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Did I Get That Right? - A High Leverage Habit that Requires Virtually Zero Skill

Summary

The episode focuses on a high-leverage communication habit that benefits professionals at all levels, from junior engineers to executives. The host explains that this behavior requires no special skills but involves thoughtful communication to mitigate one of the biggest career risks: misunderstanding others.

The core idea is that humans naturally use efficient, low-effort communication based on cultural heuristics, which can lead to miscommunication. While this quick communication has benefits in personal contexts, it poses significant risks in professional scenarios, especially with stakeholders or team members.

The recommended habit is to restate what someone says in your own words, using phrases like “What I hear you saying is…” This serves multiple purposes: it shows you’re listening intently, helps you encode and understand the information better by forming neural connections, and most importantly, gives the other person an opportunity to correct any misunderstandings.

This practice builds credibility and creates a genuine sense of connection, as the other person feels their message has been truly received and understood. The host encourages listeners to try this in their next professional conversation, aiming to iterate until the other person confirms “Yeah, that’s right.”

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to a high-leverage habit for all professionals — The host introduces a top-five effective behavior for leaders, managers, and professionals at all levels. This habit requires no special skills but involves thoughtful communication. The episode will explain why this habit is crucial for career improvement and risk reduction.
  • 00:01:03 — The importance of risk reduction in career development — The host discusses how part of career improvement involves eliminating the biggest risks. Risk reduction is presented as an ideal investment because it creates more opportunities for success. The fundamental risk that persists throughout one’s career is oneself—specifically, the risk of misunderstanding what others communicate.
  • 00:02:32 — How miscommunication poses a persistent career risk — The host explains that misunderstanding others’ communication can snowball into major setbacks. Humans default to low-effort, efficient communication based on cultural heuristics, which helps with quick understanding but increases miscommunication risk. While these heuristics have value in personal relationships, they present dangers in professional contexts.
  • 00:05:55 — Introducing the restating technique for professional conversations — The host reveals the simple habit: restate what someone says in your own words. This involves summarizing or rephrasing their message and giving them a chance to correct you. Examples include starting with “What I hear you saying is…” or “What I think I’m hearing is…” The goal is to convey the same underlying meaning using different terminology.
  • 00:07:39 — Benefits of the restating technique: listening and encoding — The host outlines the benefits of this practice. First, it shows you’re listening intently, which people notice and appreciate. Second, it helps you encode the information by forcing you to draw out meaning and create neural connections. This is more effective than simply parroting back the exact words someone used.
  • 00:08:45 — The most important benefit: opportunity for correction — The most significant risk reduction comes from giving the other person a chance to correct misunderstandings. When you restate their message, they can confirm “That’s right” or clarify “That’s not quite right.” This addresses the common assumption that we understand others when we might not, providing a valuable opportunity to refine understanding.
  • 00:10:21 — Building credibility and genuine connection through reception — The host explains that when someone confirms your understanding is correct, it builds your credibility. This creates a psychological sense of reception—the feeling that their message has been truly received and understood. This technique builds genuine bridges with others because you’re taking time to refine the message and demonstrate your ability to hear them.
  • 00:11:59 — Encouragement to practice this cheap, high-leverage behavior — The host encourages listeners to try this technique in their next professional conversation. It’s described as a cheap and high-leverage behavior to add to one’s repertoire. The key is to restate information in your own words and keep iterating until the other person confirms understanding is correct.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2025-04-11T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:13:28

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] In today’s episode, I want to share with you what is probably in my top five effective

[00:00:19] behaviors for leaders, for managers, for directors, VPs, all the way up to the executive level.

[00:00:27] And then all the way down through junior engineers, every single person in this chain

[00:00:34] can benefit from adopting this behavior.

[00:00:39] And it doesn’t require any special skills.

[00:00:46] The thing that makes it hard is that it requires some thoughtful communication.

[00:00:54] Before we get to the habit, I want to kind of give you

[00:00:57] the background as to why this is such an important and effective habit for you to pick up.

[00:01:03] If you think about part of your role or part of your kind of process of improvement

[00:01:11] for your career, for yourself, as eliminating the biggest risks,

[00:01:19] right? If you, you know, subscribe to the idea that a lot of figuring out what to do

[00:01:26] is actually mostly figuring out what not to do, that sometimes things will fill in the blank

[00:01:34] as long as you can avoid major risk. And so risk reduction, right? From a kind of a conceptual

[00:01:43] standpoint, risk reduction is an ideal investment. If you’re reducing your risk,

[00:01:50] then you have more opportunities unfettered to succeed.

[00:01:56] And that’s the basis for this idea, right? So if you think about the many things that might

[00:02:02] produce risk over your career, there’s one that will stay with you the whole time.

