – plenty of us are guilty of it. But that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. Let’s explore the five traps you might be falling into that cause you to be misunderstood, and how we can avoid them in the future.

You say too much

Have you ever asked for directions and regretted it after they rattle off a list of 27 instructions? There is such a thing as too much information. Now apply that to a sales presentation or an email. You’re drowning (potential) clients in details they don’t need.

Someone recently pitched us on a service we were interested in. But they kept talking. And talking. And talking. It got to the point where we didn’t want to buy from them anymore because it was too much. Sure, what they said addressed our needs, but it also addressed every other need under the sun. That doesn’t get someone on board.

Instead, a better approach is learning what’s important to the person you’re speaking to, and only addressing that. Then learn when to stop. You can let your audience take the lead or give them more information in other ways. When you get bogged down in the weeds, you lose people. 

You say too little

In your pursuit to not say too much, don’t accidentally say too little. This is a bit of a Goldilocks situation; there’s a knack to getting it right.

A lack of detail puts the other person in limbo. They have to either come to their own conclusion and guess what you want, or they have to ask you directly. Neither is what you want. They should come away from a conversation with a clear understanding of what you mean, and they can’t do that if you give them barely anything to work with.

And if you’re the kind of person to reply in one-word answers, it’ll be like trying to draw blood from a stone for the other person. This is a guaranteed way to leave them confused and frustrated, and you bothered by their game of communication tennis. What can you do instead? It’s helpful to learn to open up more. When you write something, ask yourself if the other person will get what you’re trying to say. Take that pause to consider their side of the conversation.

You write how you speak

There’s a big difference between having an approachable, conversational writing style and writing how you speak. The problem with writing this way is that we don’t read how we listen. We don’t have your tone and body language to go off. And when we read something, we read in our voice, not yours. 

Humour and sarcasm (which us Brits love a bit of) also often fail dramatically, unless it’s to someone that knows you well enough to understand you. Even then, it doesn’t always land. That doesn’t mean they’re being a stick in the mud. Only you can change how you communicate; you can’t change how they interpret it. 

How you handle this is up to you. If you want to make sure your tone lands in the right way, it might be easier for you to pick up the phone. Other than that, pay careful attention to your writing. When you write how you speak, that means including all the grammar and structure mistakes that go along with it. You have to construct the sentences in the right way to ensure your message comes across, and fix any punctuation errors that might confuse things further (more on that later).

You’re not editing properly

Writing and editing are two different things. You see, writing is supposed to be messy. It’s all your jumbled, ugly thoughts on a page. Once you have them out of your system, that’s when you get to work editing them to make them ready for everyone else.

For something like this blog, you would expect it to be edited. But this applies to all writing, not just longer pieces. Every email, every message, every random note. As we said, these have a tendency to be messy. Large paragraphs that seem to ramble on. More words than are necessary. All the thoughts in your mind in one massive clump. To someone else, that’s going to be a wall of nonsense, and you’re missing an entire stage of the writing process.

This leaves the other person having to sift through your spiel to draw some kind of conclusion. The fix to this is a simple one: don’t skip on the editing. Look at it as a whole and ensure your key message is there. Then get into the finer details, trimming the fat and leaving it as a lean piece of writing.

Your grammar isn’t great

This one is cheating slightly as it’s a mash-up of a couple of other points. But you can take what we said about editing and not writing how you talk and apply it here. For this tip, we’re going to be the grammar police for a moment. Yes, we’re sure a lot of you hate that person, but it really is critical that you get it right.

Let’s look at some examples and you’ll see what we mean:

“Goat’s cheese salad ingredients: lettuce, tomato, goats, cheese”

We’re pretty sure there are no actual goats in this particular lunch dish. By mistaking an apostrophe for a comma, you’ve created a real head-scratcher. It should be:

“Goat’s cheese salad ingredients: lettuce, tomato, and goat’s cheese”

Here’s another that could cause legitimate issues:

“Slow children crossing”

The instruction is to slow down so you don’t run children over. Not a description of the speed at which they’re crossing the road. And, at worst, someone might massively misinterpret your words and be offended by how you’re describing the children. Clarity is a necessity here:

“Slow, children crossing”

Bad grammar is like bad breath. It’s painful to experience and other people have to endure it. And if they have an option where they don’t have to, they will go somewhere else. Don’t let business opportunities slip through your fingers because people don’t want to spend time with halitosis Harry.

While we cannot control others, we can control ourselves. If we want to stop miscommunications from happening, that’s on us. It’s time to start taking more responsibility in how we communicate and strive to be better than before. Because if we don’t, who will?

In my book, “How to write when you’re not a writer”, we look at the four fundamental pillars to better communication – even before you put pen to paper. To find out more, you can order your copy today. If you’d like to supplement that and learn about our 1-2-1 coaching, call us on 0161 413 8418.