Assuming Positive Intent

I always take note when I begin to hear the same piece of advice in a few different contexts: Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something… Lately, that piece of advice has been to “assume positive intent.” My boss used it in an initial meeting with her senior leadership team to the effect of, “I may not always have time, and it may not always be my style, to ask my questions in a gentle way, but please always assume positive intent as my questions are generally coming from a supportive place.” A week later, I was at a conference where a team was sharing the “secrets” of their success. They mentioned that one of the first groundrules they established about working together was to always assume positive intent. And, then, during a discussion (argument?) with my husband, I heard myself saying, “But I didn’t mean it that way! I wasn’t coming from an angry / accusatory place. I was happy.”

It would be wonderful if everyone spoke and behaved as they intended to do. But experience has proven that we can’t – or we don’t. And yet, even though we know that about people in general, we take individuals' comments and actions at face value. We sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. We often assume negative intent.

There are many reasons to follow the advice to assume positive intent:

• When you assume that a person is attacking you, or coming from a negative place, you aren’t making an effort to really understand that person, or to connect with her.
• When you assume that a person is coming from a negative / angry place, that is where you go with your response and in your thoughts. You end up creating a problem where there might not have been one. You end up with negative feelings – and you’re the only one experiencing them.
• When you assume the best of someone, they often rise to the level expected.
• Assuming positive intent is a generous way to operate.

This advice has recently been highlighted for me. I’m going to take it to heart. Want to join me? Read on…

COACHING EXERCISE

Let’s try a week of assuming positive intent – in our jobs, with our partners, our parents, and our friends. Let’s assume the customer service representative or store clerk really is trying to do his best to help us; or that the reason someone is asking you a question is because they honestly don’t know the answer (not because they are trying to accuse you of something). Let’s take a moment before responding to consider whether there is any way that what we’ve been presented with has a positive slant, rather than a negative one.  

If you’re a person who journals, jot down some thoughts during the week about how this is going. Is this a stretch for you, or is it natural? What helps you to remember to assume positive intent? What happens when you do? How do you want to incorporate assuming positive intent in to your life after this week?  I’d love to hear how it goes…

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW

If you look for quotations about intentions, most of them take a “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” perspective. Here are a few that are more in line with theme of this post…

“Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different…You are trying to understand and listen because at your basic core you are saying, ‘Maybe they are saying something to me that I'm not hearing.’” ~ Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO, Pepsico 

“We judge others by their behavior. We judge ourselves by our intentions.” ~ Ian Percy, Motivational Speaker

“If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.” ~ Zen proverb

The Daily Question Process

This post will focus on a coaching exercise that was suggested to me at a conference I attended this morning with executive coach and author, Marshall Goldsmith. I'd like to try it myself with someone, so, if, after reading this, you're interested in trying it for a month or so, let's make that happen! Here's how it goes... 


Goldsmith and a friend simply ask each other a series of questions every day that help them live life more fully - and happily. Questions like:

• Did you do your best to increase your own happiness yesterday?
• Do you do something to make your wife happy?
• How many sit-ups did you do?  
• How many pages of creative writing did you write?

They each came up with their own list of questions based on things that they want to make time for / that have meaning for them. Goldsmith identified some of the major stakeholders in his life - like his wife and children - and asked them what they would like him to focus on on a daily basis. 

Goldsmith has found that the repetitive nature of the questioning eventually leads to action. For example, he says, when you get sick of being asked every day how many sit-ups you've done and answering, "none," you start doing some. When you are asked if you helped out someone less fortunate every day, that activity remains in the forefront of your thinking. And active questions - questions that focus on what you can do to make a positive difference for yourself and the world (versus passive questions that focus on what the world needs to do to make a positive difference for you) - questions like, "Did I do my best to maximize my performance yesterday?" - are especially effective.

Clearly, who you choose as your partner matters here. It will have to be someone you feel comfortable sharing your intentions with. More importantly, it will have to be someone non-judgmental who will not criticize you if your answer to a question like, "Am I current with my physical exams?" continues to be "no" week after week. Or maybe you do want someone who will push you if they notice your responses aren't matching your intentions. I guess there would have to be some groundrules established at the start of the partnership about how you want your partner to react to your responses. 

So, I'm intrigued and I'm going to start playing with the questions I would want to be asked every day: What questions would drive me to take actions that I want to be taking? What do the people I care about want me to be more aware of on a daily basis? I think even just coming up with the questions is a valuable coaching exercise. And if any one wants to go to the next step and try a daily check-in for awhile, I'm curious to try it out with you.  

Goldsmith himself was inspired to do this exercise based on a book by Atul Gawande called Checklist Manifesto, which sounds fascinating. Let me know, if you read it, what you think.

The Mind Gym, Part 2

NEW THOUGHTS...
A group of magicians were shown a trick in which an ace of spades popped up out of the middle of a deck of cards. They were asked how the trick might have been done and they provided elaborate instructions about how to perform the sleight of hand. A group of children were shown the same trick and asked the same question. "Are all the cards in the deck aces of spades?" they asked. This was the opening anecdote in the engaging "Wake Your Mind Up" workshop (put on by the Mind Gym) I recently attended. Through a series of stories and exercises, we were reminded how our minds can switch over to autopilot and how that limits our ability to see the entire picture in front of us. We learned about how curiosity, taking on different perspectives, and using reflection time can help us break this pattern.  


