It’s Faster to Face Problems than Avoid Them: The Need for Unmiscommunication 

There’s a common approach to miscommunication that sounds reasonable on the surface: Clarity – be so clear that miscommunication can’t happen in the first place.

So you over-explain things. You list out every possible facet of the issue. You try to anticipate every angle where confusion might occur and address it preemptively. You build in redundancy and multiple explanations and examples and edge cases.

You’re trying to achieve perfect clarity so that miscommunication becomes impossible.

First, this doesn’t work.
But more importantly, it also exhausts everyone involved.

The Clarity Trap

When you commit to preventing miscommunication through crystal-clear communication, you end up with unwieldy explanations. A five-minute conversation becomes a 45-minute data dump. A simple email becomes a manifesto.

(And of course, no one is going to read a manifesto… So they’ll ask you questions you already wrote out and you’ll be beyond frustrated because “Don’t people read?!” No. They don’t. Except you, gracious reader, thanks for being here.) 

None of these efforts will work and here’s why:
miscommunication doesn’t happen because you weren’t clear enough.

It happens because humans are translating experience into language, transmitting through noise, and reconstructing meaning on the other side.

Every step introduces error. There’s no level of clarity can possibly eliminate that.

So when you try to achieve clarity-as-prevention, you’re not actually solving the miscommunication problem. You’re just creating a different problem: information overload.

Your team member now has to process:

• The core idea you’re communicating
• All the nuance you’ve added to prevent misunderstanding
• All the edge cases you’ve included
• All the context you’ve provided
• The relationships between all these pieces

And halfway through that list, they’ve mentally checked out.
They’re not thinking about the core idea anymore.
They’re thinking about whether they can get back to their actual work.

So they say “Got it” to end the conversation.
And now you think they understand.
And they think they understand.
And neither of you actually checked.

You’ve created the perfect conditions for miscommunication, wrapped up tight in the language of clarity.
Whoops…

The Unmiscommunication Approach

Unmiscommunication starts from a different place entirely.

We stop trying to prevent miscommunication, accept that it will happen, and instead, get good at identifying it and fixing it fast.

Communicate what makes sense for you to communicate. Say what’s true. Share what matters. Don’t pad it with preemptive explanations for every possible misunderstanding.

Then…
and this is the key part:
actively look for where miscommunication is happening. 

Some of it you’ll spot proactively.
Some of it you’ll discover after the fact.

But whenever you find it:
fix it.
That’s it.
We swap trying to be perfect for actually being responsive.
I assure you, we’ll get a way better success rate on this one. 

I know not aiming for clarity sounds like it would create more miscommunication.
But the opposite is true.
Because when you’re not exhausted by the effort of perfect communication, you have energy left to actually notice when something isn’t landing, and use strategies for miscommunication including:

• Direct questions (clarifying a particular nuance or a fundamental difference in understanding)
• Echoing (repeating a particular phrase to elicit confirmation or elaboration)
• Paraphrasing (repeating back your understanding to confirm accuracy) 
• Self-repair (clarifying what you said when you recognize it may have been unclear)
• Code Switching (usually referring to switching languages, but here I mean – drop the jargon.) 
• Extra-linguistic means (something in addition to language, i.e. gesturing, demonstrating, screensharing)

Plus it’s way easier to fix a problem you know exists and not trying to prevent every possible problem that might exist.

When you accept miscommunication as normal, you don’t feel shame that it happened and you can actually attune to it.

Clarity Has Its Place

This isn’t really an argument against clarity. Being clear matters. You should know what you’re trying to say. You should know your audience. You should explain things in a way that lands.

But when we expect that clarity is going to avoid miscommunication, we’re going to have a rude awakening. Since stress happens when reality doesn’t meet expectations, you can reduce your stress by expecting that miscommunication will still happen. 

When you expect that, you can look for it and solve it more quickly.

The Management Implication

When we expect clarity avoids miscommunication, we exhaust ourselves with all this undue pressure, but this pressure also lands on our team. If clarity is clearly so important to you, are they allowed to not understand…? Are they allowed to ask questions…? Or is this urgency around clarity decreasing the psychological safety of our workplaces? 

Instead, let’s shift the frame: expect miscommunication.
Make it safe.
When it happens (and it will), fix it fast.

You’re not trying to eliminate error from a system that’s built on translation and interpretation and assumption-filling. You’re trying to build a system where errors get caught and corrected before they compound.

Communicate what needs to be communicated. Then elict more information: “Is there anything that didn’t land?” or “What questions do you have?” or “Walk me through what you think I’m asking.”

Then you can catch where you miscommunicated, unmiscommunicate, and move on.
Easy-peasy

This is more manageable than trying to prevent every possible breakdown. Because you’re not trying to be perfect. You’re trying to be responsive.

And responsiveness is something you can actually achieve.