Monday morning. Team meeting. The tasks are assigned, the goals defined, no one has raised any objections. The meeting ends on time. Actually a good start to the week. A week later, however, a different picture emerges. Responsibilities were understood differently, expectations remained unspoken, feedback came too late. Frustration spreads. The annoying part: no one wanted to block anything. No one wanted to be unclear. No one wanted to slow the project down.

And yet that is exactly what happened.

The most expensive problems in organizations are often not technical in nature. They arise where people believe they are talking about the same thing while they have long meant something different. This costs time, energy, trust – and sometimes employees too. From an ethnological perspective, a closer look is worthwhile here. Because collaboration rarely fails because people do not communicate at all. More often it fails because communication means different things to those involved. Information is not simply absorbed like files moved from one folder to another. It is interpreted, classified, weighted and linked with expectations. That is exactly where the misunderstanding begins.

“That was obvious.”

This sentence is one of the classics of everyday working life. It usually comes up precisely when something was not obvious. For one person the matter was clear-cut. For the other, much remained open. Both were in the same room, both heard the same information, both listened attentively. And yet they leave the situation with different assumptions. This is not an individual failure. It is human. What is a binding agreement for one person feels like a first orientation to another. What one understands as a concrete task, the other hears as a suggestion still to be developed further. Things we take for granted are rarely as self-evident as they feel. They only seem clear to us because we do not have to explain them – at least not to ourselves. That is exactly where their pitfall lies.

“Why doesn’t anyone say anything?”

Many managers know this moment. You ask for feedback, objections or open points. The room stays silent. No one raises concerns. No one disagrees. Everyone may even nod a little. Later it turns out that there were indeed uncertainties. Then the quick question is: why didn’t anyone say anything?

An ethnological answer would be: perhaps because “saying something” does not mean the same to everyone. In some work cultures, direct criticism is seen as a sign of commitment. In others it is experienced as loss of face, rudeness or unnecessary confrontation. For some, respect means openly disagreeing, because that is how you take responsibility. For others, respect means not questioning a decision in public. And those who have learned in hierarchies that silence is safer than dissent do not automatically become more willing to speak just because someone says: “You can be completely open here.” Silence is therefore not automatically agreement. Sometimes it is uncertainty. Sometimes caution. Sometimes politeness. Sometimes simply the experience that openness does not always remain without consequences.

“It was just a suggestion.”

A manager formulates an idea for how to proceed. For them it is clear: the team should discuss, add to it, perhaps even disagree. The team, however, leaves the meeting with the impression that a decision has already been made. No one deliberately miscommunicated. That is exactly what makes such situations so interesting. Communication does not consist only of words. It also consists of tone, context, relationship, role and history.

• Who is speaking?
• In what position?
• At what moment?
• With what expectation?
  
  

A sentence is rarely just a sentence. In everyday working life it always travels with baggage. What was meant as an invitation can arrive as an instruction. What was formulated as a cautious idea can seem like a final decision. What was intended as a friendly reminder can be read as criticism. The problem then does not simply lie in what was said. It lies in the meaning attributed to what was said.

“Why does everyone do their own thing?”

Hardly any term sounds as modern and positive as personal responsibility. Who could be against it? It only gets interesting when you ask what exactly is meant by it. For some, personal responsibility means above all freedom: making decisions independently, showing initiative and not having to check back on every little thing. For others, it means above all responsibility: involving relevant people, safeguarding intermediate steps and creating transparency about what is currently happening. Both can be sensible. Both can be professional. And both can be needed within the same organization. It only becomes difficult when it remains unspoken which form of personal responsibility is actually expected in a particular situation. On top of that, self-organization does not mean the same thing to everyone. While some see it as an expression of trust, creative freedom and self-determination, others experience it more as an additional burden. Not everyone perceives open scope for action as relief. For some, clear processes, unambiguous responsibilities and reliable routines provide security and orientation. For others, the same structures feel constraining. Here too it is less about right or wrong than about different ideas of what good work looks like. That is exactly why tensions often arise where expectations remain unspoken. One person suddenly seems unreliable, even though they wanted to act especially independently. Another appears hesitant, even though they actually wanted to coordinate carefully and avoid risks. Many conflicts in teams are therefore less about competence than about expectations. People argue not only about what was done, but about the often invisible ideas of how work should be organized, how much coordination is necessary and what taking responsibility actually means. Self-reflection becomes an often underestimated resource at this point. Because only when we recognize that our own idea of good work is not the only conceivable one does space for understanding emerge. Not about who is right, but about which expectations lie behind the respective actions.

“We all mean the same thing.”

Perhaps this is the most elegant error of all, because it sounds so harmless. Professionalism, respect, team spirit, commitment, good feedback – such terms seem unambiguous at first glance. Who would say that respect is unimportant? Or that commitment is overrated? The problem is not that people reject these terms. The problem is that they fill them differently. For one person, professionalism shows in factual distance. For another, in personal warmth. For one, good feedback means saying clearly and directly what is not working. For another, it means first establishing relationship and safety so that criticism can be heard at all. It is precisely the big, beautiful terms of collaboration that often need the most explanation. Because they sound so self-evident, they are rarely negotiated. And that is exactly why they carry so much explosive force in everyday life.

The anthropologist Michael Agar described such moments as Rich Points: situations in which our usual expectations suddenly no longer work. What is irritating at first can become insightful the second time around. Because that is exactly where it becomes clear that our view of the world is not without alternatives. For ethnologists, such irritations are not minor social mishaps. They are clues. They show where meanings diverge and where a closer look is worthwhile.

Why this is decisive for organizations

A central insight of ethnological research is: people rarely act without reason. What seems incomprehensible, illogical or cumbersome to us at first often makes sense from the perspective of the person acting. For organizations, this is not a romantic insight but a very practical one. Because those who want to improve collaboration must clarify not only processes but meanings. It is not always enough to distribute more information, schedule more meetings or introduce yet another tool. Sometimes the decisive question is not whether everyone was informed, but whether everyone understood the same thing by what was said. Many companies invest considerable resources in strategies, mission statements, communication formats and digital platforms. All of that can be useful. Nevertheless, a considerable part of the friction arises in a place that is less visible: where people interpret the same situation differently. That is precisely why misunderstandings do not only arise when communication fails. They often arise in the middle of seemingly successful communication. All those involved listened. Everyone understood something. Just not necessarily the same thing.

The decisive challenge is therefore not to try to avoid misunderstandings entirely. That will succeed neither in everyday working life nor in private life. Far more productive is the question of how organizations can create conditions under which different expectations, interpretations and assumptions become visible early on – before they turn into frustration, withdrawal, conflict or wrong decisions. Herein lies an often underestimated future skill of modern collaboration: not to keep accelerating communication, but to look more closely at what it achieves. Not only to ask whether something was said, but what was understood from it. Not only to optimize processes, but to create spaces in which meanings can be clarified. Because collaboration does not succeed simply because people talk to each other. It succeeds where people begin to reach an understanding about what they have actually understood.

Text: Dr. Lisa Johnson