The Communication Gap
- Rashmi Kulkarni
- Nov 15
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 22
What bosses think they’ve said… and what teams actually hear.
(The Boss Paradox, Part 1)
The Announcement That Didn’t Land
The Workshop had been buzzing all week.
The Workshop, for those who followed The People Paradox, is the same mid-sized design firm we’ve been watching grow faster than its systems. A place built on warmth, hustle, and raw talent ... now standing at that uncomfortable edge where culture, clarity, and leadership don’t always move at the same speed. The people are the same. The pressures are sharper. And this time, we’re seeing it through the team’s eyes.
Rohit, the founder, had called for an “important town hall”.
The team expected something big ... a new vertical, a new market, maybe a new client who would finally stabilize their quarter.
Instead, Rohit walked onto the little makeshift stage near the pantry, smiled, and launched into a sweeping, passionate monologue.
He talked about “sharpening the mission”, “repositioning the brand”, “embedding innovation in every sprint.”
He spoke about Q4 goals, market shifts, customer expectations, and the need for “everyone to step up.”
The team clapped.
People nodded.
Slack filled with emojis.
And then, the real story began.
Because when the applause died, something familiar happened:
every single person walked away believing they understood what he said…
when in reality, no two people heard the same message.
Inside the Team’s Head: Five Minutes After the Town Hall
Meera (design lead):
“He wants us to take ownership. But… ownership of what exactly?”
Aman (developer):
“Does this mean more features? Or fewer? Or faster?”
Sam (marketing):
“Innovation in every sprint? That’s… everything?”
Priya (ops):
“Are we changing strategy or just renaming it?”
Rohit walked off the stage thinking he had aligned the entire company around a single direction.
The team walked back to their desks feeling like they had just witnessed a motivational trailer for a movie whose script they weren’t given.
This is the first fracture of The Boss Paradox:
Leaders think in narratives. Teams operate in consequences.
And between those two worlds lives a gap that quietly rewrites culture, speed, and trust.
The Town Hall Illusion
Founders, especially passionate ones, communicate in arcs.
They tell stories.
They paint visions.
They speak in themes.
Teams don’t hear themes.
They hear instructions, implications, and risks.
A strategy announcement is never “just a strategy announcement” to the people receiving it.
It is interpreted as:
“Will my workload change?”
“What’s my part in this?”
“What will the boss expect tomorrow?”
“Is this feedback? Is something wrong?”
Leaders often walk away feeling energised by what they said.
Teams walk away feeling responsible for what they interpreted.
These are not the same outcomes.
Pattern 1: The Strategy That Didn’t Translate
In a tech startup we worked with last year, the CEO announced:
“We’re shifting from outputs to outcomes.”
He meant:
“Measure success by customer impact, not by number of tasks.”
The engineering team heard:
“Stop tracking tasks. Just guess what matters.”
The product team heard:
“We’re behind. Panic.”
The sales team heard:
“Our targets will change. Again.”
No one was wrong.
But no one was aligned.
This is how a single sentence becomes ten different workstreams.
Pattern 2: The Mixed-Signal Founder
Founders encourage risk until the moment the risk doesn’t look like their version of the idea.
At The Workshop, Rohit often said:
“Take initiative. I trust your judgment.”
So when Meera pushed for a bolder design direction in a client pitch, she expected appreciation.
Instead, Rohit quietly redirected everything in the final hour.
No explanation.
No rationale.
Just a soft override.
The team was confused.
Was initiative welcome?
Or was initiative only welcome when it matched Rohit’s inner logic?
When encouragement and enforcement don’t match, teams stop experimenting.
They start waiting.
Pattern 3: The Approval Loop That Nobody Admits Exists
Many bosses say, “You don’t need my sign-off.”
But they have never actually seen someone make a big decision without looping them in.
So teams create invisible layers of self-protection:
“Let me run this by him once.”
“Just checking alignment.”
“What if she doesn’t like this direction?”
The founder’s actual rule never matters.
The founder’s historical reactions do.
This is the quiet psychology of The Boss Paradox:
teams don’t follow instructions; they follow patterns.
Pattern 4: The Sudden Emotional Shift
A hospital shift briefing we observed last year illustrated this perfectly.
The head physician announced a new workflow:
“Let’s reduce check-ins to improve patient flow.”
The nurses nodded until his tone shifted when questioning began.
One nurse hesitated, then asked:
“Does this affect how we document?”
He responded sharply:
“Did I say anything about documentation?”
The room froze.
The words were harmless.
The tone was the communication.
The result?
The team made no further clarifications.
The next week, everything broke.
Not because of the system.
Because of the silence the system created.
The Real Gap
Most bosses don’t suffer from a lack of communication.
They suffer from:
1. Lack of translation
Strategy → role
Vision → next steps
Concept → behaviors
Encouragement → boundaries
2. Lack of closure
They name a shift but don’t name what must remain unchanged.
3. Lack of consistency
The message on Monday doesn’t match the reaction on Thursday.
4. Lack of calibration
They forget that every message has power they cannot de-weight.
The team doesn’t hear the boss; they hear the boss’s authority.
What The Workshop Felt That Day
By the end of the town hall, the team wasn’t confused because Rohit communicated poorly.
The confusion came from the gap between:
what he meant,
what he said,
how he said it, and
how people felt responsible afterward.
Alignment doesn’t fail because of miscommunication.
It fails because of misinterpretation.
And misinterpretation is always a leadership design issue and never a team competence issue.
This is the first truth of The Boss Paradox:
The gap between what leaders believe they said and what teams actually heard is the quietest, most expensive leak in any growing company.
KEY CONCEPTS
1. The Town Hall Illusion
The belief that broadcasting equals alignment.
Teams don’t absorb vision — they absorb implications.
2. Perception Drift
The gap between the leader’s intended message and the team’s operational interpretation.
3. Mixed-Signal Encouragement
When leaders promote risk but punish deviations, causing teams to freeze.
4. Interpretive Responsibility
Teams are forced to “translate” ambiguous leadership messages into concrete action — often at personal risk.
5. Authority Echo
The phenomenon where tone, timing, or emotional energy of the boss outweighs the content of the message itself.
FAQs
Q1. Why do teams misunderstand even clear communication?
Because clarity isn’t what is said ... it’s what feels safe, consistent, and actionable.
Q2. Why do founder messages get misinterpreted more than manager messages?
Founder words carry gravity.
Emotion.
History.
Implied power.
Teams “over-interpret” to stay safe.
Q3. Do teams become dependent on the boss by habit?
Not naturally, but inconsistent messaging and overrides condition them unintentionally.
Q4. How do cultural behaviors impact communication?
In cultures where hierarchy is strong, people “read between the sentences” far more than the sentences themselves.
Q5. Is this fixable?
Yes, but not in this series.
This series is about clarity, not cure.
The “how to fix it” belongs to a different conversation.
Read more deep-dive insights at www.ppsconsulting.biz/blog.
(PPS Consulting helps organizations scale without chaos through structure, governance, and people systems that grow with their teams. Views are institutional.)
The Boss Paradox series:
The Communication Gap - What bosses think they’ve said… and what teams actually hear.
The Power Paradox - Why meritocracy looks like favoritism from the outside.
The Pace & Pressure Paradox - How a founder’s natural speed becomes the team’s chronic anxiety.
The Boundary Collapse - When kindness becomes micromanagement and autonomy becomes fear.
The System Distortion - How unofficial influence quietly bends the system teams think they’re operating in.
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