By Randy Hain. One of the most rewarding personal practices I implemented several years ago is finding quiet time each week to thoughtfully reflect on my numerous daily conversations with other professionals through my coaching and consulting work. This reflection time allows me to examine trends and common themes from my clients’ experiences which often shape the topics I address in my writing. One such relevant topic I have noticed for years, but have not written about before now, are the dangers of assumption and how to overcome them.

Being More Aware of the Assumptions We Make About Others

A senior leader recently shared with me how frustrated he was that his team didn’t “address problems the way he did when he was at their level”. We often mistakenly believe others will act or react the same way we do, without acknowledging that we may not have properly trained them, modeled the behavior we seek or shared our clear expectations. Another leader I met several weeks ago told me about a mediocre performance review she received and how she “was certain her boss hated her”. Rather than look in the mirror, we may make ill-founded assumptions, fail to take accountability for our actions and project our insecurities on to others. I have also encountered many leaders in my travels who often make poor assumptions and incorrect conclusions about the abilities, motivations, career aspirations and work ethic of Gen Z team members as they make their way in the workplace. We may get mentally entrenched in our biases and stereotypes from our personal experiences and rather than be curious, seek clarification and pursue a deeper understanding, we make judgments about others that can have long-lasting, unfair and often negative consequences.

What are Hidden Workplace Assumptions?

In addition to the specific examples above between work colleagues, there are also more general assumptions we can make which need to be acknowledged and addressed. Hidden workplace assumptions, or unspoken rules, are unwritten expectations that shape employee behavior but are rarely communicated in a clear and transparent way. These assumptions can strongly affect team dynamics, productivity, innovation and overall morale. Here are some relevant examples:

Common Work Practices

  • The “Badge of Honor” fallacy. There is an unspoken belief in many workplaces that working long hours equals greater work dedication. This is the assumption that those who start early and leave late are most committed, overlooking employees who are efficient with their time/schedules, get their work done during a traditional workday and respect boundaries (others AND their own). It also falsely assumes that team members with families and important obligations outside work who have to leave while others are working late are not interested in growing their careers.
  • No feedback means everything must be fine. Silence may reflect fear and lack of psychological safety or lack of trust that leaders care, rather than job satisfaction. When our team members are quiet, do not assume all is well.
  • Valuing tradition over change. When we rely on established methods simply because they worked before (and assume they will work in the future), this stifles innovation and open dialogue. I, like many of you, love tradition. But it is important to be open to discussing a better way if it exists.

How We Communicate

  • Assumed shared knowledge. When we believe everyone has the same information, this can lead to serious mistakes and delays.
  • Assuming shared expectations. An example might be a leader yelling, “Hurry up and fix sales!” and dismisses the team to go make it happen. This sounds inspirational and good in theory, but what happens when each team member approaches the solution in their own unique way and gets in each other’s swim lanes, causing chaos? This is one of the most common and easily fixed assumptions at work when we wrongly assume others know exactly what we want, how we want it or when we want it. We have to clarify our expectations to eliminate this issue.
  • Unspoken email etiquette. Examples for this might be interpreting brief replies from colleagues as negative or expecting (and not getting) lightning quick responses without fully understanding how busy our colleagues may be.

How We View People & Roles

  • The Boss always knows best. There is a tightly protected and dangerous assumption that is quite common: we assume managers shouldn’t be questioned. They got the role for a reason, so they must know what they are doing. Is that YOUR experience? Offering the leader in question respectful candor and constructive private feedback are two useful tools to combat this outdated and dangerous assumption.
  • Stereotypes about roles/groups. Easy examples might be assuming creative people are disorganized or remote workers are less productive. Or wrongly assuming that people who seemingly multi-task well are more productive (they are not).
  • Introverted employees lack ambition. Wrongly assuming quiet team members are not ambitious and don’t seek leadership positions is very common. Their ambition and desire to grow is often as strong as others, but they may take different paths from their more extroverted colleagues to achieve their goals.