[00:02:10] And it just so happens that it’s you. You are a risk to your own career. And

[00:02:18] there are many ways that this plays out. There’s many ways that you pose a risk for yourself

[00:02:23] or to yourself. But the most,

[00:02:26] salient, the most salient example of this that will last all the way through,

[00:02:32] no matter what level you are, is your ability to understand what someone else is communicating to

[00:02:39] you. Think about this. If you misunderstand what someone else is communicating to you,

[00:02:49] if you hear something and you assume that they mean one thing, but they actually mean

[00:02:56] another, then you’re not going to be able to understand what someone else is communicating to

[00:02:56] you. This can snowball into major miscommunications, which can result in significant

[00:03:05] setbacks in your career. We won’t go into specifics, but I’m sure you can think back to

[00:03:11] very recent examples of this, where you made assumptions about what a person meant.

[00:03:17] And this is kind of our default mode of communication. Why is that? Well, mostly because

[00:03:23] our communication is intended to be a way for us to understand what someone else is communicating to

[00:03:26] us. We need to be low effort. When I say intended, what I mean is we are adapted. We

[00:03:32] focus on low effort communications. This is an efficient form of communication. We try to

[00:03:41] convey as much meaning as is necessary and no more by default. Why is that? Well,

[00:03:49] because our brain is trying to be as efficient as possible, using as little energy as necessary.

[00:03:56] So this is a survival instinct. Being able to communicate quickly is beneficial.

[00:04:03] It’s beneficial because you don’t have to spend a ton of time translating or understanding each

[00:04:09] other. But this is beneficial in the sense that it would have helped you 100,000 years ago.

[00:04:19] It would have helped you understand the norms of your small village,

[00:04:26] it would have helped you understand when somebody is making a particular sign or saying a particular

[00:04:33] word, what they really mean by that. It’s cultural heuristics that you’re using. And these cultural

[00:04:39] heuristics, they can be valuable even now. We use these to build rich communication with each other.

[00:04:48] It helps us feel comfortable when we’re around our friends and we can share inside jokes. These are

[00:04:55] a type of heuristic, right? They are heuristic to a deeper, richer kind of history together.

[00:05:04] So let’s be careful in trying to throw out these heuristics altogether, trying to throw out

[00:05:10] the quick communication as if it is fundamentally bad. But it does present a risk. Alongside the

[00:05:19] benefits that we’ve already talked about, the risk is miscommunication. Offending someone is a very

[00:05:25] simple example of miscommunication. It’s a very simple example of miscommunication. It’s a very

[00:05:25] simple example of this in our personal lives. Making a joke that is at someone’s expense

[00:05:31] is a risky communication behavior. Now, sometimes that risk is minuscule and the downside is worth

[00:05:39] it. The quick communication that we have with another person, the upside turns out to outweigh

[00:05:47] the downside. But when we’re in a professional scenario, when we’re talking to, let’s say,

[00:05:55] another team member, or especially when we’re talking to somebody like a stakeholder or a

[00:06:01] collaborative partner, this one behavior is going to provide so much risk mitigation for you,

[00:06:11] right? It’s very simple. All you’re going to do is restate what the person is telling you

[00:06:18] back in your own words. Restate what they’re telling you back in your own,

[00:06:25] your own words. Restate what they’re telling you back in your own words.

[00:06:25] You’re summarizing what they are saying, or you are restating it in words that you would

[00:06:31] understand that are natural to you, and they get a chance to correct you. So this looks something

[00:06:41] like, what I hear you saying, or what I think I’m hearing is, and then you proceed to explain

[00:06:47] what you think you’re hearing. So you might be listening to this, and if we were sitting in a

[00:06:55] room, come back to me and say, Jonathan, I think what I hear you saying is that when I’m listening

[00:07:01] to someone, one way I can show them that I’m listening is by trying to restate what they’re

[00:07:07] saying with my own terminology. Now, here’s the thing. You’ll notice that I didn’t say anything

[00:07:14] different there. I’m restating with the same underlying meaning. We’re using different words

[00:07:23] to convey the same fundamental truth or the same fundamental assertions that the other person is

[00:07:32] making. And here’s, here’s what this does. Okay. One, we already mentioned it. You are showing them

[00:07:39] that you’re listening intently. Okay. Giving somebody else your time. This is a hugely

[00:07:46] influential decision. Giving someone your time, they notice. They notice if you’re listening.

