This is the time of year (I’m writing this in January 2021) when many of us turn to our plans. There is a psychological angle to it – it just seems to make sense that we set our objectives/goals/targets at this time of the year. (From now on I’m only going to call them goals). These goals tend to be quite  big “projects”, and how to achieve them can be quite overwhelming. Planning definitely involves a lot of thinking because you need to figure out the following before you can set your plan down:

• What are the specific measurables/indicators of success for each of your goals?
• What are the “mini-projects” that will contribute to the achievement of each objectives/goals/targets?
• In what sequence must each of these mini-projects be addressed, or can they be addressed simultaneously?
• What actions make up each mini-project, and in what order must these actions be taken?
• What are the timelines, deadlines and due dates?

The overwhelm is not just because the achievement of the goals seems to involve to much, but also because there will overlaps in terms of the timing of various actions. We can’t address our goals sequentially. We have to address them simultaneously, and then it becomes difficult to keep all the right balls in the air.
Then on top of these goals (which are often unique or special projects), we also have our daily responsibilities and tasks: the routine work that must be done as a Marketing Executive or Sales Manager or Divisional Director or CFO. It is useful to also consider these in the context of projects. For example, if the CFO thinks of the generation of the monthly management reports as a project, it becomes possible to create a monthly project plan that ensures that everything that needs to be done in order to deliver the management reports on time takes place as and when it should.
Many of the management guru’s whose work I’ve read or followed over the years advocate treating ones job responsibilities as a series of projects: they each have required outcomes (goals) that are measurable; they each consist of a series of mini-projects which each contribute to the whole; and each mini-project consists of a series of tasks that must be actioned in a particular sequences and according to particular timing. Projectizing every aspect of your job and planning properly using one of the many (free) planning tools available helps you to create a roadmap for the year and makes it possible for you to keep many balls in the air. They ensure that you don’t fall down on follow-up and that you never miss a deadline.
Why do I advocate using a specific planning tools?

1. Because the use of these tools “forces” a level of rigour that a blank piece of paper or Excel Spreadsheet will not do – they take you through a process that reduces the risk of leaving out important thinking steps;
2. These project tools enable you to update project progress in real time;
3. Most of these tools enable your collaborators (your team members or colleagues) to update their own contributions and be reminded of their own responsibilities and deadlines;
4. These tools make it possible for you and your team (and even your manager) to have a visual scoreboard or tracker that gives a sense of where you are in real time;
5. Modification to the plan is easy because automation takes out much of the donkey-work involved in updating the details on the plan.

Success and consistent discipline are simply indivisible. Using a project planning tool fosters so many important disciplines that are essential to success:

1. Once again, the rigour that is ensured when you follow the process that the tool takes you through;
2. Secondly, you can drive the project because you can see where you are;
3. It is possible for you to meet with your team around the scoreboard (physically or virtually) in order to review progress and assess every aspect of the plan;
4. Team members and other collaborators can manage themselves using the scoreboard;
5. It gives everyone a sense that progress is being made consistently – which is an essential component of real engagement.

Many organisations own and make available to their employees a variety of planning tools. The challenge is to get people to use them as they are intended. The kiss of death is for them to be treated as “admin”. Nobody loves “admin”. The best energy “admin” can expect to get is that people go through the motions. When people use planning tools as a “way of working” – something that helps one to do good work and stay on top of things; something that assures success rather than something that “inspects” your work – you have a better chance of success.
This means that your planning activities should be fun:

• Take the team out of the office and away from the phones;
• Do the work in a room that has windows and a view! You are looking into the future. How can you do this when all you can see is four walls?
• Take regular breaks – during those breaks do something energizing (a yoga class; a trust walk; some stretching; a team exercise that makes people laugh). Drinking coffee and eating muffins JUST DOESN’T DO IT;
• If you are planning a really big project, do your planning over time – don’t try and do it in one exhausting hit.

Furthermore, monitoring your progress should be fun:

• Your scoreboard should be visually appealing;
• Progress must be acknowledged;
• Obstacles must be addressed and problems solved – quickly and as a team;
• Celebrate successes!

