People with a limited emotional vocabulary struggle to articulate their feelings. If you don’t have the words, you can’t express the feeling. Not reliably or consistently.
It’s like cooking - if you’ve never heard of “sous vide,” you probably won’t reach for it when planning dinner.
The same goes for meta-communication - something we discussed with Martin Dubin, author of Blindspotting (episode coming soon on Change Wired).
Meta-communication is communication about communication.
It’s the signal behind the signal - the part that says how to interpret the message. It can be verbal (“I’m telling you this because I care about your success”) or non-verbal (tone, facial expression, body language).
The difference it makes is huge.
“This presentation lacked technical depth. Please work on it more.”
vs.
“I’m giving you these comments because I have high standards for you, and I believe you can meet them.” - before saying your feedback.
One feels like criticism.
The other feels like an investment. Like teamwork - you are in it together
We often assume our words are enough. And they mean the same thing no matter who's hearing them.
Wrong.
The other person brings their own set of filters, assumptions, and histories to every exchange. Without meta-communication, your message might land somewhere you never intended. That's how relationships get broken for life.
Oftentimes, simply knowing about meta-communication, or sou vide, doesn’t make you good at it.
But what Blindspotting reminds us: “You can’t improve what you can’t see.”
So learning new concepts is the first step to getting better.
And that’s why blindspotting as a practice - spotting what you didn’t even know was there - is such a game-changer for leadership or communication or anything you want to improce. And it’s why coaching works: someone else helps you see what you’ve been failing to see.
The moment you name something, you gain the power to work with it.
The moment you see it, you can change it.
Now you know of meta-communication, are you doing it enough to be understood correctly to be effective collaborating, building relationships and leading?
PS Here's a 5-point meta-communication checklist to do it better now that you know of it. Checklists are powerful - they use them to land planes safely.
