Mind reading: a terrible superpower at work

It's hard not to feel uncomfortable when a colleague responds to your carefully considered email with: ‘Fine.’

Fine? As in absolutely fine? Or fine as in you’ve disappointed them professionally and possibly as a human being?

Before long, you’re rereading your original message, searching for the offence.

Your colleague, meanwhile, may have been replying on their phone while trying to eat a sandwich.

Welcome to workplace mind reading. An impressive ability to know exactly what someone else is thinking, without the inconvenience of asking them.

When a guess becomes a fact

We all interpret other people. Communication would be difficult if we never considered what someone’s expression, tone or behaviour might mean.

The trouble starts when we forget that our interpretation is exactly that - an interpretation.

‘They haven’t replied’ becomes ‘They’re unhappy with me.’

‘She asked several questions’ becomes 'She thinks I'm incompetent.'

'He looked distracted' becomes 'I’m boring him.'

Each explanation might be possible. But none is established by the behaviour alone. Despite this, we can find ourselves responding as though we’ve received a signed statement confirming our worst suspicions.

And once we believe we know what someone thinks, it then changes how we communicate.

We overexplain.

Apologise before making a reasonable request.

Become unusually formal.

Or perhaps we arrive at the next meeting slightly defensive, ready to deal with hostility that the other person didn’t know they were supplying.

That’s where an imagined problem can begin to create a real one.

The face isn’t the whole story

This comes up in communication coaching, particularly when someone is presenting to a person who gives very little away.

A still face can be surprisingly unsettling. You’re speaking, they’re watching, and there’s no reassuring nod to tell you that everything is going beautifully.

So you work harder. Fill the pauses. Add another example. Explain the point again, despite having explained it successfully the first time.

But a quiet listener might be concentrating. They might be considering a question. They might simply have a different way of showing attention.

Expressions and eye contact vary between individuals, cultures and neurotypes. They can offer clues, but they aren’t a reliable transcript of someone’s thoughts.

You don’t need to ignore the person in front of you.

You do need to leave room for the possibility that your first reading is incomplete.

Get curious before you get certain

A starting point is to separate what you observed from the story you’ve attached to it:

'They didn’t ask any questions' is an observation.

'They thought it was rubbish' is a conclusion.

That small distinction gives you somewhere to go. You can check understanding, invite a response or ask a useful question:

'How does that fit with what you need?'

A question gives the other person an opportunity to tell you something you couldn’t discover by scrutinising their eyebrows.

Sometimes the answer will confirm that there is a concern. That’s useful too. Now you can respond to a specific issue instead of trying to defend yourself against a vague sense of disapproval.

You don’t need supernatural powers

Confident communication involves being able to stay engaged when you don’t yet know how you’re being received.

You can pause without rushing to rescue the silence. Ask a question without apologising for it. Notice an uncomfortable thought without handing it control of the conversation.

That’s something we can practise in coaching: keeping your attention available for what the other person actually says and does, even when your imagination has started writing a horror screenplay.

Next time, before deciding what’s going on inside somebody else’s head, try a little curiosity.

It’s a surprisingly effective way to turn the lights on.

If you’d like to feel more at ease in the conversations you tend to overthink, my one-to-one communication coaching offers a safe, practical space to explore and practise.

Get in touch to arrange a free, no-obligation discovery call.