So what project planning tools would I recommend? Here is a great link that will help you to find tools that suit your needs:

• https://www.getapp.com/p/sem/project-management-software?t=Top+Planning+Software&camp=adw_search&utm_content=g&utm_source=ps-google&utm_campaign=COM_MISC_Desktop_BE-Project_Management&utm_medium=cpc&account_campaign_id=1509234447&account_adgroup_id=56224923741&ad_id=476115059493&utm_term=planning+tool&matchtype=e&gclid=CjwKCAiAxp-ABhALEiwAXm6IyT9xdXljFNMmFIGeque-mVpoEa6cMM3xciqOwC2j-BTn8-1-XAKShRoChZ0QAvD_BwE

This link will take you to a comparison of some of these tools:

• https://www.capterra.com/sem-compare/project-management-software?gclid=CjwKCAiAxp-ABhALEiwAXm6Iydm5TLSiIKvJltFVXhnH7kjJD9Mo9aVbljsQrjZ1-_l_YY26P72XEhoCmAAQAvD_BwE

 
To me, the specific tool you use is not important. What is important is that you use something that follows a thorough process, is easy to revise when things change, can be updated in real time, allows the whole team to collaborate and shows you how you are progressing in real time.

What makes having goals important at all? Why should we do it when it seems that there is so little over which we have control?
Well, research from as far back as 1968 (Locke) shows that conscious ideas guide our actions - and the act of clearly articulating our goals translates them into conscious ideas. Perhaps you are aware of the quotation from William Hutchinson Murray who said "Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
We may have different types of goals:

• Career goals
• Life goals
• Team or department goals
• Business goals
• Material goals

In order to be truly committed to achieving these goals, they need to be worthwhile at some deeper level. So what characteristics make goals worthwhile or worthy?

1. Your values: goals that are a manifestation of our clear values are worthy. Any goal that serves your values is worthwhile. If you value Excellence, and you have set yourself the goal to win an excellence award, then that is worthy. If you value Relationships, and you have set yourself the goal of having a fulfilling and happy marriage that, too, is worthwhile. If there is clear line of sight between your values and your goals, you can be sure that you are living in alignment.
2. Contribution: goals that contribute to something larger than ourselves are worthy. It is my belief that our purpose in this life is to make a contribution - and that will be different things for different people. If, by working towards the achievement of your goal, you are making a contribution to the lives of other people or the quality of life on this planet (no matter how small that contribution may be) that is worthy.
3. Relationships: we are social creatures and the quality of our lives is dependent on the quality and richness of our relationships. If your goals improve the quality of your relationships, you are expending effort and energy on something worthwhile.
4. Ambition and success: there is nothing wrong with being ambitious and pursuing success in whatever form that may take for you. I believe the only problem with these pursuits is the abuse of power. Being ambitious and pursuing career success is definitely worthwhile. The more successful you are, the more you can do in the world and the greater the impact you can have - provided it is not at the expense of worthy values, contribution and relationships.

If you cannot attribute one or more of these characteristics of worthiness to your goals, how committed are you likely to be? How much energy and quality attention will you give them? How satisfying with their achievement be? These are all important in giving us the sense that we are living in a worthwhile manner - making our lives mean something. This is fundamental to human nature.

What is the impact of having clear goals?

• they clarify behaviour - everything you do or don't do moves you towards or away from the achievement of your goals;
• they allow for feedback - in terms of how you are progressing and whether you are doing in pursuit of your goals is or is not working;
• they promote happiness - having a sense of purpose and a reason to get out of bed every day contributes to our personal happiness, and happy people are more effective in their pursuits, generally;
• they encourage the use of your strengths - and when we use our strengths we feel effective and impactful.

So here are some questions for you?

1. What are your goals for this year?
2. Which of the characteristics of worthiness do they satisfy?
3. If you could only achieve one of your goals this year, which one must it be?

I've always believed and taught that any communication that may result in a strong emotional response should always be delivered in person.

We use email, Whatsapp and sms too often when we should have an in-person conversation.

The point is that you cannot contain or manage a strong emotional response unless you communicate in person. You cannot manage incorrect assumptions or interpretations if you send crucial messages electronically.

The other may take as "obvious" something that couldn't have been further from your mind.

So before you click "send" on the email or Whatsapp message, ask yourself "How might the recipient respond? Is there any chance their response might be strong?" Even if you only answer "maybe", reconsider. This might be better delivered in person.

