How to recognise assumptions (and kick them out of the conversation)

We’ve all experienced that rush of blood to the head; that primal sensation when we feel wronged. Take the following examples:

• David’s colleague says at a sales meeting, “This week, I think I’ve managed to set new benchmarks for us as a team”. David grimaces, thinking to himself, “Who does she think she is, suggesting that she’s better than the rest of us?!”

• When Mary asks Steve, one of her team, for a copy of their proposal during a meeting with a key customer, Steve says that he didn’t bring a copy. Mary thinks to herself, “Typical, this guy has no idea how the business world works!”

• Wendy arrives home from a day at work, to find her partner’s breakfast dishes still strewn all over the kitchen bench. Her internal voice screams, “I can’t believe how lazy he is!”

All three examples demonstrate the sort of assumptions that we readily make about other people. Perhaps they are born out of a recurring pattern of similar behaviour from that same person. More often, however, these assumptions creep into our thinking because they’re easy to make. Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as the “fundamental attribution error” – in other words, a tendency to more readily explain away other people’s behaviours with what are called dispositional or personality-based assumptions.

By contrast, when the behaviour is our own (for example, if it was Wendy who had left dirty breakfast dishes on the kitchen bench), we’re more inclined to favour situational assumptions – ones that look to broader circumstances for a rational explanation. So, if Wendy were challenged on why she had left the breakfast dishes out, she might protest that she was under extra pressure to get out the door, the dishwasher was full, she forgot because she was under a lot of stress at the moment … and so on.

One version of this in negotiation culminates in writing off your counterpart as “irrational” or “deliberately obstructionist”. We commonly hear these terms being used to describe other people, but how often are they actually true? More likely, what we are observing is people coming up with easy (or even, lazy) ways of explaining behaviours they don’t like.

Take off the demonising goggles!

As a general caution, always check your assumptions about the other party before engaging in a difficult conversation or negotiation (take off those demonising goggles!).

A helpful way of doing this is to deliberately spend time asking yourself why the other person might be saying or doing the things that they are. Start off by allowing yourself to answer that question instinctively (which is more likely to air any demonising assumptions); but then change gears, asking yourself what explanations they might offer that would seem justifiable or legitimate to them. This might seem hard, so be disciplined: force yourself to actually write it down. It can also be very helpful to ask a colleague or friend to help you take the other person’s perspective, especially if you are feeling as though emotions and instincts are getting the better of you.

Of course, sometimes we’re in the heat of the moment and so don’t have the opportunity to prepare. Which is why it’s important to train yourself to recognise your instinctive impulses. What do you notice in yourself when you get upset – do you start making unkind judgments about the other person; does your heart beat faster; does your mouth go dry?

By better recognising those instincts, with practice you can train yourself to interpret them as signals to bite your tongue and take time out to think things through.

What about your own experiences: what works, and what doesn’t? We’d love to hear from you…

Simon Dowling
CEO

Tags: conflict resolution, how-to, negotiation, Simon Dowling