Why He Said That: Working with Assumptions in a Respectful Workplace

A couple of weeks ago, angered by the unpleasant behavior of a stranger I encountered while traveling for work, I found myself once more caught up in a very common human tendency: I automatically blamed the behavior entirely on the individual's personality and character, without stopping to consider whether any other factors might have contributed to the situation.

Reflecting further after the incident, I was struck again by the prevalence of this tendency, which psychologists call the "fundamental attribution error", and the risks it poses for relationships -- especially in the workplace.

Because we have offices in different countries, and because we have work with clients around the world (in over 25 countries now!), my colleagues and I travel a lot internationally. Based as I am in our Sydney office, I enjoy it when my work-related travel keeps me closer to home. Luckily for me, we've been involved in some large-scale culture change projects in recent years with clients in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, and as a result, I've seen a lot of those 3 states over the last 24 months. I particularly love getting out and visiting locations like Broken Hill, Longreach and Cobden, and I typically post on Facebook photos of the different places I come across. I guess you could say that I often travel with two hats – the working hat and the tourist hat. And, to be completely honest, sometimes the tourist hat comes out a little too often when I’m driving in places I haven't been before.

Here is what happened when I pulled on my tourist hat a couple of weeks ago, when I was in Leeton, NSW, which is about mid-way between Sydney, to the north, and Melbourne, to the south.

I drove into town with a couple of goals in mind: first, to find the pharmacy; and, second, to get into the pharmacy before it closed at 5 p.m. When I say I had my tourist hat firmly on at the time, I refer to the fact that I was driving slowly, watching for streets and landmarks, trying to locate the Pharmacy, while keeping my eyes out for suitable parking spots, at the same time that I was taking in the local sights. Tourist that I was, I stopped in the middle of the main street as soon as I spotted the pharmacy, and made ready to back into the nearest open parking stall.

As I shifted into reverse, I heard a car horn; looking in my rear-view mirror, I realized there were 8 or more cars lined up at a stand-still on the road behind me. I saw that the driver of the nearest car was yelling out the window, though I could not hear what he was saying, and the target of his attention was not immediately apparent to me. In my tourist-minded state, I did not take the time to figure out what was going on. Instead, I simply continued reversing into the parking spot.

It did not help that I misjudged the angle somewhat on that first attempt, which necessitated my pulling forward again to re-position myself for another run at the parking job. This created more difficulty, as the driver in the car behind me had, in the meantime, started to edge his vehicle around mine instead of waiting for me to finish parking, so that I almost hit his car when I pulled forward again. He stopped abruptly and yelled abuse at me out the car window. I quickly put my hand up to apologize and defuse the situation, and off he sped.

I was that the incident had not escalated further, but could not stop the angry thoughts running through my head, all of which had to do with what a rude, impatient jerk the other driver was. (Actually, a number of other, much more colorful descriptors came to mind, which I won’t repeat here.) Did he think he was only one on the road?!

This was the fundamental attribution error, a term you have likely run across if you have taken any courses in leadership, conflict resolution, or basic psychology. It simply refers to the human tendency to identify "internal factors" such as personality and character as the cause for people's situations and behavior, and to ignore or minimize external factors that might have contributed to the situation.

It happens all the time.

And we fall into this trap regularly.

When a car cuts us off in traffic, when a family member makes a comment we don’t appreciate, when a co-worker looks at us in a certain way across the conference room in a meeting, we come up with stories to explain the behavior when we actually have no idea of the person's real motivation or what they were actually thinking at the time: "He's a jerk!"; "She's so totally self-absorbed"; "He just can't handle it when others disagree with him."

And we say it with such conviction!

Each of us is vulnerable to being victimized by the fundamental attribution error of others, too. Most of us can think of at least one time that we've heard of a family member, friend or co-worker explaining away specific situations with "explanations" based on our character or personality, without taking other important realities into account. It can be hard to hear that our concerns have been minimized with statements like, "she's always just trying to show she's in charge", or, "he's just like that, he can't stand up for himself in meetings."

