When Workplace Communication Gets Lost in Translation

Ever been here?

A Slack message comes through and something about it just doesn’t sit right.

You read it again.

Was that as harsh as it sounded?

Then the wheels start turning.

Is she frustrated with me? Did I miss something? I thought we agreed on this. Why would she say it that way?

We’ve been there. And if you work closely with other people, especially remotely, chances are you have too.

It’s frustrating. It can be distracting. And we’ve learned that the longer you sit with your own interpretation of a message, the easier it is to turn a few words on a screen into a much bigger issue than they may have ever been intended to be.

That’s something we’ve had to learn ourselves as leaders and something we’ve become much more intentional about with each other.

There’s a Lot Missing From a Slack Message

Slack and email are part of how we work every day. They’re fast and convenient, but they’re also missing almost everything we normally use to understand another person.

Tone of voice. Facial expression. Body language. The ability to immediately say, “Wait, what do you mean by that?”

A quick response written between meetings might sound dismissive.

A direct question might feel like criticism.

“Can you redo this?” might land very differently than the sender ever intended.

And sometimes, yes, the message really does need to be addressed.

But we’ve learned not to decide which one it is while we’re worked up.

Don’t Respond to the Version You’ve Created in Your Head

This one can be hard.

When something hits wrong, there’s a temptation to respond immediately. Or worse, not respond at all and spend the next hour thinking about it.

We try to do something different.

Give it a minute.

Go work on something else. Get out of Slack. Come back to the message when the initial reaction has settled and read it again.

Then ask:

What did this person actually say, and what am I adding to it?

That question has saved more than one unnecessary conflict.

And sometimes, after coming back to it, the message still doesn’t sit right.

That’s when we stop typing.

Sometimes You Just Need to Get on the Phone/Zoom

There comes a point when another Slack message isn’t going to fix a Slack misunderstanding.

We’ve learned to call each other.

Not with a dramatic “we need to talk,” but simply:

“Hey, I might be reading this differently than you intended. Can we hop on the phone for a few minutes?”

It’s amazing how quickly things can change when you hear someone’s voice.

“Oh, no. That isn’t what I meant at all.”

“Okay, because here’s how I took it.”

“I can completely see why. I should have explained that better.”

Ten minutes later, something that could have created tension for the rest of the day is over.

And there’s another important piece to that conversation: intent doesn’t erase impact.

Maybe you didn’t mean for your message to sound harsh. But if it did, it’s worth hearing that too.

That’s part of working well together.

Sometimes the Message Isn’t Really the Problem

We’ve also learned that communication issues often expose something else.

Maybe two people had different ideas about who owned the decision.

Maybe the priority wasn’t as clear as everyone thought it was.

Maybe one person thought they were asking for input while the other thought they were being given a directive.

Maybe an expectation existed in someone’s head but was never actually communicated.

Those are harder problems to solve with another perfectly worded Slack message.

They require a conversation.

And the earlier that conversation happens, the better.

Ask the extra question. Clarify who owns what. Repeat back what you think you heard. Say when something doesn’t make sense.

We’d rather have a five-minute conversation today than discover three weeks from now that we’ve been operating from two completely different understandings.

What We’ve Committed to With Each Other

We’re not perfect communicators. Nobody is.

We get busy. We answer quickly. We leave out context because the context seems obvious to us. We occasionally send something that lands differently than we meant it.

So the goal isn’t to never misunderstand each other.

The goal is to build enough trust that a misunderstanding doesn’t have to become something bigger.

For us, that means trying not to assume intent.

It means asking before stewing.

It means being willing to say, “That landed differently than I think you meant it.”

And it means being equally willing to hear, “I can see why.”

Because words matter.

But so does what we do after the words don’t land the way we intended.

Sometimes the healthiest thing two people can do is close Slack, pick up the phone, and actually talk to each other.

We’ve learned that ten minutes of real conversation can save hours of thinking, typing, worrying, and misunderstanding.