I’ve noticed something slightly strange about the word understand.
Sometimes when I tell someone,
“I understand.”
they seem to hear,
“I agree with you.”
And that’s usually not what I mean.
What I mean is:
I can see how you got there.
I can follow the information you started with, the assumptions you made, the things you were trying to protect or achieve, and the reasoning that led you to your conclusion.
I might still think you’re wrong.
In fact, sometimes disagreements are the most interesting conversations.
Because once I understand how someone got to a conclusion I don’t share, we have somewhere useful to go next.
Where did we actually disagree?#
If all we have are our conclusions, a disagreement can look pretty simple.
You think A.
I think B.
Excellent.
We’ve established that we disagree.
Now what?
But if I understand how you got to A, we can start comparing the path rather than arguing about the destination.
Maybe you have information I don’t have.
Maybe I have information you don’t have.
Maybe one of us has made an assumption the other hasn’t.
Maybe we’re looking at exactly the same information, but we value different things.
Or maybe we’re starting from different values altogether, and those values are shaping how each of us reasons about the same situation.
Maybe we agree about almost everything, but we weigh one particular risk differently.
Or maybe one of us is just wrong.
That’s useful too.
Because now we’ve located the disagreement.
And once you know where two people’s reasoning diverges, you can actually do something with it.
Understanding also gives me the opportunity to change my mind#
This part matters.
Trying to understand someone isn’t just a more sophisticated way of explaining to them why I’m right.
Sometimes I follow somebody else’s reasoning and discover that they have a point.
They knew something I didn’t.
They spotted a consequence I hadn’t considered.
Or I discover that one of the premises I was confidently building my position on isn’t actually true.
Great.
I’d rather find that out.
If someone gives me information I didn’t have before, and it changes how I understand the situation, why wouldn’t I change my mind?
That’s what the information was for.
But sometimes we go through the whole thing and still disagree.
That’s okay too.
Understanding isn’t agreement.
It just means I can see the model you’re working from.
This matters enormously on projects#
Projects bring together people who know different things, care about different things, and are responsible for different things.
The technical specialist sees one set of risks.
Operations sees another.
The client has priorities.
Finance has constraints.
Delivery has dependencies.
The person actually using whatever we’re building, changing, or maintaining may have an entirely different perspective again.
We’re not always going to agree.
And I’m not sure agreement should even be the goal.
If every stakeholder has to get 100% of what they originally wanted before we can move forward, we’re going to have some very long meetings.
But people do need to be heard.
And I don’t mean the performative version of consultation where everybody gets five minutes to speak before we proceed with the decision we already made.
I mean genuinely trying to understand:
What do you know that I don’t?
What are you concerned about?
What outcome are you trying to protect?
What constraints are you working within?
How did you get to your position?
Because sometimes that information changes the decision.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
Being heard isn’t the same as getting your way#
I think we sometimes confuse these too.
A stakeholder can disagree with the final decision and still understand why it was made.
They can see what information was considered.
They can see where their concerns fit into the decision.
They can understand the constraints.
They can disagree with the weighting.
They can even walk away thinking they would have made a different call.
“That isn’t the decision I wanted, but I understand why we’re doing it.”
is a very different project environment from:
“Nobody listened to me.”
The outcome might be exactly the same.
The process wasn’t.
And that matters because projects don’t happen between boxes on an organisational chart.
They happen between people who need to keep working together after this particular disagreement is finished.
Curiosity comes before agreement#
Maybe that’s the bit I’ve been getting at when I say I understand someone.
I’m not awarding them points for being right.
I’m curious about how their model works.
And I think I’ve realised that my natural order is:
Curiosity → Understanding → Agreement or Disagreement
Not:
Agreement → Permission to Understand
Understanding isn’t the reward we give people for being right.
It’s the reward we get for being curious.
And sometimes understanding will change my mind.
Sometimes it will change yours.
Sometimes neither of us is going anywhere.
That’s fine.
Agreement isn’t the goal of every conversation.
Sometimes understanding is progress.
Because understanding doesn’t require agreement.
It gives us somewhere useful to disagree from.
Originally published on LinkedIn.