You’ve had it happen. Probably even this week.
Someone said something, did something (or didn’t), and you thought:
“Well. That wasn’t very nice, because…”
And your mind literally filled in the gaps.
The truth is, we don’t know. That’s why our brains (wired for story) leap in to “help”.
But since we are humans, full of fears and past experiences and hurts and worries, the story we leap to might be one that feeds into those.
- “They don’t like me.”
- “That business doesn’t want to work with us anymore.”
- “Clearly they’ve been planning this for ages.”
And we go further. We take the story to a disastrous ending, or make it about us.
- “They’re probably going round telling everyone about it too.”
- “We aren’t different enough.”
- “This will never work.”
We even make it a self fulfilling prophecy:
- “Well if they’re going to be like that, fine. So will I.”
- “Did you hear what they did? Don’t work with them.”
- “I knew that project was doomed to fail. I’ll give up.”
We might not feel so dramatic as this in our mental conversations, but if the way we respond is based on our presumption, this is essentially what we’re doing.
Instead, what if we…
…assumed good intent?
What if you and I took the opportunity, next time or right now, to consider it from the other side?
- “They’ve probably got something really tough going on right now.”
- “Maybe they’re struggling too and are grasping for any kind of control.”
- “I wonder if they’re trying to help in some way.”
- “They might not know everything we do.”
Sometimes it’s a matter of asking a direct question.
I hadn’t heard from a company we work with regularly on events together. “Maybe they don’t want us at their event this year.” “They might not even be running it.” “It’s because I did some restructuring, they don’t like the new setup.”
But (hilariously) I talk to these people regularly. So I checked my mental conversation, assumed good intent, and asked straight out.
“Are you doing the event this year?”
They were a little confused. Um yes, of course, we always do… did we give the impression we aren’t?
Oh well usually we’ve got the agreement set up by now and I haven’t heard.
Oh, shall we send the agreement and get it all set up?
Yes!
Great! Let’s gooooo!
And all was agreement and pleasantness.
I know it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes people say “well things are busy” and “that sounds interesting” and “we aren’t sure yet”….
…and sometimes those do mean they don’t want to connect or work together (or they genuinely aren’t sure).
But if I assume good intent then I’m definitely a lot less stressed. And more creative and more motivated and enjoying life and business more.
Where can you assume good intent? What difference might that make?
