We're not speaking the same language...

Whether it’s the opposing perspectives of different technical areas, different relational styles, or different world views, when you feel like ‘we’re not speaking the same language’ the effects are real: lower trust, slower decisions, more stress, and less impact for the people you’re here to serve.

Technical worlds collide: “Are we even in the same meeting?”

To play with some stereotypes for a moment. Think about the tension that might emerge between a Clinical Lead and a Finance Lead. One is focussed on safety, ethics, the human cost of decisions; the other is scanning for cashflow, compliance, sustainability and funder acquittal. Both perspectives matter, but when we’re locked into our own way of seeing the world through a technical lens, we can easily slip into defending our own position and labelling the other as ‘wrong’. 

When this goes wrong, you see:

• circular arguments where the same issues are re‑litigated from the same perspectives 
• decisions that everyone ‘agreed’ on, but nobody takes ownership
• workarounds: people doing what they think is right and value and ignoring what they don’t buy into
• rising stress and burnout as teams try to navigate mixed messages. 

Over time, unresolved conflict between functions reduces team morale, slows projects, and erodes trust in leadership. People stop bringing ideas because it feels like a battleground, not a place to solve problems. 

What helps in the moment

• Be clear about where you’re speaking from so that it’s clear you’re presenting one view of the situation, not all of them. “From a clinical safety perspective, this is what worries me…” or “From a financial viability lens, here’s the risk I see…” 
• Start with the ‘because’ so that others can understand your reasoning not only hear your viewpoint. “We need to hold off on backfilling because our current cash position risks next year’s services.” “We need extra staff because our current ratio creates unacceptable safety risk.” 
• Don’t pretend you understand, or let yourself be bamboozled by jargon. Ask: “Can you explain that like you would to a new starter?” “What are the top two risks in plain language?” 
• Show that you’re listening and that you’re making an effort to understand a different perspective before you push back. “So if we don’t do this, from your perspective we’re putting clients at real risk – have I got that right?” or “If we do this, you’re worried we can’t pay for it next year – is that your core concern?” 

Handled well, exploring technical difference can create a fuller picture of reality, rather than a fight about who cares most.

Task‑first vs relationship‑first: “Why do you always…?”

Some leaders are wired to be task‑first. They care about clarity, deadlines, and follow‑through and their anxiety lives in missed targets and dropped balls. Others are naturally relationship‑first. They care about mood, connection, and how people are coping; their anxiety lives in fractured trust and distressed staff. When these styles clash you see:

• meetings where one person is trying to lock in decisions while another keeps circling back to ‘how people are going’
• frustration that quickly becomes personal: ‘You don’t care about people’ vs ‘You never want to make a decision’
• avoidance: people stop raising concerns because they don’t want to be seen as ‘soft’ or ‘cold’
• dips in both performance and morale.

What helps in the moment

• Bring the tension into focus and call out the patterns you see. “I notice I go straight to the task and you go straight to the people. For this decision, what would ‘doing right by both’ look like?” 
• Get curious about what drives their approach and ask what they’re trying to protect. To a task‑first colleague: “What outcome are you most worried we’ll miss?” To a relationship‑first colleague: “What impact on people are you most worried about?” 
• Create opportunities for all perspectives to be heard and valued. “Let’s spend ten minutes on how the team’s doing with this change, then fifteen on what has to happen in the next fortnight.”
• Build shared understanding and language to talk about outcomes and agreements and how you’ll communicate them. “If you were explaining this to your team tomorrow, what would you say we decided?” (and be prepared to workshop both your answers)

Done well, you keep the edge of task focus and the warmth of relationship focus, instead of oscillating between the two extremes. A maxim to keep in mind: ‘you go faster alone, but further together’.

Different world views: “Are you one of us or one of them?”

Finally, the trickiest layer: politics, culture, identity, and personal history.

In many for‑purpose organisations, people arrive with strong views about justice, identity, economics, faith, or the role of the state – often shaped by lived experience, activism, or community work. Those don’t stay at the door, and in a more polarised world, disagreements can very quickly feel like: “Are you on my side or theirs?” 

When this goes wrong, you see:

• people quietly categorising colleagues by “camp” and trusting them less as a result 
• teams splitting into informal factions, where information and support flow along ideological lines instead of organisational ones 
• everyday disagreements about work decisions being interpreted as statements about someone’s character or morals
• drops in collaboration, willingness to speak up, and the sense that ‘this is a safe place for someone like me. 

Over time, political and ideological conflict at work is linked to lower trust, weaker teamwork, and more turnover. The organisation pays in missed opportunities, cautious decision‑making, and good people who opt out. 

What helps in the moment

• Make ‘how we talk about hard things’ explicit. Instead of hoping people will be respectful, agree and write down how charged conversations will happen: no personal attacks; no ‘you people’ language; no piling on someone for expressing a minority view; no sharing screenshots or quotes outside the room without consent. Then refer back to those ground rules in real conversations: “We agreed we challenge ideas, not people - let’s reset.” 
• Slow your first reaction and respond with curiosity rather than judgement. Take a moment to breathe before you ask: “What value is underneath your position on this?” “What life experience is informing how you see it?”
• Be clear about what you need to collaborate without pretending you’re aligned on everything. You might need: clarity on boundaries (“We won’t use certain terms”); an agreed focus (“We’re talking about this policy, not everything behind it”); or a shared check‑in (“If this feels off for either of us, we’ll name it rather than stewing on it”). 

Handled with care, differing world views become something that can be worked through, a source of richer thinking, and a reflection of the broader world we live in (no matter what our social feeds and preferred media are serving us).

How leadership coaching can help

All of this asks a lot of leaders.

You’re expected to understand multiple ‘languages’, hold competing pressures, and stay calm while everyone around you is reacting from their own training and history. Leadership coaching creates a space away from the politics of the organisation where you can unpack what’s going on and experiment with different ways of showing up. 

In practical terms, coaching can help you to:

• See your own default language. Most leaders underestimate how much their technical background and style shape what they notice and how they speak. Coaching helps you see your own patterns clearly. What phrases do you rely on, what lenses do you default to, what assumptions do you carry about what ‘good leadership’ looks like?
• Build range, not a new personality. You don’t have to stop being task‑focused, or clinically‑minded, or values‑driven. But you do need more range. Coaching helps you develop additional ‘dialects’, ways to talk to Finance that make sense to them, ways to talk to staff that don’t sound like a board paper, ways to hold a politically charged conversation without collapsing into either avoidance or attack. 
• Work with your real situations, not theory. The most useful coaching conversations are built around the specific people and conflicts that are keeping you awake: “This Fundraising and Marketing tension”, “This clinician and CFO relationship”, “This clash of world views in my team.” You can slow those situations down, experiment with different language, and then take that back into the next meeting. 
• Strengthen your tolerance for difference. A lot of what makes ‘we’re not speaking the same language’ so draining is the emotional load. Coaching helps you notice where you get hooked, how you interpret challenge, and what it takes for you to stay grounded and curious for longer. 
• Translate learning into habits. It’s one thing to know you should ask “What are you hearing?” or add a “because”. It’s another thing to actually do it when you’re tired and under pressure. Coaching helps you identify a small set of concrete practices that fit you, and hold you accountable for trying them in the wild. 

Coaching in this context is about making you more able to sit in the middle of difference and help other people stay in the conversation too.