We're speaking the same language. So why do we keep misunderstanding each other?

We're speaking the same language. So why do we keep misunderstanding each other?

I do Wordle every day. And Spelling Bee. And both regularly annoy me.

Mostly because they're American, and every so often I'll confidently enter a perfectly good word only to discover that, apparently, it doesn't exist. Or it's spelt differently. Or the word I would naturally use simply isn't part of their language. My latest irritation was 'faff'. FAFF. Really? It is, frankly, a bit of a faff that they won't accept perfectly good British English. And yes, I know I'm Scottish, but I'm claiming this one.

It got me thinking about how often something very similar happens at work. We assume we're speaking the same language because, technically, we are. We sit in meetings and talk about needing to 'collaborate more', 'move faster', 'communicate better', 'give people space', 'be more decisive' or 'challenge each other'. Everyone nods. It sounds as though we all know what we mean. But do we?

Take something as simple as 'let's just get started'. To one person, that means momentum. There's no point trying to work everything out in advance; let's get something moving, see what happens and adjust as we go. To someone else, those exact same words can sound like a worrying lack of thought. Why are we rushing into action before we've properly understood what we're doing?

Or think about collaboration. One person might genuinely do their best thinking out loud. They want to throw ideas around, ask questions, interrupt themselves, change their mind and arrive at the answer with other people. Someone else might need time to go away, process what they've heard and come back with a considered view. Put those two people in a room and they can both leave believing that the other person isn't very good at collaborating.

The same happens with communication. Someone who values directness may think the kindest and most useful thing they can do is say exactly what they think. The person on the receiving end might experience that as unnecessarily blunt. Meanwhile, someone who is trying to be thoughtful and diplomatic may be experienced by their more direct colleague as evasive or unclear.

This is where workplace relationships get interesting, because we don't usually experience our own preferences as preferences. They just feel normal. We know what we mean by being collaborative, decisive, thoughtful, organised, flexible or direct, and it's remarkably easy to assume everyone else is working with roughly the same definition.

So when somebody behaves differently, we don't necessarily think, 'Ah, they might have a different preference from me.' We interpret what we see. They're rushing. They're overthinking. They're dominating. They're disengaged. They're indecisive. They're controlling. They're too sensitive. And, of course, while we're busy constructing our perfectly reasonable story about them, there's every chance they're constructing an equally reasonable story about us.

That's often where the friction comes from. What I think of as giving you space, you might experience as a lack of interest. What I call being thorough, you might see as overcomplicating things. My flexibility might look like chaos to you, while your careful planning might feel restrictive to me. The behaviour hasn't changed; what changes is the meaning we attach to it.

And intention doesn't necessarily rescue us. I can have entirely positive intentions and still have an impact on you that I didn't expect. In fact, some of the most frustrating workplace relationships I come across aren't between people who fundamentally dislike each other. They're between perfectly decent people who are each doing something that makes complete sense from where they're standing, and inadvertently driving each other mad.

This is one of the reasons I find the idea of a shared behavioural language so useful. It gives us a way to talk about these differences before we turn them into judgements about each other. But the language itself isn't enough. We also need to learn how to have what I think of as the meta-conversation: the conversation about what's happening between us while we're trying to have the conversation.

That might mean being able to say, 'I notice I'm pushing us towards a decision and you seem to want more time - what's happening for you?' Or, 'When you challenge my ideas that quickly, I notice I stop contributing. I don't think that's what you intend, so can we talk about it?' These aren't always easy conversations to have, particularly if a team has got used to avoiding tension or if people don't feel safe enough to say what they're experiencing. But if we can't talk about how we're working together, we're rather stuck with the patterns we already have.

That sense of safety matters. A shared language can make these conversations easier and less personal - we can explore a difference rather than accuse somebody of being difficult - but it only works if there is enough trust and curiosity in the room to use it. The aim isn't to remove disagreement or friction. It's to create teams where people can notice it, name it and explore it without worrying that doing so will make things worse.

That's what we're trying to do with Co-Valence. It isn't about putting people into boxes or deciding that there's a right way to think, communicate or work. It's about making some of the preferences that sit underneath our behaviour easier to see and talk about. If I understand what I tend to prefer, and I have some insight into what you might prefer, we have a much better chance of understanding what's happening when those things meet.

Instead of 'Why are you always rushing me?', we can have a conversation about the different pace at which we like to work. Instead of assuming someone who doesn't speak immediately in a meeting has nothing to contribute, we can recognise that people process and formulate their thoughts differently. Instead of deciding someone is difficult because they keep challenging our ideas, we can get curious about what challenge means to them and what they're trying to achieve by it.

Importantly, understanding a preference doesn't mean endlessly accommodating it. 'That's just how I am' isn't particularly helpful either. The point of understanding ourselves and each other is that it gives us more choice. Sometimes I might need to adapt towards you. Sometimes you might need to adapt towards me. Sometimes the situation might require both of us to behave differently from the way we naturally would. Awareness gives us the chance to make that decision deliberately rather than simply reacting to each other.

For me, that's also why understanding ourselves is only half the job. There are lots of tools that can tell us interesting things about who we are, but work doesn't happen in isolation. It happens between people. The really useful question isn't simply 'What am I like?' It's 'What happens when the way I naturally think, relate and get stuff done meets the way you naturally think, relate and get stuff done?'

Those differences can absolutely create friction, but they can also be incredibly valuable. We don't need everyone in a team to think in the same way, communicate in the same way or approach work in the same way. In fact, we'd lose a great deal if they did. What we need is a way to understand those differences, talk about them without immediately judging them and work out how to use them well.

Because working better together sometimes starts with realising that, despite using exactly the same words, we weren't quite speaking the same language in the first place.

And if anyone from the New York Times is reading this, I stand by my original point: faff is a word.