What Is Misunderstanding Costing You?
Two people can walk away from the same conversation with completely different accounts of what happened, and both can be certain they're right.
That gap between how we experience ourselves and how other people experience us is where a surprising amount of leadership happens.
In this episode, I explore the role awareness and curiosity play in helping us understand ourselves, challenge our assumptions about others, and make more intentional choices about how we lead.
We look at why some of the best leaders seem to have such a good “read” on people—and why what looks like intuition may actually be something deeper: a willingness to remain curious.
I also explore the hidden energy cost of adapting our natural preferences to meet the demands of our environment. You can become extraordinarily good at a behavior that is simultaneously exhausting you. Effectiveness and effort are not always the same thing.
And then we tackle a more uncomfortable question:
When should you trust your gut—and when might your confidence simply be reinforcing a story you've already created?
Research on expert intuition suggests that reliable instincts develop under particular conditions. Research on self-awareness reminds us that we're not always the best witnesses to our own behavior. And research on workplace conflict shows just how expensive misunderstanding can become when assumptions, communication differences, and unresolved tension are allowed to accumulate.
In this episode, we explore:
- Why awareness and curiosity sit underneath so many other leadership capabilities
- What leaders of high-performing “superteams” do differently
- The difference between intuition, pattern recognition, and assumption
- Why confidence in a judgment doesn't necessarily make the judgment accurate
- How our own preferences can become the measuring stick we unconsciously use to judge other people
- Why our greatest strengths can become liabilities when we overuse them
- The hidden energy cost of continually adapting to an environment
- How personality differences can influence communication, collaboration, and conflict
- Why remote and written communication can create additional opportunities for misunderstanding
- How Insights Discovery and other self-awareness tools can give us a shared language for understanding differences
- How greater awareness can lead to curiosity, knowledge, and ultimately more choice
A reflection experiment
For the next week, don't simply think about your personality. Watch for patterns.
Notice when your energy changes. Who leaves you energized? Who leaves you depleted? When do you become impatient, withdraw, talk more, talk less, take over, accommodate, or behave differently from the way that feels most natural to you?
Write those moments down and ask:
What was happening?
What did the situation seem to require from me?
What was I assuming?
What evidence do I actually have that what I believe is true?
What else could be true?
What might I try differently next time?
You don't need a personality profile to begin developing greater awareness.
You just need to start paying attention.
Research & References
Curiosity and High-Performing Teams
Read “How to Build a Superteam That Keeps Getting Better” — Harvard Business Review
When Should You Trust Your Intuition?
Kahneman & Klein — Conditions for Intuitive Expertise
Self-Awareness, Blind Spots & 360-Degree Feedback
The Johari Window
Joseph Luft & Harrington Ingham — Johari Window, 1955
Workplace Conflict, Communication & Personality Differences
The Myers-Briggs Company — Conflict at Work Research, 2022
Workplace Conflict in Great Britain
Acas — Conflict at work: why it happens and how people try to resolve it
Acas — 2025 workplace-conflict research report
The Gap Between Employer and Employee Views of Conflict Resolution
CIPD — How Employers Are Tackling Bullying and Harassment at Work
Remote Work and Organizational Silos
Microsoft Research — The Effects of Remote Work on Collaboration Among Information Workers
Published study — Nature Human Behaviour
Why Written Communication Is So Easy to Misread
Justin Kruger, Nicholas Epley, Jason Parker & Zhi-Wen Ng — “Egocentrism Over E-Mail: Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2005
PubMed — Egocentrism Over E-Mail: Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?
People, Culture & Organizational Transformation
Why Transformations Stall - and where only CEO's make the difference
Explore Your Own Patterns
If this episode has you wondering about your own preferences, energy, communication style, blind spots—or how these dynamics may be affecting your team—you can learn more about Insights Discovery or schedule a conversation with me.
Schedule a chat with Marie
And in the next episode, we'll go deeper into the psychological preferences rooted in Jungian psychology that underpin Insights Discovery and several other approaches to understanding personality—what those preferences mean, how to begin recognizing them, and how they may affect your energy, stress, communication, and relationships at work.
Choice, not Chance.
Support the show
If you enjoyed this content and would like to learn more about how you can awaken and showcase your unique gifts, use the link below to join our X-Treme Executive Club. Our Club offers:
- 30-minute private coaching calls each month with Marie Chindamo
- Exclusive Masterclasses and access to bonus episodes of Choice, not Chance
- Unlimited email correspondence with a coach
- Semi-Annual live inspirational mixers with Marie Chindamo and other X-Treme Executive Club Members
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