The Communication Failure I Didn't Notice I Was Reproducing

This semester I started studying Project Management for one of my Software Engineering courses, and one framework stuck with me right away: the 5 Cs of communication — a message should be Clear, Correct, Concise, Coherent, and Controlled. I understood it, filed it away as useful, and moved on.

Then real life handed me a mirror.

I'm part of ICPT, an institute involved in a community-based tourism initiative. Recently I set up a meeting with a potential partner for the project — something I was excited about, something I'd put real effort into arranging. When I brought it to one of the institute's directors, his reaction made me feel like I couldn't move a single step without him. Like every decision, no matter how small, had to run through him first.

It stung. Not because I think decisions shouldn't be shared — they should. It stung because of what it implied: that I wasn't trusted to act.

I sat with that feeling for a couple of days. And then I noticed something uncomfortable.

A friend of mine — the same one I run Bountiful Labs with, our software house, still informal but very much ours — has been helping me build the platform for that tourism initiative, Caminhos de Mambucaba. We argue. Not big arguments, just the kind where we lock onto some small technical decision and spend hours trading messages, each one of us convinced the other is wrong. He's younger than me, and stubborn — sometimes stubborn while actually being wrong. But here's the thing I hadn't let myself see until this week: I don't give him the freedom to be wrong and figure it out. I hold on tighter than I need to. I'm doing to him, in miniature, exactly what left me feeling small in that meeting with the director.

And if I'm honest, he has every reason to be trusted with that freedom. I chose him for a reason. He has the base to be there. That's not a small thing to overlook.

The 5 Cs framework talks about "Controlled" as a property of a single message — don't let it carry more anxiety or ambiguity than the situation needs. I think it's bigger than that. Control isn't just something you exercise over a sentence. It's something you exercise, or don't, over how much room you leave for the person next to you to act. The director controlling every decision and me controlling every argument with my friend are the same failure, just wearing different clothes.

I want that director to eventually trust me with more room to act on my own. I'm realizing the fastest way to earn that isn't to keep proving I can win an argument — it's to become someone who knows how to extend the same trust downward that I'm asking for from above.

Have you ever caught yourself doing, to someone else, the exact thing that frustrates you when it's done to you?