Reading Between the Lines: What Your Team's Communication Is Actually Telling You

My last article was about thinking in layers - about how the presenting complaint that leaders bring to me is rarely where the real leverage lives.

But once you've figured out which layer to look at, there's a second question: What is the information itself telling you about the person who sent it?

I've been learning watercolor this summer, and something Tom Hoffman writes in Watercolor Painting helped me see this more clearly:

"What we see when we look at a painting is the way the painter has interpreted the scene. Much of the pleasure of our experience as viewers, whether or not we are conscious of it, is seeing into the artist's mind."

A painting is not a photograph. It's not trying to capture objective reality (that's what cameras are for). A painting is filtered through the artist's choices, feelings, and perspective - the colors they reach for, the mood they're in, what they want you to feel, what they pull into focus, and what they let recede into shadow.

As I was noodling on this idea, the connection to my coaching work felt natural. Because I think reports, emails, and data work the same way.

When you receive a report from a direct report (even or a terse email from a colleague, or a deck summarizing "what's happening"), it's tempting to treat it as objective reality. Just like the photograph.

But it's not. It's always a painting.

Someone chose what to include and what to leave out. Someone chose the framing, the order, the tone. The data points selected are the colors they reached for. The ones omitted are the ones they let recede into white space.

This doesn't mean it's wrong or dishonest.

It means there's always more to see. And sometimes the most useful question isn't what does this tell me about the situation — it's:
What does this tell me about the person who wrote it?

Are they worried? Covering for something? Making a case for a particular solution? Signaling that they're overwhelmed? Proud of a result and wanting you to notice?

This is a different kind of reading than scanning for information. It's reading for subtext. For the artist's mind. And it is part of the upleveling I do with leaders to help them establish stronger discernment skills.

The impulse I observe most often in organizations is the opposite of this: "Just do something. We can't just sit here! Fix it."

And that impulse, when it's not well-resourced, leads to actions taken from a place of incomplete information. Panicked moves made before anyone has stepped back far enough to see the full picture.

The advice? Pause first. Get curious. Then act.

I came to watercolor this summer because a friend invited me and it sounded like a fun way to get outside and connect. I didn't expect it to hand me a new lens for the work I do with leaders.

But here we are.

Reach out to me on LinkedIn: I’m curious about how this plays out for you or your team. Do you feel that impulse to just do something - fix it, escalate it, solve it fast? Or do y'all tend to hit pause and get curious first?

No judgment either way. Our brains are wired to detect and respond to threats, and that impulse is doing exactly what it was designed to do. And your answer probably changes week to week (maybe hour by hour) given what we're all navigating right now.

What I've found is that impulse gets louder the more pressure you're under - which is exactly when the pause matters most.

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This is the second piece in a series on discernment as a leadership skill that was originally posted on LinkedIn. Once you can read the painting in front of you, there's one more question worth sitting with: what does your own painting reveal? That's next.

🔗 Part 1: Thinking in Layers