Leadership is exercised one conversation at a time - not via email or sms or WhatsApp. So we miss vital opportunities to exercise leadership and influence the direction of a communication positively when we default to email or text.

This video talks a bit more about this.

It is my very firm belief that we lead one conversation at a time – because leadership is relational. Everything we do in the working environment is with or through people – so via our relationships - and relationships are built one conversation at a time There are dozens of occasions every day that are an opportunity to exercise leadership – and they are often squandered by sending an email!
So often I find myself astounded at the mindless way in which many people work. They talk about the frustrations that they have with their team members’ lack of progress or disappointing execution despite the fact that they have emailed them numerous times! I am always concerned when I hear about complex work being delegated by email, so my standard question is “Where are these team members located?” Of course, I’m a bit of a smartass, so I know the answer to this question – “Oh, in the open plan outside my office.”

That is when silence is my best friend.
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Let’s be clear. We are all vulnerable to working on autopilot. We receive an email about some important initiative, and we delegate this on by email. In fact, how much of our day do we spend reading and responding to emails? There is just too much that is done by email that really should be done via the medium of conversation.
If you are frustrated by team members who send emails to each other from adjoining desks, then you have the opportunity to model the way in terms of how you exercise leadership and build relationships yourself. 
How many times a day do you leave your desk just in order to check in with the people around you? How many times a day do you pick up the phone to team members working remotely from you just to see how it's going? Are you too busy for this? If you are too busy to care, then you will find that your leadership team is probably also too busy to care. And then the whole organisation is too busy to care. That's how toxic cultures are created - not through malice, but through lack of care.
But let's not see this as a purely altruistic thing. Leaders connect with their people and teams as much for themselves as they do for other people! According to Steve Siegle, quoted in an article on the Mayo Clinic Health System "Being kind boosts serotonin and dopamine, which are neurotransmitters in the brain that give you feelings of satisfaction and well-being, and cause the pleasure/reward centers in your brain to light up. Endorphins, which are your body's natural pain killer, also can be released." Serotonin impacts on our ability to focus, and focus is critical to the quality of our work - so caring and kindness boost output! It's in the interests of organisational performance to create a culture of care and kindness - it just makes good business sense.

This article is a follow-on to my previous article: http://www.leadershipsolutions.co.za/articles/how-to-decide-what-to-track-and-monitor-focus-on-the-field-of-play, which you should read before this one.
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Too often, with my coaching clients, we have to address the problem that the team is resistant to the way their activities are measured. Perhaps they see their weekly activity report as admin – so they “tick the boxes”, telling their managers what they think they want to hear (or, in this case, read). Perhaps they just don’t agree with it, so they don’t bother to do it at all – or they have to be nagged 90 times before they do it. And, again, they do a shoddy job. They may or may not also tell you that they find it a waste of time. Or they may say nothing, and just give you the teenage eye roll!
The reasons for the resistance are some combination of:

• They don’t get it – meaning they don’t see these measures as important drivers of their results;
• They don’t see the value and they treat the process as admin;
• They don’t like the way the measures are recorded or reflected;
• They see it as micromanaging (which most people resist).

What you really want is the following:

• The team absolutely agrees that these measures represent their 20 mile march – they definitely drive achievement against the KPIs;
• The team has participated in setting the targets (or the target ranges for these measures);
• The team has been involved in designing the scoreboard – this is the document on which their performance (collective and individual) is reflected;
• They find the process of recording and reflecting on their team and individual performance motivating;
• They love the way the scoreboard looks and what it tells them and they get excited about reviewing their progress.

Agreeing on What to Watch
You will need to have one or more discussions in your team with a view to answering the following questions:

1. What are the behaviours or activities that drive each one of our KPIs?
This can be quite a rich discussion. There may be many drivers of your KPIs, but your objective here is to identify the clear performance markers that deliver achievement against the KPIs for your team. You must be able to set lower and upper limits for performance. These performance markers must be within the team’s control to achieve. They must have an appropriate timeframe – long enough to be able to manage them, and short enough to have an impact.
Settle on no more than 4 performance markers per KPI. It must not be a shopping list or tracking it will become a burden.