10 Best Practices for Overcoming Assumption

Pardon me for the level of detail I shared before getting to these best practices, but I am convinced many of us operate from a place of assumption on a frequent basis, but may not be aware we are doing it. The examples I gave will hopefully elevate your self-awareness about your own assumptions and help you spot and combat it in others. Below are helpful best practices I have observed from others and utilize myself that can help us overcome the dangers of assumption at work (and in life):

  1. Take a breath! Pause and slow down, We often make assumptions because we are too busy to stop and think a little more deeply about others or the situations in front of us. Before jumping to an assumption or the wrong conclusion, take a minute and reflect whenever possible.
  2. Ask questions. Be more curious and have the courage to always seek clarification if you’re unsure about someone’s intentions or understanding. Prioritize curiosity over judgment and make time to deepen your understanding. Coach’s Note: I have listed several examples of helpful questions to overcome assumption at the very bottom of this post.
  3. Actively listen. Practice genuine curiosity first, then listen to understand and learn, not anxiously wait for your turn to speak.
  4. Focus on the facts. We should always try to base our conclusions on evidence, not feelings or beliefs.
  5. Assume good intent. This will completely transform your perspective. Give others the benefit of the doubt unless proven otherwise. This will greatly help us when we feel ourselves projecting our worst fears, insecurities and negative thinking on to others.
  6. Have more two-way courage. When you realize you are making assumptions about others, be brave enough to go directly to the other person and deepen your understanding. If you sense/believe assumptions are being unfairly directed at you, have the courage to respectfully and candidly address it with the other party. Appropriate and well-timed courageous action can largely eliminate much of the assumption in our lives.
  7. Create clear expectations and demand clarity from others. When we operate from a place of effective two-way clarity in our daily work, we largely eliminate many of the assumptions and ambiguity that can derail our success. Assumptions create ambiguity. Clarity eliminates ambiguity.
  8. Reflect on your beliefs. Be aware of how personal history and experience shapes our assumptions at work. Is it time to be more open to change and new ideas? To evolve our thinking? Are we just dead wrong and the other person right…and do we have the humility to admit it?
  9. Practice the Golden Rule. Do I want people to make assumptions about me? Am I OK with decisions being made about me and my career by people who never took the time to know me better? Of course not. So, we should all live by: ”Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
  10. Build deep trusting relationships. Really get to know your colleagues at work and build strong trusting relationships with them as this largely eliminates the temptation to make assumptions about people you have taken the time to know well.

Assumption, yours or the assumptions of others, may be limiting your success and holding you back. Work and life are hard enough and introducing unnecessary assumption only makes things harder. I am a big believer in simplicity and efficiently applying our energies where they will drive the greatest positive output. Overcoming and eliminating much of the assumption from our lives is a very effective approach to unleashing more of our potential and achieving greater success. I hope this post resonates with you and that you will put these best practices to work right away. I am a work in progress when it comes to making assumptions and these ideas have really helped me improve, for which I am grateful.

One simple and challenging takeaway for readers of this post (and me): The next time we catch ourselves forming a snap judgment, an opinion…an assumption, about someone else…let’s have the courage to go and speak to them first with all of the above best practices in mind, especially the focus on curiosity.

Making This Sticky:

Over the next week, make a list at the end of each day after some careful reflection, on where you may have made specific assumptions about others at work or been guilty of some of the generalized assumptions about the workplace I shared. Apply the best practices in this post to eliminating them from your life for the next 30 days. Share your progress with a trusted and candid colleague and ask them to give you feedback on how you are doing and to help hold you accountable to make the changes permanent.

Sample questions to help you eliminate assumption:

“Can you tell me more about that?”

“I do not know a lot about your career goals. Can you share them with me?”

“I am concerned that something is bothering you. Is there something that I have done or said to cause an issue? Please be candid with me.”

“Could you walk me through the steps for this process?”

“How does this relate to the larger issue we’re trying to solve?”

“I may not have been as clear as I should have been in our meeting today. Do I need to go deeper or unpack anything I shared? What can I do to make sure we are on the same page?”

“Per the announcement in the staff meeting last week, I am putting together a new project team. You haven’t said anything, but I am curious if you are interested?”

“What specifically can I do to support you better for the rest of this year?”

“I heard you say [XYZ]. Did I get that right?”

“I am assuming we are in agreement, but is that correct? Be honest. What do you really think?”