[00:07:53] And they notice if you’re not listening. So by restating what they’re saying in your own words,

[00:08:00] you are showing them that you’re listening. You’re also encoding this for yourself,

[00:08:06] right? And you’re, you’re creating the meaning. You’re making the connections. The neural

[00:08:11] pathways are getting formed. When you have to draw out the meaning and summarize something for

[00:08:17] yourself, rather than just parroting back exactly the words that they’re saying back to them,

[00:08:23] if you are summarizing, if you’re, you know, synthesizing it, right? Especially if you can

[00:08:29] then go on to talk about it in context to something else that you’re talking about,

[00:08:35] then you’re, you’re creating the connections. Now, perhaps the most important thing that you’re doing

[00:08:40] here. Okay. All of that is risk reduction, by the way. What we just talked about, it’s all risk

[00:08:45] reduction, but the biggest risk risk reduction that we can accomplish with this is giving the

[00:08:51] other person the opportunity to correct us. And that’s what we’re doing here. We’re giving the

[00:08:53] other person the opportunity to correct us. Making sure that they respond with something like,

[00:09:00] that’s right. That’s correct. Yep. You’ve got it. And here’s what that does. Okay. One, of course,

[00:09:08] you have the very likely potential that at some point somebody said, no, that’s not quite right.

[00:09:15] You are going to be wrong about what you’re hearing. And this is the part that most people

[00:09:21] miss that we assume we understand. We assume we understand. We assume we understand. We assume

[00:09:23] we understand just because we know the meaning of the words that the person is saying that we

[00:09:29] have some context for what they’re saying. But when we restate it back to them, we have a chance.

[00:09:35] We have a chance to refine our understanding. This is a huge opportunity, right? And we must

[00:09:41] pay attention to this as a huge opportunity to refine our understanding, to, to check it against

[00:09:48] what the other person is actually intending to say. Right? So there’s very basic,

[00:09:53] basic, basic, basic, basic, basic, basic, basic, basic, basic, basic, basic, basic, basic,

[00:09:53] mirroring technique. It’s not, it’s not traditional mirroring in that you are, you know,

[00:09:58] trying to emulate what the other person is saying. You’re just mirroring back what they’re saying to

[00:10:02] them. They get a chance to critique you. They get a chance to, uh, to correct you to say, no,

[00:10:08] you don’t quite have it. I’m going to add another layer for you to understand. So you walk away with

[00:10:13] better understanding. The final thing that it does is this person feels the sense of reception.

[00:10:21] All right. In other words,

[00:10:23] they have asserted that you are correct. They have asserted that you understand what they’re

[00:10:31] saying. Psychologically speaking, when you look at someone and you say, yep, you’re right,

[00:10:38] that builds credibility, right? That builds your credibility. If you’re the person that they are

[00:10:44] saying, yep, you’re right to, then they have a, they have this opportunity to confront that you

[00:10:49] have indeed understood them. And now you are more, you know, you’re more, you know, you’re more

[00:10:53] credible because you’ve taken the time to fully parse what they’re saying. Now compare what this

[00:11:00] feels like. Imagine that you were trying to, to explain something to somebody

[00:11:03] and they didn’t engage with you at all. They said, yeah, that makes sense. And that’s where

[00:11:10] they leave it. Now it’s very possible that whatever landed in their head is pretty close to right. If

[00:11:16] they were to restate it back to you, you might say, yeah, that’s, that’s pretty much it. But the truth

[00:11:23] of reception, right? The acknowledgement that you provide, that there’s a feeling that my message

[00:11:31] has been received, that my meaning has been received. Someone truly understands me.

[00:11:39] This is a bridge building technique with other people. And it’s not a fake bridge. It’s not you,

[00:11:46] you know, blowing smoke. It is actually a genuine connection because you’re taking the time

[00:11:52] to refine the message. And it’s not a fake bridge. It’s not you, you know, blowing smoke.

[00:11:53] Your ability to hear what they’re saying. So I want you to try this. It’s a very cheap

[00:11:59] and high leverage behavior to add to your repertoire. And all you’re really doing here

[00:12:05] is if there’s, you don’t even have to have a hint of doubt. You can just do this

[00:12:10] just for the benefit of the practice of it in your next conversation, especially in your next

[00:12:17] professional conversation. When someone gives you some bit of information,

[00:12:23] repeat.

[00:12:23] Play it back to them. Replay it back. Try to capture whatever they said and repeat it back

[00:12:32] to them. And the key factor here again is do it in your own words. And your goal, your goal in that

[00:12:40] effort is to keep iterating with that person until they say, yeah, yeah, that’s right.

[00:12:48] Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

[00:12:52] If you think that someone that you know would benefit from this, go ahead and share it with

[00:12:58] them. They can find it at developertea.com or probably more naturally these days, you can

[00:13:05] just go straight into your podcast player and search for Developer Tea and you’re going to find

[00:13:10] it. You can also share this show directly from whatever podcasting app you’re using.

[00:13:15] Share this episode with them. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.

[00:13:22] Bye-bye.

[00:13:23] Bye-bye.

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