3 critical assertions that seem to implicitly go along with the fundamental attribution error:

"I can slip up once in a while, and still be a good person. You, on the other hand, are a bad person, as your behavior on this occasion proves.""I excuse my own behavior based on my 'good intentions', but I'll judge your behavior based on the impact on me.""I'll ignore all the times I've messed up in the past, and just focus on this occasion on which you messed up."

The unfairness of each of these assertions is pretty apparent once stated aloud.

Curiosity and imagination can be useful in countering the effects of the fundamental attribution error. 

In my own case, it was only after I had cooled down that I was able to reflect on the situation more clearly; gradually I realized that in attributing the offending driver's behavior solely to his personality and character, I was simply guessing at why he had behaved so badly. There could in fact have been any number of explanations for his behavior at the time, aside from or in addition to his personality and character.

As I worked up my curiosity and put my imagination into gear, I was easily able to generate several plausible alternative scenarios. These ranged from the driver having been in the middle of rushing to hospital to see his child in the emergency ward, to his having been in distress over hearing that day that his spouse was going to leave him. These imagined scenarios allowed me to contemplate the possibility that the yelling and swearing could have been less about the driver himself, and more about what was happening in his world.

I even ended up wondering whether the whole situation could have been more about me than anything else -- maybe I had inadvertently missed a traffic sign and actually caused the back-up of traffic by committing a driving infraction.

One way or the other, I was able to connect with the fact that I actually had no real idea what had been behind his behaviour.

None of that, of course, meant that I had to put up with being yelled or sworn at. But the incident did help me recognize once more how important dialogue and conversations are in making sense of any situation, and how important it is for me take personal responsibility in recognizing, acknowledging and checking out my own assumptions about the behavior of others.

Of course, the great thing about my own example in Leeton is that I never had to see the other driver again. All I had to do was manage my way out of my own frustrations and resentments, while carrying on with my journey.

It is typically more challenging when situations like this flare up in the workplace, as we often end up having to deal with the same person again and again over long periods of time. We become more vulnerable to the fundamental attribution error under these conditions.

My take is that all of us get a little short sighted when we become emotionally reactive over the behaviour of others, especially in the workplace. In the process we often fail to ask the right questions to understand and deal with the situation appropriately.

When we run with our assumptions about the behavior of colleagues, without first questioning those assumptions and checking them out, we can quickly find ourselves in a place of frustration and resentment. When this happens repeatedly with specific individuals, it places a real strain on our working relationships with them. In an effort to alleviate our own distress over the situation, we can be tempted to start talking badly about the individuals involved to our other colleagues, drawing them into the dynamic.

From the perspective of the workplace, it is important that people become competent both at self-managing in moments of frustration, and at engaging directly with people about those frustrations, rather than simply jumping to conclusions and working on assumptions about each other. At ProActive ReSolutions we teach a 6-step conversational model called Straight Talk as part of our Respectful Workplace Training Program for this purpose, and but whatever model or process you use, it is critical to find some way of keeping in check your own tendency to resort to the fundamental attribution error.

Next time you find yourself about to respond to someone's behavior by simply making unfavorable assumptions about their motivations or commenting negatively on their personality and character, take a pause. Work up some curiosity about what you don't know, and imagine some different scenarios that might (if true) make the behavior -- and the person -- seem more reasonable or understandable.

Then, from that place of curiosity and openness, try sitting down with the person for an informal conversation about what happened -- talk honestly and directly about the behaviors you observed, and the impact on you, including what you were left thinking and assuming. Express your genuine interest in understanding the other person's story about the incident. As part of the conversation, go ahead and ask for the person to do things differently next time, if that seems appropriate to you.

You might be surprised by what comes out of the conversation. At the least, you'll be doing the right thing for your workplace.

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