“But I told them.”
I’ve heard some version of this countless times.
A deadline was missed. A decision was misunderstood. Someone delivered something completely different from what was expected. And the leader is frustrated because, as far as they’re concerned, the expectation was clear.
I told them.
And maybe they did.
But notice where that statement puts the responsibility: I did my part. The problem must be on the other end.
What if it isn’t?
Sending information and creating understanding are not the same thing.
Think about how much has to happen for communication to actually work:
What I intend → What I say → What you hear → What you understand → What we agree happens next
There’s an opportunity for things to go sideways at every step.
I was recently talking with a coaching client who was frustrated with the results they were getting from a direct report.
So I started asking questions.
“What did you say?”
They knew exactly what they had said.
“What do you think your employee heard?”
That took a little more thought.
Then I asked, “What do you think they understood?”
Pause.
They weren’t sure.
And there it was.
We had started with a performance problem. But before we could conclude that the employee had failed to deliver, we discovered something else:
We didn’t actually know whether the two of them had left the original conversation with the same understanding.
Somewhere between What I said and What you understood, the communication had broken down.
It happens all the time.
Someone assigns a task but doesn’t clarify ownership or timing. A team makes a decision, but three people leave with three different interpretations. A leader gives feedback and assumes the other person understands what needs to change.
Our instinct is often to solve this by communicating more.
Another email. Another explanation. Another meeting.
But more communication doesn’t necessarily create more understanding.
Stop measuring communication by what you said. Start measuring it by what was understood.
And that means checking.
Instead of “Does that make sense?”—which almost always gets you a “Yep”—try:
- “What are you taking away from this?”
- “What feels unclear?”
- “What do you see as the next step?”
- “What are you going to do differently as a result?”
- “What assumptions should we check before we move forward?”
Those questions aren’t a test of whether someone was listening. They’re a way to discover whether you actually created shared understanding.
Because communication isn’t successful simply because you said what you needed to say.
It’s successful when you’ve created enough shared understanding to move forward together.
So here’s my challenge: The next time you’re tempted to say, “But I told them,” stop.
Go back through the chain.
What did I intend?
What did I say?
What did they hear?
What did they understand?
What did we agree happens next?
You might discover the communication problem isn’t where you thought it was.
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