Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label assumptions

Test Your Assumptions

When was the last time one of your assumptions was wrong? It's so easy to jump to conclusions. We fill-in-the-blanks so many times in so many ways because it's just part of being human. But, when we assume that things are not going in our favor, when maybe there is no reason to, we do ourselves no service. This is a picture of a recent training room for one of my workshops. It was day two of the two-day workshop and since the hotel staff had in the past forgotten to unlock the door to my room. I arrived, and sure enough the door was locked. Rather than get upset (something I might have experienced in the past) I calmly contacted the hotel staff and politely, yet assertively, asked to have my door unlocked. "I can do that, sir," said a polite maintenance gentleman, "but you could also just walk in thru that second, open door..." "Oh. Gee. Thanks!" That was just a little embarrassing. Just about fifteen feet from the locked door was an o...

Solving Problems: Avoid Making Assumptions

How good are you at avoiding assumptions. (Careful now, is that an assumption?) We all make assumptions and it's almost always a mistake when we do. I'm working on taking Don Miguel Ruiz's advice on that from the Four Agreements: Don't make any assumptions. I'm especially careful about it when it comes to answers, to solutions, to big changes. Assuming we have all the answers is highly questionable thinking. When we do that, it's time to ask more questions. What assumptions should you stop assuming today? -- Doug Smith

Test Your Assumptions

When we want to communicate for results -- to achieve something, to reach shared meaning, we need to constantly clarify and test our assumptions. Does smiling and nodding mean agreement? Does silence infer disagreement? Is that frown on their face a sign of trouble? What does it all mean? We get into trouble communicating when we rely on our assumptions as truth. Maybe they are, and maybe they aren't, but my experience has been that more often than not our assumptions are not truth. Not the truth of the people we are seeking shared meaning with. If you don't test your assumptions they'll keep lying to you. And, that's probably not what you want. -- Douglas Brent Smith Front Range Leadership  |   Fast, affordable leadership training