2. Set the lower and upper range of acceptable performance.
The key here is consistency. You do not want people to shoot the lights out on good days and do nothing on bad days (or weeks or months). You want them to do between the low mark and the high mark every day, week or month (or whatever time frame you choose). Using the language of the 20 mile march, you want them to march between 14 and 20 miles every single day, no matter the weather. You do not want them marching 40 miles on one day, then collapsing with exhaustion for the next 2 days, and being unable to go out on the 3rd day because of bad weather. 14 to 20 miles every day.

3. Design a Scoreboard
The team should decide on what the scoreboard should look like. It must be fun to update and use. You should be able to update it as close to real time as possible. It should also connect input measures (the behavioural drivers) with the KPIs. That means you should be able to see how performance against the behavioural drivers actually contributes to performance against the KPI.

I did an internet search using “how to put team metrics on a scoreboard” and came up with some exceptional guidelines.

Your team’s scoreboard may no doubt undergo a few iterations before the team is completely satisfied – and that is fine.

The scoreboard you settle on will meet the following criteria:

• The team will love how it looks
• It will be easy to update
• It will be updatable in as close to real time as possible
• The team will love updating it and reviewing their progress
• Individuals will be able to use it to motivate themselves

All of this speaks to the power of instant feedback. The best example of this I have ever seen is in the advertisement for bottled water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GimoLDYI_JE.

4. Agree on the Rituals and Routines
Rituals and routines are those things that are done regularly and in a disciplined way in order to ensure that you and your team are paying attention to the important issues regularly enough.

Rituals tend to be interpersonal exchanges – meetings; coffee sessions; tele- or videoconferences. Examples of rituals include:

• The Monday morning meeting (teleconference/videoconference) to discuss priorities for the week;
• Your daily walk around the office or plant to take the pulse of the team;
• The team brown bag lunch session held once a month;
• The weekly scoreboard review;
• The monthly review of past performance and planning for the coming month.

Routines are activities that take place consistently. Examples of routines include:

• Checking yesterday’s performance every day before 9.00am and noting down any required follow up;
• Updating the Scoreboard or Project Tracking Boards;
• Making your appointments for next week every Thursday afternoon;
• Updating your activity records after (or during) every customer meeting

The team needs to agree on the appropriate rituals and routines that will keep them on track as both a team and as individuals. What will they do? What will you do? How will the scoreboard be updated? How often will you meet as a team to review progress and troubleshoot any issues? What is your agenda for that meeting?

So think about this:
What will you do with your team in order to reach agreement on the behavioural drivers, the targets for each one, the design of a scoreboard, and rituals and routines to be implemented?

Managing the Rituals and Routines
The Manager of the team us ultimately responsible for ensuring that the team is absolutely consistent in taking the 20 mile march. This means that you need to monitor whether the routines are being observed – is everyone consistently taking the agreed actions and inputting their own information? You also need to ensure that rituals are consistently observed – that the weekly meeting takes place every week at the same time regardless of who may be absent; that the meeting is short, lively and forward moving; that there is agreement on who will lead the meeting when you can’t be there.

It is also important to review the effectiveness of your rituals and routines every so often with your team. Here is a review agenda which you can modify to suit the situation:

1. What did we set out to achieve?
2. What did we actually achieve? What did we not achieve? What happened that we did not expect?
3. What worked?
4. What did not work?
5. What are the lessons to be learned?
6. What do we need to do now?

Those hours of walking gave me pause to think about 2020 and to review what happened and how effective I have been. My personal review is not the topic for this article. Believe me! It is a mixed bag! This is more about the art of the review.

I call it art in the same sense as my previous article "The Art of Conversation". A review is also a kind of conversation, even if you are doing a personal review. The best and most flexible process for a review is one I came across in a book called "On Being a Supervisee: Creating Learning Partnerships". The authors, Michael Carroll and Maria C. Gilbert, quote a review process used by the American military called the After Action Review - or AAR. After any military operation, small groups of soldiers gather with their commanders. The basic ground rules are that:
1. Nobody will be penalised in any way for anything they contribute to the discussion;
2. No blame or fault is acceptable.

The discussion has 6 questions:
1. What did we set out to do?
2. What happened?
3. What worked/went well?
4. What didn't work/went badly?
5. What have we learned?
6. What will we do differently next time?

These 6 questions can be used in slightly different wording across a wide range of situations. Here are some examples:

A. Project/Strategic Review
1. What were our goals?
2. What did we achieve? What actually happened?
3. What worked/went well?
4. What didn't?
5. What have we learned?
6. What do we need to do now?

