“Humans are perhaps the only species capable of having their hearts broken by a story that never actually happened.”

I don’t know where I first heard that thought, but it has been sitting with me for days, especially after one particular conversation.

The Conversation

A few weeks ago, I had one of the toughest conversations of my career.

Like many organisations navigating change, we were going through a restructuring. I was asked to speak to someone in my team about a decision that had already been made. It wasn’t a conversation I had anticipated having that morning, and certainly not one I was emotionally prepared for.

I remember sitting at my desk afterwards because I suddenly realised that communicating the decision was probably going to be the easiest part of my job that day.

The harder part was something else entirely.

How do you communicate a decision you didn’t make, while still taking ownership of it? How do you balance honesty with empathy? How much business context is enough, and at what point does more explanation begin to sound like justification?

Most importantly, how do you make sure the other person walks away understanding not just the message, but the intent behind the message?

I have spent years talking to customers about customer experience, AI and intelligent workflows. But none of those conversations prepared me for the very human discomfort of this one. There were just two human beings sitting across the table, each processing the same moment very differently.

The conversation eventually ended, but it refused to leave me. Over the next few days, I found myself replaying it—not because I was questioning the business decision, but because I kept wondering about something much more fundamental.

Did my intent travel with my words? Or is that something none of us can ever really control?

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Meaning Isn’t Delivered. It’s Created.

That question stayed with me much longer than I expected.

Over the next few days, I found myself paying closer attention to interactions around me. Team meetings. Customer discussions. Casual chats over coffee. The pattern was surprisingly consistent.

People sat through the same meeting, heard the same discussion and walked away with completely different understandings of what had just been said.

The discussion & facts were the same. The meaning wasn’t.

It made me realise that we often think communication is about transferring information. We spend so much time choosing the right words, structuring the flow and making sure we’ve explained ourselves well. Somewhere along the way, we convince ourselves that if we’ve said it clearly, we’ve communicated effectively.

But have we?

Information is probably the easiest part of communication. Meaning is much harder.

Meaning does’nt belong to the speaker , it is created by the listener

Based on their experiences, their beliefs, their fears, their relationship with us, and sometimes simply by the kind of day they’re having.

This was probably my biggest realisation.

“Intent is what we mean“

“Interpretation is what others believe we meant.

“Communication lives in the fragile space between the two.“

The more I thought about it, the more I realised this wasn’t just about one difficult conversation. It explained why meetings sometimes end with five people aligned on six different ideas.

Why honest feedback motivates one person and discourages another. Why the same silence can be interpreted as respect, indifference or anger, depending on who is experiencing it.

Perhaps communication has never really been about words, it has always been about reducing the gap between what we mean… and what others hear.

And strangely enough, it was AI that made me realise that……

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What AI Made Me Realise

“The irony wasn’t that AI was becoming more human. It was that, while teaching machines how to communicate, I had quietly started rethinking how humans do.“

For the last couple of years, I’ve spent countless hours discussing Conversational and Intent based AI agents with customers. Most of those conversations revolve around how AI is intent driven.

Today, one of the biggest challenges in AI isn’t making it respond faster; it’s making sure it understands intent before it responds at all. We spend enormous effort teaching AI not to assume—to seek context, ask clarifying questions and understand what the user is really trying to achieve before taking action.

For the longest time, I thought this was simply good technology design.

Now, I’m beginning to think it is simply good communication.

Assumptiond are just our brain’s way of filling gaps in information. AI is deliberately designed not to do that.

Humans, on the other hand, rarely give themselves that luxury.

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The Stories We Write

One thought kept coming back to me. Perhaps we assume so much because we are uncomfortable with unfinished stories.

I certainly am.

If I start reading about something, I want to know how it ends. If I’ve already invested two hours in a terrible movie, I’ll probably watch the last thirty minutes anyway—not because it’s good, but because I need closure. Somewhere along the way, I’ve realised my mind doesn’t enjoy leaving things incomplete.

Conversations, I realised are no different.

When information is missing, we instinctively fill the blanks. We take a few facts, mix them with our experiences, emotions and fears, and before long we’ve created a version of events that feels complete.

The interesting part is that we rarely stop to ask whether that version is true.

It is funny when you think about it. We’ll ask Google five follow-up questions before buying a coffee machine. Read reviews. Watch YouTube videos. Compare prices.

But somehow, we hesitate to ask one uncomfortable question that could save a friendship.

“Is that what you heard?”

That question has stayed with me ever since. Not just because of one difficult conversation. But because it made me wonder how many conversations in my own life had been misunderstood.

How many assumptions had I accepted as facts? How many relationships had been shaped by stories that nobody had ever intended to write.

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My Reflections

Every difficult conversation leaves behind two conversations.

The one we have with another person…..and the one they continue having with themselves after we leave.

We leave the room. But our words don’t.

I don’t know whether I handled that day perfectly. I’m fairly certain I didn’t.

That conversation didn’t change the decision. It changed me.

Today I find myself pausing a little longer before assuming I’ve been understood.

Even more important, before assuming I’ve understood someone else.

I still don’t get it right every time.

But I’ve become a little less comfortable assuming. And a little more comfortable asking.

“Is that what you meant?”

“Is that what you heard?”

“I don’t know if those questions would have changed that conversation. But I have a feeling they’ll change many others.”