Abstract thinkers focus on purpose and patterns while concrete thinkers anchor on tangible details and examples. Most team conflicts aren't about goals - they're about mismatched cognitive styles that nobody named.
Most team conflicts that look like alignment problems are actually cognitive style mismatches. Some people naturally think in abstracts - they want to start with purpose, explore patterns, and work backward from intent. Others are wired for concrete thinking - they need tangible examples, clear steps, and specific details before they can move forward. Neither approach is wrong, but when you don't recognize the difference, collaboration breaks down fast.
The author shares a painful example from their own experience. They were operating in strategy-discovery mode, focused on adaptive learning and uncertainty, treating initial solutions as hypotheses to test. But their stakeholders equated vague direction with poor leadership. They wanted concrete artifacts to react to, something that signaled conviction. When the author finally gave in and just blasted out specific solutions, suddenly everyone thought they had "product sense." To the author, it felt like a charade. To others, it was exactly what they needed to feel confident moving forward.
The trap is thinking this is about empowerment, autonomy, or command-and-control culture. Those frameworks miss what's actually happening. When someone asks for concrete examples and you keep pushing them toward abstract problem exploration, you're not empowering them - you're speaking a language they don't understand. When someone wants to define the "why" before moving to "how" and you just want to scroll for inspiration, neither of you is wrong. You're just operating from different cognitive defaults.
The really hard part comes when you develop awareness of these dynamics but others haven't. You'll find yourself adapting your communication style to bridge the gap, investing energy to translate between concrete and abstract thinking. Meanwhile, you'll keep running into people who believe their way is the only way, who think their perspective reflects "the real world." That's frustrating, but it's also a reminder that not everyone is on the same journey of self-awareness. All you can do is show up with good intent and recognize that it probably isn't personal - it's just how people are wired.
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