The Art of Clarification

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By next year, communication experts will have been studying digital miscommunication for over two decades, yet the problem continues to grow. Remote workers will have been relying on email and messaging apps for years, and many will have been misunderstanding their colleagues’ tones without realising it. The absence of vocal inflection and body language creates a void that our brains fill with assumption.

My team leader, who will have been managing remote employees for five years by this summer, has developed strategies to prevent confusion. She predicts that by the time our company celebrates its twentieth anniversary, we will have been implementing clarification protocols so consistently that miscommunication will have become rare. Her approach is simple but effective: whenever a message seems ambiguous, she asks the sender to rephrase it explicitly.

The cognitive effort required to clarify rather than assume is substantial. Most people prefer to fill gaps in understanding with their own interpretations. However, by the end of this quarter, our department will have been practising reflective listening techniques for six months, and the results have already been promising. Colleagues who will have been checking their understanding regularly report fewer conflicts and faster project completion.

Some people think this emphasis on clarity is excessive. They say that anyone who constantly asks for clarification must be off their rocker. Yet the evidence suggests otherwise. Organisations that invest in explicit communication save enormous amounts of time and money that would otherwise be wasted correcting errors.

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