Heard Is Not the Same as Said
What you shared is not what arrived.
My wife’s phone went missing this morning at a Lisbon train station (on our way to a speaking event in Porto). I was literally about to press send on this week’s note to you. I’ll tell you what happened. But first, Mars.
On September 23, 1999, NASA lost a spacecraft.
The Mars Climate Orbiter had traveled 416 million miles to reach the red planet. It survived launch, the long cruise through deep space, and the approach. Everything worked.
Then it disappeared.
It didn’t crash into Mars. It didn’t get hit by debris. It came in at 35 miles altitude instead of the planned 90. The friction tore it apart.
The investigation took months. The answer, when they finally found it, was almost too embarrassing to publish.
Two teams had built the spacecraft. Lockheed Martin used imperial units. NASA used metric. Nobody checked. Two teams, same numbers, completely different meanings.
$125 million of equipment. Years of work. Burned to a streak of light over a planet that swallowed it whole.
Because nobody translated.
The Gap
I think about that orbiter every time I sit in a coaching session.
The CEO says, “I’m fine.”
He’s not fine.
The team lead says, “I’m a team player.”
She means, “I’m done fighting.”
The board member says, “We trust your judgment.”
He means, “We’re watching you.”
Every conversation is a translation. We’re not exchanging words. We’re trying to decode the meaning underneath them. And most of the time, we’re doing it badly.
What we say isn’t what we mean. What we mean isn’t what’s heard. What’s heard isn’t what’s remembered.
Three translations. Three gaps. And we wonder why nothing ever lands.
The Word “Interesting”
A client of mine, senior VP at a global brand, walked into our session last month and said, “I think my CEO hates me.”
I asked her why.
She said, “He told me my last presentation was ‘interesting.’”
That was it. That was the data.
Interesting.
We spent forty minutes on that word. What he might have meant. What she heard. What context shifted between his mouth and her ears. By the end of the conversation, she realized he probably meant “I’m processing this.” Not “I’m dismissing you.”
But she’d carried “he hates me” for three weeks. Skipped two meetings. Updated her resume.
All because of one word. Translated wrong.
What Most Leaders Miss
The best leaders I work with aren’t the most articulate. They’re the most curious. They don’t assume they heard what was said. They check. They ask. They translate, then verify the translation.
They know the gap exists.
The worst ones think they’re great communicators. That’s the tell. They believe their intent traveled across the room intact, like a package that arrived without a scratch.
It never does.
Intent leaves your mouth. Impact lands in someone else’s chest. The space between them is where every meeting falls apart, every relationship cracks, every great idea dies in committee.
We don’t have a communication problem at work. We have a translation problem.
And we keep hiring more communicators to fix it.
The Hug
As I was finishing this piece and about to press send, my wife’s phone went missing at the train station in Lisbon.
A woman called us back. We don’t speak Portuguese. She doesn’t speak English. We couldn’t tell if she’d taken the phone or was returning it. We couldn’t tell if she wanted help or a reward. Every word was a guess.
We went to the police. They called the phone. She picked up. They spoke to her in Portuguese.
She’d boarded a train with it, not knowing what else to do. She brought it back with her family. Her little boy was holding her hand when we met her.
We tried to give her money. She backed away. We pressed it into her hand anyway. My wife pulled her into a hug and they both smiled big smiles.
Nobody understood a word the other said.
Everything got through.
Sometimes the translation isn’t the language. It’s the willingness to keep trying when the words don’t fit.
NASA lost that orbiter to assumption.
A stranger in Lisbon almost lost our trust to the same thing.
She didn’t.
Stay human
-Bryan
P.S. Who in your life or at work are you mistranslating? Please comment, a word, a line. I’ll read and reply.
I’m Bryan, and if you’re a leader or executive, pull up a chair. Fancy stuff: Built companies in Silicon Valley. Gave a TEDTalk. Keynoted 200+ times.
Crashed hard. Found my way back. Lost 85 lbs. Ditched diabetes. Moved to Lisbon. And as it turns out, you can operate differently at any age.
Now I work with leaders and teams who’ve proven themselves but know something needs to shift.
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What a fantastic post, Bryan. The NASA data was fascinating, but this line really stayed with me: “The best leaders I work with aren’t the most articulate. They’re the most curious.” Curiosity is probably one of the most underrated traits because it usually shows up as listening first.
The image of her handing the phone back with her little boy beside her — that detail does more than the whole ending paragraph. I coach a lot of people who think connection at work requires the perfect pitch or the right words, and what I keep seeing is that the willingness to stay in the discomfort long enough is usually the whole thing. Lisbon will do that to you, by the way. It's a city that keeps finding ways to make people feel found.