How often has this happened to you:
You give a long report about what’s going on with the project, what the current status looks like, when you expect to deliver. After you finish, you open the room up to questions. No one has any. At all. After the meeting, you check with the sponsor- it’s an important sponsor – and he says he understands and is impatient for completion of the project. After engaging him in conversation about the deliverables you are wrapping up, he asks some odd questions, you probe more… and realize he doesn’t understand what you’re about to deliver to him at all. He’s working off assumptions.
This is (unfortunately) not an uncommon experience in the workplace. The part of this situation I want to illustrate is how you learned what was truly going on: by what the person asked. Most people believe that they understand what’s going on- otherwise, they will voluntarily ask questions. They don’t dodge asking questions out of any insistence on not knowing what’s going on. You must seek what they don’t know- what they do ask questions about- if you want to know what they believe is going on. Seeking inquiries and digging into details with someone will invariably lead you to their view on things.
It’s an old mantra, but it’s true: Judge people not by what they say, but by what they ask. Use this to your advantage. Never be satisfied with just what they say. Seek them questions.