A few months ago, I watched a perfectly solid working relationship wobble because of a WhatsApp message.

It was six blunt, practical words sent late in the day, without a greeting, a softener or an emoji.

“Can you just sort this today?”

How would you have read it? Be honest.

In the sender’s mind, it was efficiency. A quick nudge to keep things moving. But to the recipient, reading it alone on a phone screen after a long day, it felt very different.

They reread it. Then reread it again. With every pass, the message became harsher, colder, more loaded. A sentence written in ten seconds slowly acquired an entire emotional backstory that had never existed.

By the following morning, the actual work had become secondary. The real conversation was now about tone, intent and respect.

“Digital communication is counterintuitively primitive. When you strip out facial expressions, warmth, timing, eye contact and nuance, it’s no surprise when human beings start misunderstanding each other.”

I’ve seen versions of this happen dozens of times in modern workplaces. Smart, capable adults spiralling because somebody sent a message without a “Hi”.

And before anyone rolls their eyes, it matters.

Not because people are fragile, but because digital communication is counterintuitively primitive. When you strip out facial expressions, warmth, timing, eye contact and nuance, it’s no surprise when human beings start misunderstanding each other.

The strange thing is that most organisations spend endless time discussing strategy, performance and productivity, while barely discussing the mechanics of how people actually speak to one another all day.

That’s a mistake.

One of the most underrated jobs of a leader now is emotional temperature control. I don’t mean therapy. Or hand-holding. Just preventing tiny frictions from turning into needless organisational drag.

Over time, I’ve become mildly obsessed with what I call “shorter toes”.

Some people go through working life with emotional clown shoes on. Every passing comment lands heavily. Every ambiguous sentence feels personal. Every rushed email becomes evidence of disrespect, conspiracy or exclusion.

Once that mindset spreads through a team, productivity leaks away surprisingly fast.

But there’s another side to this.

The best teams I’ve worked with were never the most delicate. In fact, they were often remarkably resilient with one another.

For one reason: They assumed good intent. People recovered quickly from clumsy phrasing. They didn’t conduct forensic investigations into every missing exclamation mark.

That didn’t mean poor behaviour was tolerated. Far from it. Consistently sharp, dismissive or aggressive communication is exhausting in any workplace and leaders should deal with it early.

But high-performing cultures usually understand an important distinction: not every badly worded message is a personal attack, and not every moment of friction requires emotional escalation.

That resilience matters more than ever now because modern work runs on written communication, and written communication is a terrible carrier of emotional nuance.

Which means leaders have to shape the culture around it, through repetition, behaviour and example.

A few things help.

1. Teach teams that clarification is not confrontation.

One quick “Did you mean this the way it sounded?” can save two days of silent resentment and amateur mind-reading.

2. Encourage people to pick up the phone faster.

Half the tensions in modern organisations would not survive a 90-second conversation.

3. Remind them that brevity is not always hostility.

Some colleagues are simply terse. They are not building a legal case against you from a Costa near Swindon.

4. Deal with genuinely abrasive communicators early.

A team should not panic every time somebody forgets an emoji. But equally, one consistently sharp or dismissive person can drain energy from an entire organisation surprisingly quickly.

5. Develop a thicker skin yourself.

Teams watch senior people closely. If leaders react dramatically to every awkward email or clumsy comment, everybody else starts doing the same. Organisations become twitchy, defensive and performative.

This is not about lowering standards or pretending communication doesn’t matter.

It’s about recognising that in fast-moving organisations, people will occasionally phrase things badly, hit send too quickly, or forget the cushioning language that makes modern work feel socially safe.

A healthy culture absorbs some of that without constant emotional injury.

Shorter toes help.

Best, Mike