Indra Nooyi is the former Chair and CEO of PepsiCo, and her name often appears on the list of the world's most powerful women. She once said that "to always assume positive intent,"* was the best advice she ever received. She learned it from her father. I agree! It's one of the most powerful tools in a good communicator's toolkit.
But I didn't learn it from Indra Nooyi. Instead, I learned that lesson from Teacher Laura, my son's pre-Kindergarten teacher, many years ago.
Teacher Laura believed that most human actions are spurred by a positive intent. It's our job to discover that intention. We can do this by staying present with others and not being reactive.
Once when volunteering in the pre-K class, I saw Teacher Laura put this in action.
Three five-year-olds were playing together in the sand pit; two little boys stood on either side of a little girl.
The boys were giddy. They giggled with excitement.
The little girl was... crying. She held on tightly to the sides of the yellow-flowered hat on her head as her two friends sprinkled it with water from colorful plastic watering cans. Big tears rolled down her cheeks and blended in with the wet tracks of the water.
The boys were delighted!
Their classmate was miserable.
Enter: Teacher Laura
WAIT!
Before reading how she handled it, what would you do if one of those children was yours? Would you yell at the boys? Would you ask them what the heck they were doing? Full disclosure: If that was my daughter crying, I probably would have done just that.
Teacher Laura handled it differently, however.
With lightning speed, she got the children's attention and stopped the bucket brigade. She didn't raise her voice nor draw attention. She swiftly got the little girl with one of the other teachers and then went back to talk to the boys. She kneeled down to their level and spoke calmly and kindly.
Teacher Laura (TL): "Boys. Did you see your friend was crying?"
Boys: "What? No. We didn't know!"
TL: "Oh, she was. See? She's okay now. But I am curious...what were you doing with her?"
Boys (excitedly): "We were watering her hat!"
TL: "Oh, tell me more!"
Boys: "She has flowers on her hat, and she said we could water them, so we were!"
TL: "Oh! She did? Did she like that?"
Boys: "Yes! She was laughing! We didn't know she started to cry."
As it turned out, their friend confirmed that is exactly what happened. The three preschoolers were playing, and one happily agreed the others could water the bright decorative flowers on her hat. What she didn't anticipate, however, was how awful it would feel to have a soggy hat on her head. More importantly, she didn't know to tell her friends to stop.
What stood out to me in this example was how Laura assumed positive intent when talking with the boys. She didn't yell, accuse them or get angry. She kicked her emotions into neutral, so to speak, and got curious. The only way she would get to the bottom of the story was by assuming positive intent and asking good questions.
Imagine what would have happened if she'd jumped to conclusions ("Bad boys!") and scolded them immediately.
Instead, it was a teachable moment about being aware of others and also about saying no.
(And what was once an unspoken rule about not pouring water on each other now became a formal declaration.)
Assume
Positive
Intent
Try it; it's a game-changer!
It's also one of the key skills I've been teaching people throughout the years. Instead of being reactive, we can choose to pause and get curious. We can look for the intention behind the action, even if it doesn't make sense to us at the moment.
Try assuming positive intent with your kids. Practice it with your co-workers. Certainly use it with your dissatisfied customers.
How?
1. Begin by giving people the benefit of the doubt. Very few people operate from a place of ill intent, even if they are doing or saying things differently than you would.
2. Instead of meeting the world with your boxing gloves on, start with the assumption that people are fair, honest, and good. If that's too much of a stretch, kick it back to neutral and assume that, in general, people are at least okay-ish. When we're looking at the world through the lens of good or bad, we will find evidence to support our views or values. (That's called confirmation bias.)
3. Know your own triggers. What sets you off? When we can identify what triggers our emotions (and sends us into negative, impulsive communication), we can strategize ways to reduce our defensiveness and choose better responses.
4. Put some distance between the stimulus (in this case, what triggers you) and your response (your reaction). Count to ten, breathe, do what it takes to snap out of autopilot and rote scripts.
5. Increase awareness of your own stereotypes and judgments. Set them aside! (You can always get them back later if you must.)
6. Stay curious and ask good questions instead of jumping to conclusions-- even when you think you know the motivation behind something.
Again, there's so much more to explore around this concept! In closing, though, I think Indra Nooyi said it well:
Whatever anyone does or says, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different. When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed.*
*https://archive.fortune.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.bestadvice.fortune/7.html
Image by: Alexandra ❤️A life without animals is not worth living❤️ from Pixabay
