Have you ever come out of a meeting convinced your manager thinks you’re incompetent, or read a short email and decided the sender is annoyed with you?
Or perhaps a colleague has walked past without saying hello and you’ve immediately wondered what you’ve done to upset them.
Apparently, we’re all psychic, because we know exactly what’s going on inside someone else’s head, even when they haven’t actually said anything.
In last week’s article, I wrote about wanting appreciation from my husband, while two clients wanted their bosses to recognise their contribution – all without any of us wanting to ask for it.
Because surely they should know what we want without us having to provide step-by-step instructions.
When you think about it, we’re expecting them to be psychic.
The difficulty is that we can go from “they should know I’d like some appreciation” to “if they haven’t said anything, they obviously don’t appreciate me”, without either of us having said very much at all. Before you know it, we’ve stopped making as much effort, the other person has noticed and become annoyed, and we’re both wondering what the other person’s problem is.
Essentially, we’re expecting them to read our minds while being remarkably confident that we can read theirs, and those assumptions start affecting how we behave towards each other and, in turn, our relationship.
It’s quite a talent, considering how often we get it wrong. Unfortunately, being wrong doesn’t stop our false assumptions having very real consequences.
At work, we’d like more responsibility, but haven’t mentioned it to our manager because we think our hard work should make that obvious. When nothing changes, we decide they’re not interested in our development and start looking for another role, while our manager may have no idea we wanted to progress.
We’re struggling with our workload, but keep saying yes because we don’t want to let anyone down, while wondering why nobody has noticed that we’re barely keeping our head above water. Meanwhile, our manager takes our continued “yes” as a sign that we’re coping.
Or someone sends us an email saying “Fine”, and we spend twenty minutes analysing the tone of a word they spent approximately half a second typing, before replying with a level of frostiness normally reserved for the freezer aisle.
Sometimes we’ve picked up on something real, of course, and our interpretation may be based on a pattern we’ve seen many times before.
But sometimes we’ve taken what happened, added an explanation and forgotten that the explanation came from us.
“They haven’t replied” is something we know. “They’re annoyed with me” is something we’ve decided.
They might be annoyed, but they might also be busy, have forgotten to press send or have read our message while standing in the supermarket and then become distracted by a special offer on cheese.
Just last week, I sent our lovely plumber a text message with an ‘x’ at the end, then hoped his wife wouldn’t see it and conclude that we’re having an affair.
Just to clarify: we’re not. I did it out of habit, but then spent ten minutes wondering whether to apologise for the ‘x’, followed by another ten worrying that an apology would look suspicious. By this point, I’d mentally created a marital crisis from a text about a time and date for fixing a broken pipe.
Equally, we might think we’ve made our own feelings perfectly clear, when all we’ve actually done is become slightly quieter and put a mug down with more enthusiasm than usual.
We know we’re communicating annoyance, but the person on the receiving end may simply think we’ve misjudged the distance to the table.
What’s interesting is that we can help our own psychic predictions come true.
This is something I explore with teams, because the assumptions we make about each other can affect far more than our interpretation of a short email. Left unchecked, they can contribute to a toxic workplace where people feel criticised, excluded or constantly on their guard.
If I decide a colleague doesn’t respect me, for example, I might become cooler towards them, stop asking for their opinion or feel the need to defend myself whenever they question something.
They notice the change and become less friendly in return, which I then take as confirmation that I was right about them all along.
Meanwhile, I’m more likely to notice their abrupt reply than remember the offer of help they made yesterday, because the abrupt reply fits what I already believe.
This is called confirmation bias: our tendency to favour information that supports our existing beliefs, while overlooking or explaining away information that challenges them.
So, if my colleague offers to make me a coffee, I might decide they’re only doing it because they want something. Apparently, even the kettle is embroiled in the office politics.
There are two things happening here: I’m interpreting their behaviour through what I already believe, and my own behaviour may be encouraging the very response I was worried about.
Before long, we’re both helping to keep the problem going, while each privately wondering what on earth is wrong with the other person.
This is why I work with teams to separate what they’ve actually observed from what they’ve assumed, and consider how their own responses might be feeding the situation. We also explore why certain assumptions come so readily to them: why does one person read “Fine” and carry on with their day, while another mentally prepares for a disciplinary? Understanding the beliefs and past experiences behind those reactions gives us something to work with, so we can start changing the pattern rather than simply getting better at spotting it.
It doesn’t mean every concern is imaginary or that poor behaviour should be excused, but it does mean being willing to check our explanation before treating it as a fact.
So, when we find ourselves getting upset about what someone thinks, or frustrated that they haven’t realised what we need, there are a few useful questions we can ask ourselves:
- Have I checked what they’re thinking, or have I decided for them?
- Have I told them what I need, or am I expecting them to work it out?
And, if we keep getting the response we expected:
- Could the way I’m behaving be contributing to it?
That might mean asking what a colleague meant by a comment, explaining that our workload is becoming unmanageable or admitting that, actually, a bit of positive feedback would mean a lot.
I know that asking can feel awkward, particularly when part of us is thinking we shouldn’t have to, but it does give the other person a better chance of understanding us than a meaningful sigh from the other end of the room.
As much as I like the idea that my husband should occasionally know what I’m thinking without me having to explain it, I have to remind myself that being obvious to me isn’t quite the same as being obvious to him.
If you recognise some of these patterns in your team and would like to explore what’s behind them – and how to change them – get in touch. I’d love to help.