I’ve watched deals fall apart not because the parties disagreed, but because they thought they agreed when they didn’t. Both sides left the room nodding. Both sides had completely different pictures of what had just been decided.
Agreement is a feeling. Clarity is a document, or at minimum a clear verbal summary that both parties confirm.
This is especially common in professional settings where people are trying to be collegial. Nobody wants to seem difficult. So when something is slightly ambiguous, there’s a temptation to let it pass — to assume you’ll work it out later, or that the other side means the same thing you do. They often don’t.
The fix is simple but requires a particular kind of discipline. At the end of every significant conversation, someone needs to say: “Let me summarise what we’ve agreed.” And then actually summarise it. Who is doing what. By when. Under what conditions. What happens if circumstances change.
This feels awkward the first few times. It can feel like you’re being overly formal in a relationship that doesn’t require formality. But the people who do this consistently are the people who rarely end up in messy situations six weeks later, arguing about what was supposed to happen.
The other benefit is that it surfaces disagreement while there’s still time to address it. If your summary doesn’t match what the other person understood, better to know now than to find out when the work is due or the deadline has passed.
Clear expectations are a form of respect. They tell the other person: I take this seriously, and I take your time seriously. That’s not pedantry. That’s professionalism.