I learned a valuable lesson in a church setting when I formed an opinion about a person based on what others said about him. They told me he had wanted my job, but didn’t get it. I began to think the same thing. After a while, he sensed my attitude, and reciprocated the sentiment. All my assumptions were based on what others had assured me was the case, and they urged me not to let him give me a hard time. Things grew tense, and he finally suggested we needed to talk. I agreed. We met for lunch, exchanged small talk while eating, then it came down to what I was not looking forward to: what his problem was with me.
The first two sentences out of his mouth were not what I expected. “I don’t want your job. You are the right person for the job, and I’m okay with that.” I was stunned. All my invalid assumptions flashed before my eyes, and it hit me that all the time and energy (and things said) had happened without my asking him anything about the very thing I thought was his problem. My problem was my assumption that wasn’t true. The rest of our conversation went well, and I left there relieved, grateful and vowing that I would never allow others to convey a person’s motivations to me again. We talked about a lot of things. I learned more about him, from him, than I could have learned from any other source. It’s liberating to feel no obligation to believe everything I hear or read, but go to the source when possible. In this case, it was possible.
My next task was to convince the others that he and I were fine, and to stop trying to fan a flame that no longer existed. I rejected their every effort to convey him as my enemy, and finally told them they were wasting their time. I encouraged them to do what I did, talk to him yourself. Not as a group, but individually, as I did.
We always do better when we learn what “he” or “she” thinks. We almost never get it right when relying on others to interpret it for us. I’m not that good at guessing.
buildtrustblog 