B. Progress Review (on a Project or Strategy)
1. What are we trying to achieve?
2. What is actually happening? What progress have we made?
3. What have we done well?
4. What have we not done well?
5. What lessons must be learned?
6. What do we need to do now (to get things back on track)?

C. Personal Review
1. What were my goals for this year?
2. What have I achieved? (And what have I not achieved?)
3. What did I do well?
4. What did I not do well?
5. What have I learned?
6. What am I going to do now/What are my new goals?

D. Performance Review
No matter what the admin process is around formal performance reviews, the actual conversation is along the same lines:
1. What did you set out to achieve in the last x months?
2. What did you actually do?
3. What went well?
4. What did not go well?
5. What have you learned?
6. What do you want to do now? PLUS And how can I support you?

I have used this process in various contexts many many times and have never failed to be enthused by how inspiring and rewarding it has been for the participants. I love that the questions are asked in a way that does not brook blame or fault. When people know that the purpose of the review is to learn rather than to apportion blame, they are willing to be quite frank about their experiences - and this is how one creates a learning organisation. Simple! Not necessarily easy though.

Every team has what I like to call “vital signs” which the Manager of the team needs to keep an eye on every day. If we use our medical analogy, the nurse checks the vital signs of the patient in order to ascertain if there are any problems that might need attention. If the patient’s blood pressure, temperature or pulse rate are either too high or too low, these are indications that the doctor may need to obtain more information (perhaps in the form of tests) in order to diagnose and treat the problem.

So too does a team have vital signs. These are indicators that the team is doing what it should be doing in order to ensure that it delivers the results by which its performance is measured. The principle is as follows:
If the team does enough of the right things at the right time and in the right way, then it will achieve the results it seeks.

In the book “Great by Choice” (Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen) – which I highly recommend – the authors talk about the 20 Mile March. We live in an economic environment that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA), and one of the 3 habits that sets the outstanding performers apart from the businesses who fail or only just survive is that of “Obsessive Discipline”. This means that there is absolute clarity on what must be done in good times and in bad times. Achieving the daily 20 Mile March requires “hitting specific performance markers with great consistency over a long period of time.” These performance markers drive the results that the team is looking for.

Let me give you a really simple example from the world of truck sales to illustrate the point:
You have to see enough customers every day, in order to write enough quotations
every week, in order to sign up enough offers to purchase every month, in order to
deliver enough vehicles in order to achieve your monthly target.
So the vital signs in truck sales are:

• Customer contacts
• Quotations
• Offers to Purchase
• Deliveries

This means that on at least a weekly basis, a Sales Manager needs to actively monitor what is happening with each Sales Executive in order to know where and how to support them. If your Sales Executives are reaching or exceeding their targets, then they will need little from their Manager other than being available on request and checking in with them in a periodic one-on-one. However, if a Sales Executive is struggling, then looking at their vital signs will give you an indication of what support they need:

• Are they seeing enough prospects? If not, what will assist them to see more prospective buyers?
• Are they seeing enough prospects but not writing enough quotations? If so, how are they conducting their contact conversations and what can they do differently to increase the number of quotations they are asked for?
• Are they seeing enough prospects and submitting enough quotations, but still not getting enough signed Offers to Purchase? In which case, how can they improve their closing skills?
• And finally, are they getting enough signed Offers to Purchase, but still losing some of these sales? What might be happening that is getting in the way of Offers to Purchase resulting in Deliveries?

Tracking these vital signs closely and often with Sales Executives who are not achieving their targets puts their Sales Manager in a position to do some remedial coaching early on, resulting in greater success – which ultimately impacts on the overall success of the team.

I’ve used a commercial vehicle sales example because it provides really tangible drivers of performance – anyone can identify with these even if they are not in the same field.
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So think about your own area of the business:

1. What are the KPIs in your part of the business? These are the Output Goals.
2. For each KPI, identify the behaviours, actions or targets that comprise the Input Goals – that is, the achievement of the Input Goals is what will deliver the Output goals.
3. How can you track and monitor the Input Goals? Come up with some tentative ideas for a dashboard that focuses on the Input Goals.
4. For each of the Input Goals, identify what could be going wrong in the event that those goals are not tracking.

