I thought he said go. He was yelling stop.

Communicators are sometimes the worst at communicating. I have proof.

My husband Mike is a former ski racer. I am not. When we met, I was a nervous, shaky skier who spoke to herself the entire way down a run and snowplowed where everyone else was carving. Over the years, with a lot of patience on his part and stubbornness on mine, I got better. A lot better. This past season, I was tackling double black diamonds and feeling genuinely confident on skis for the first time in my life.

So naturally, on our last run of the day at Lutsen, we decided to point ourselves at the steepest, most technical run on the mountain.

Key takeaways

• If you don’t have a pre-plan, including what “stop” looks like, you’re winging it. In crisis communications, winging it can become a problem quickly.
• Distance, noise and pressure distort messages. People hear what they expect to hear, not necessarily what was said.
• Confidence without clearly defined parameters can increase risk. The more capable your team feels, the more likely they are to stop over-clarifying.
• Ambiguity in high-stakes environments is never neutral. A vague talking point, an unclear approval, an assumption about what leadership meant — these are the technical turns you didn’t know were coming.
• Before any high-stakes communication moment, answer three questions: Who approves? What does “stop” look like? What happens if something goes wrong?

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One of the double-black diamonds at Lutsen Mountains that I conquered.

We had been eyeing this run all day. It looked steep — seriously steep — and for reasons that made complete sense in the moment and zero sense in retrospect, we decided it should be our very last run of the trip.

We did what we used to do years ago: Mike skied over the edge to scout it out while I waited at the top where I could bail if needed. What we did not do was establish any kind of communication plan. No signal for “good to go.” No signal for “abort.” No agreed-upon way to communicate anything, actually, which turned out to be a problem when he got far enough down that I couldn’t hear him clearly.

He was yelling something. Waving his arms. I squinted down the mountain trying to make out what he was saying.

“It’s good for me to do? I’ll be OK?”

I heard something that sounded like a yes. So I yelled back: “OK. I’m coming down.” And I pushed off.

What Mike was actually yelling was: “THIS IS NOT FOR YOU.”

Jen is gonna Jen

He saw me take off. He watched me pick up speed. And instead of slowly, carefully making my way down like he expected, I came bopping past him at full speed and said — and I quote — “I don’t want to stop. I need to keep going.”

He had stopped on a very steep section specifically to warn me about a technical turn ahead and coach me through it. I did not stop. I did not get coached. I flew past him and made the turn on instinct and luck and somehow made it to the bottom in one piece.

When we got to the bottom and compared notes, we both started laughing. He had been terrified watching me come down. I had been completely fine — oblivious, even — because I genuinely thought he had given me the green light.

We had the same conversation. We heard completely different things.

The part where this stops being funny

Here’s what actually went wrong and why I think about this story a lot in the context of crisis communications.

We had no pre-plan. We didn’t establish what a “go” signal looked like. We didn’t establish what a “stop” signal looked like. We assumed we’d figure it out in the moment, the way we had on easier runs for years. It hadn’t mattered before because the stakes were lower. On this run, the stakes were not lower.

Distance and noise distorted the message. On a mountain, you’re dealing with wind, echo, distance and the fact that both people are operating under a kind of low-grade stress that affects how they process information. In a crisis environment, those variables are amplified — media pressure, political scrutiny, emotional intensity, time pressure. Under those conditions, people hear what they expect to hear. I expected to hear “you’re good.” So that’s what I heard.

My confidence increased my risk. I had just had two great seasons. I had just skied double blacks. I felt capable. And that feeling of capability made me less likely to pause, less likely to ask for clarification, less likely to wonder if maybe I had misheard something important. Confidence is a good thing until it becomes the reason you stop double-checking.

Ambiguity on a technical run is dangerous. There was a turn coming that I didn’t know about and had no preparation for. I got lucky. In crisis communications, the equivalent of that turn shows up all the time. A reporter asks something you didn’t anticipate, a leader goes off-script, a detail surfaces that changes everything. You can’t prepare for every turn. But you can make sure everyone on your team knows who has authority, what approval looks like and what “stop” means before you push off.

What this looks like in practice

Before a media interview: Do we have agreed key messages? What does “don’t answer that” look like? Who has final authority on what gets said?

Before a crisis response: Who approves the statement? What’s the holding message while we figure out what we know? What are we not saying and why?

Before launching anything: What does success look like? What does “stop” look like? What happens if something goes wrong and who makes that call?

These aren’t complicated questions. But they’re the questions that get skipped when a team feels confident, when time is short, or when everyone assumes someone else has already answered them.

I thought Mike said “you’re good.”

He was yelling “this is not for you.”

The difference between those two messages is the difference between confidence and catastrophe. In my case, it ended with a good story and a laugh at the bottom of the mountain over a few drinks. In your organization’s case, the bottom of the mountain might look very different.

Communicators are sometimes the worst at communicating because we assume shared understanding. But shared vocabulary does not equal shared meaning. Plan for that gap before you need to.