Difficult conversations

Our assumptions about intentions are often wrong.

Are there never bad intentions? Of course sometimes we get hurt because someone meant to hurt us. The person we are dealing with is nasty or inconsiderate, out to make us look bad or steal our best friend. But these situations are rarer than we imagine, and without hearing from the other person, we can’t really know their intentions.

We assume bad intentions mean bad characters Perhaps the biggest danger from assuming the other person had bad intentions is that we easily jump from “they had bad intentions" to “they are a bad person”.

Focusing on blame is a bad idea because it inhibits our ability to learn what's really causing the problem and to do anything meaning-ful to correct it.