Creative thinking has long been one of my favorite topics, and it was great to just get immersed in it again for an hour or so with Mind Gym. It's one of those topics that, as much as I love it, I need to be periodically reminded of it in order to re-engage with it. I highly encourage everyone to give creativity exercises a try now and then, to learn more about creativity (some resources I especially like are listed below), and to remain open to new ways of thinking about and looking at things, which is kind of all creativity really is. Enjoy!


... AND AN UPDATE
So, I wrote in my last post that I was going to try to respond to ideas I didn't initially like by sharing three things I did like about them and three things I would change. That didn't work too well this past week. Turns out people don't often announce, "Now I am going to share with you an idea you won't like so you can use this tool..." Often I'd be well on the path of putting an idea down before I even realized I'd been presented with one. I'll have to try this one again. Any one else try it? What kind of results did you have? 


CREATIVE THINKING RESOURCES

• A Whack on the Side of the Head, Roger von Oech
• How to be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum, Keri Smith
• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creativity for the 90's, Michael Michalko
• Five Star Mind: Games and Puzzles to Stimulate Your Creativity & Imagination, Tom Wujec
• Everyday Creativity, Dewitt Jones (video)

COACHING EXERCISES
Try a couple of these to get your mind working in new (and creative) ways...

• Wear your watch on your other wrist; take a different route home; go straight to a different room than usual when you arrive at home, listen to a different genre of music.
• Do a logic puzzle; or better yet, write your own logic puzzle - or a crossword, word search or Suduku. 
• Look at a picture of people you don't know. Come up with several stories about who they are and what was happening when the photo was taken. 
• Try looking at a problem or a project from several different perspectives: How would someone from another planet view this? What would a child think about it? How would a politician sell this idea? How would an advertiser position it? Creative thinker (and inventor of "lateral thinking) Edward DeBono, suggests putting on one of six thinking hats when thinking about a decision or dilemma:
  • Information: (White) - considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
  • Emotions (Red) - instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling 
  • Bad points judgment (Black) - logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch
  • Good points judgment (Yellow) - logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
  • Creativity (Green) - statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes
  • Thinking (Blue) - thinking about thinking 
• Get curious. An exercise I had to do during my coaching certification was to look under my kitchen sink for 10 minutes and just be curious. I wasn't to move / clean / fix anything. I was just to observe and be curious. This one gets both at seeing things differently and also the whole concept of reflection time. It's harder than it might seem. Alternatively, you can just make it a goal to ask a whole lot of questions about things or people you don't know in the coming week. 

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW

• “If you trip down one step, don’t throw yourself down the rest of the flight.” ~ Weight Watchers
• "Men are born to succeed, not fail." ~ Henry David Thoreau
• "If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are." ~ Zen proverb
• "A jug fills drop by drop." ~ Buddha

The Mind Gym, Part One

This week, I attended a really engaging workshop created by The Mind Gym called, "Wake Your Mind Up." While the entire session did just that - wake my mind up, in this post I want to focus on one exercise in particular that really hit home with me (my next post will focus on the session as a whole). In a discussion of how we establish automatic patterns of thought (someone says, "May I help you?" and we say "No thanks, I'm just browsing," even if we could use some help!), my facilitator had me try out an an exercise in which someone presented me with an idea that I did not like, and instead of expressing immediately what I didn't like about it, I was to mention three things I liked about the idea and then three ways I would like to change it. Immediately, I saw the power of this tool and I knew exactly where I had to apply it: My husband is always saying that I shoot down most of his ideas and I want to address his feedback. I've committed to trying this tool out at least five times this week with Jeff. 


So, for instance, if he suggests we take a bike ride through Central Park and I don't want to, I might say: 

"What I like about that idea is..."

- we'd be outside

- we'd be doing something active

- we'd be spending time together

"What I'd like to change about this idea is..."

- I would like to walk, rather than bike

- I would like to go to Riverside Park, rather than Central Park

- I would like to finish writing this blog post first  

Will this enhance our relationship? Does it frame the conversation as more of a conversation, rather than me shooting down another of his ideas? Does it remove my initial resistance to doing some new things? I'll let you know...

Enjoy the remaining days of summer!

~ Sophie

Coaching exercise

Is your initial inclination to think about what's wrong with someone's proposal, rather than what's right about it? Do you need a tool to help you approach tasks that you really don't enjoy doing? Obviously, I am giving you the same coaching exercise that I am doing this week to help you in these situations. For example, what are three things you like about having to organize your closet this weekend? And then what three things will you change - Maybe only do the top half? Maybe do it with a friend (and then work on hers the next weekend)? Maybe do it in ten minute intervals with "reward breaks" built in? Or... What three things appeal to you about your colleague's proposal? What three things would you like to change?

Note: While I don't think you have to be strict about the number three in this model (three things you like; three things you'd change) in the longer-term, I think forcing yourself to find at least three things is critical to making this work in the beginning - to stretching your mind to respond in a new way.  

Quotes

I haven't been inspired by many quotes recently. Maybe you could suggest a few??