Understanding as a Leadership Skill: Why ‘I Understand You’ Is Usually a Lie
Why understanding is so often missing as a leadership skill, even though everyone thinks they are listening. A closer look at genuine leadership communication.
"You didn’t understand me."
This sentence is uttered in companies every day. In meetings, after feedback conversations, in emails that should never have been needed. Sometimes out loud. Usually only in people’s heads—on both sides at once.
The odd thing is that both are certain they are right. The leader is convinced they communicated clearly. The employee is convinced she listened carefully. Yet the misunderstanding stands between them like a wall.
So what does understanding really mean—and why is it so often missing from leadership communication when nearly everyone thinks they have been doing it all along?
What the Word Really Says: ‘Understanding’ and Standing Under
Dig into the German word verstehen—‘to understand’—and you find something surprising.
In Old High German it was firstān or firstēn, a combination of the prefix fir- (ver-) and the Germanic verb stēn (to stand). The Etymological Dictionary of German (DWDS) documents: from the beginning, the word carried two meanings: ‘to perceive, comprehend mentally, recognise’ on the one hand, and ‘to stand in the way, obstruct, prevent’ on the other.
Both meanings are still in there today.
To understand means to place yourself under something. To take the other person’s standpoint. To stand in their space, not your own.
When that fails, something is quite literally standing in the way. That is the real point of conflict in leadership communication: rarely malice, but remaining rooted in your own position while already believing you are standing with the other person.
Its English relative is revealing too: understand = to stand under. The same metaphor of movement, the same invitation: step down from your own lofty perch and move towards the other person.
Hermes: The God Who Makes Understanding Possible
It is no coincidence that hermeneutics, the philosophy of understanding, is named after Hermes.
In Greek mythology, Hermes is the messenger of the gods: agile, boundless, equipped with winged sandals and universal knowledge. He bridges worlds—Olympus and Earth, the living and the dead—and translates not only words but meanings. He makes the incomprehensible comprehensible and the divine accessible to humans.
The Greek verb hermēneuein means to express, interpret, explain. It gave rise to hermeneutics, the art and science of understanding.
What Hermes embodies is not a technique but an attitude: the willingness to move between two worlds. Not to abandon your own perspective, but to open it wide enough for another reality to fit inside.
That is exactly the challenge facing every leader.
How to Understand Like Hermes.
As a leader, getting understanding right in conflicts matters. The zflys NVC worksheet tackles precisely this problem—properly!
Gadamer & Dilthey: What Understanding Means as a Value
Wilhelm Dilthey, one of the founders of modern hermeneutics, made a distinction that still holds: explaining is what we do with facts. Understanding is what we do with people.
Explanation follows laws and patterns. Understanding requires empathy: grasping an individual experience that cannot be reduced to formulas.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, the great twentieth-century hermeneutic philosopher, went further: understanding is not a process we control, but an event we must open ourselves to. His hermeneutic imperative says that anyone who wants to understand must be willing to let what they hear say something to them.
It is not about listening so you can reply. It is about listening to understand—and perhaps allowing yourself to be changed.
For leaders, that is a radical demand—and at the same time the most honest description of what genuine communication costs.
Understanding is not passive nodding. It is active openness.
Three Kinds of Understanding—and Why Leaders Usually Practise Only One
In my work with leaders, I encounter three levels of understanding again and again. Rarely are all three active at once.
- Cognitive understanding: "I know what you mean."
This is the intellectual grasp of the content: the brain has taken in and classified the information. Leaders are usually strong here. Most can quickly grasp, analyse and prioritise facts. The problem is that they often stop right here and still call it ‘understanding’. - Emotional understanding: "I can feel what is moving you."
This is where empathy lives—not as suffering with someone, but as standing with them. You register not only the content of the words but also the emotional context from which they are spoken. Leadership often underestimates this level, sometimes even actively suppressing it under the motto ‘no feelings in the meeting’. A disastrous misconception. - Intentional understanding: "I recognise what you need."
The deepest of the three levels. Behind every sentence lies an intention, a need, an inner movement. Intentional understanding means hearing not only what someone says, but why they say it. This very ability separates average leaders from exceptional ones.
Inner Dialogue as a Prerequisite for Understanding
Here is a truth I encounter again and again: if you do not understand yourself, your ability to understand others is limited.
When your own inner dialogue is disordered—dominated by old patterns, coloured by judgements, drowned out by noise—it filters every incoming message through that very lens. What I hear is then not what you said, but what my inner dialogue made of it.
This is exactly where what I call the communication muddle begins: sender and receiver believe they are talking about the same map. They are not—and nobody thought to check whether the maps matched in the first place.
Watzlawick stated it clearly in his axioms: one cannot not communicate. Every message has a content aspect and a relationship aspect. And that relationship aspect—who I think I am and who I think you are—ultimately decides whether we understand or misunderstand each other.
Anyone who knows and guides their own inner dialogue—who knows which inner role is judging, protecting or projecting—can pause for a moment before interpreting. In precisely that moment, genuine understanding becomes possible.
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The Price of Listening
Leaders face pressure every day: decide quickly, communicate clearly, set the direction. In this climate, understanding is a resource that is easily sacrificed.
Yet research and my consulting practice both show that the opposite is smarter.
Leaders who live understanding as a guiding principle—who truly listen before speaking; ask about the other person’s map before drawing their own; and treat emotional context as information rather than interference—gain on every level: trust, loyalty, creativity and resilience.
And yes, it costs something. It costs time. It requires a willingness to question your own interpretation. Sometimes it costs you the sentence: ‘Wait, I think I misunderstood you. Please explain that again.’
That is not a sign of weakness. It is the clearest sign of strength a leader can show.
Four Ideas for Understanding Leadership You Can Put into Practice Today
- Ask instead of interpreting.
Before you react, ask a genuine question: "What exactly do you mean by that?" or "What do you need from me in this situation?" Not rhetorically, but with sincere curiosity. The answer will often surprise you. - Turn down your inner dialogue while you listen.
What happens inside you when the other person speaks? Are you already judging? Already planning your reply? That is exactly the moment understanding stops. Let their voice remain in the room before you switch on your own. - Treat context as data.
Someone who speaks hesitantly is telling you something. Someone who avoids the point is telling you something. Someone who words everything with painstaking precision is telling you something too. Emotional context is not noise; it is information. Learn to read it and you communicate on a level that creates genuine resonance. - Briefly name your own inner dialogue before reacting.
Sometimes one sentence, spoken or merely thought, is enough: "I notice I’m judging right now." That brief moment of self-observation is often enough to step out of automatic interpretation and truly listen.
Understanding Is Not a Destination. It Is an Attitude.
Hermes is still running. He runs between worlds, between people, between what is said and what is meant.
The question is not whether you understood, but whether you are willing to understand.
Because understanding does not begin in the ear. It begins within—with the willingness to leave your own standpoint for a moment and step under the other person’s.
Every dialogue begins within.