Have you ever sat in a meeting where you understood only half of what was being said?
Acronyms.
Charts.
Status updates.
Slides full of technical jargon.
And you sit there thinking:
Why am I here?
What do they actually want from me?
And what of this is even relevant to me?
It feels like you are speaking two different languages.
And that is exactly what meetings with business stakeholders in projects and transformations often look like.
We invite people from the business. We explain what we are doing.
But we stay inside our own bubble.
We do not say why we invited them.
We do not say what we need from them.
And sometimes we do not even ask for the decision we urgently need.
We simply keep walking down our own well-worn path.
It is not bad intent. It is professional blindness.
We are so immersed in our expertise that we stop noticing what is unclear to the other side.
We do not build bridges to the other side of the river.
We do not extend a hand to help them cross successfully.
We do not explain the change from the user’s perspective.
We do not explain what it means for the business.
We are missing a basic skill that anyone introducing innovation, change, or new processes needs.
I call it Common Language.
The language most people speak.
A skill that requires empathy, not just expertise.
The ability to translate the complex into something clear.
The ability to leave out what is interesting to the project but irrelevant to the other side.
The ability to say: “I need this and this from you…” — instead of hoping the other person will guess your intention.
From my experience, HR people tend to do this naturally.
Communication professionals too.
For others, it is often quite a challenge.
But it can be learned. Like any skill, it is a matter of practice and willingness.
And also of empathy and self-awareness in the moment.
Once you start speaking common language, you begin to…
- build real relationships
- have meaningful conversations and meetings
- gain trust and respect