In the next article, I’ll write about how you could get the team on board so that they are excited about a Scoreboard – rather than resistant. You don’t want them to treat any of this as admin! So process is everything.

Leadership is exercised one conversation at a time. The video speaks more about my views on that. In this article, I share a specific conversation that all leaders should have.
Teams and their leader need to have explicit agreements about how they will work together. The term, Rules of Engagement, was originally a military term outlining the circumstances under which opposing forces might engage with each other. It has been extended to include intimate relationships, and their purpose is to create safety so that difficult topics and conflict can be addressed without fear because both partners agree to adhere to certain rules.
Rules of engagement (ROE) also create psychological safety in a team. The ROE outline how team members will deal with each other and with specific topics, and the purpose is to create clarity. Psychological safety is always prejudiced when team members don't know how things should be handled. It is further prejudiced when they (or the team leader) don't like the way things currently tend to be handled.
When you take on a new leadership role, this is a time for you and the team to discuss and reach agreement on how you will work together. If you were previously a member of the team and now you are the manager of that team, it is also an opportunity to talk frankly about the change to the relationship – “Yesterday I was one of you. Today I am your manager. Let’s talk about what that means.”
Rules of engagement would touch on such topics as:

• communication: what to communicate, how to communicate, meetings, sharing of information, etc.;
• decision-making: how decisions should be made, who should be involved, who has the final say, etc.;
• conflict: what does this team regard as conflict; how to we expect it to be handled; how robustly do we expect to debate issues; how do we intend to resolve conflict; what will we do if we get stuck; what do we share with the team.

This is not an exhaustive list. Furthermore, no matter how comprehensively you think you have covered the discussion, something you didn't think of will come up at a later time. This implies that Rules of Engagement is never a "once and done" discussion. Periodically, you will need to pick up the discussion again in order to find agreement on something new that hadn't been anticipated. Relationships are dynamic, so these topics need to be revisited as circumstances change.
Here is a starter agenda for such a discussion:

1. Meetings: How often shall we meet? What will we discuss? How will meetings be led and by whom? What preparation is required? What participation is expected? Whose responsibility is it to make sure our meetings stay on track?
2. What do we believe and expect regarding action items, deliverables and deadlines?
3. How will we make decisions? Do we favour consensus, majority rule or “managerial edict”?
4. How will we resolve conflict? At what stage do you want to be involved? What do you want to know about conflict that has been resolved without your input (if anything)?
5. What are the team’s views and expectations around timekeeping, working from home, taking personal time, leave, after hours contact, etc.?

Experiment with this. You will find it incredibly liberating for both you and the team to have some explicit boundaries that help you navigate some of the more tricky discussions.

The next article will deal with a different type of ROE conversation - that between a manager and a team member to agree on how they individually will work together.

We have all heard it said that “assumptions are the mother of all stuff ups” (or some variation of the same). Yet we all make assumptions every day. Making assumptions is necessary – it short-cuts many thought processes and human interactions that would otherwise be unnecessarily time-consuming. The types of assumptions we make are based on some core beliefs:

• Whether we believe the world is basically a safe place OR that the world is full of danger;
• Whether we believe that people are basically good and well-intentioned OR basically bad and self-serving;
• Whether we believe that we are deserving OR that we are not deserving.

Assumptions tend to be most problematic when they drive our most unhelpful behaviours. When we find ourselves triggered or upset by the behaviour of others, it is often as a result of the assumptions we have made – and often our assumptions are related to their intentions.

What happens is that we tell ourselves stories about what another person’s behaviour might mean -and sometimes these stories can be quite elaborate!

Let’s understand what an assumption is:
it is accepting as the truth a belief for which you have no proof.

Can you see how your choice of assumption is determined by the core beliefs I’ve listed above? If you believe that people are basically good and that the universe is basically supportive, your assumptions about other people and their intentions will tend to be either innocuous or generous. If you believe that people are basically bad, or that the universe is out to get you, your assumptions will be negative.

How can you tell when your reactions are being driven by your negative assumptions? The most common indicator for me is when a client uses the word “obviously” and then tells me something that they believe about another person’s intentions. That is a cue for me to ask “What is obvious about your interpretation”? You will know that your reactions are being driven by negative assumptions when you ruminate about a situation and the players in that situation.

Let me use an example:
You were recently appointed as head of your division. You presented your divisional budget in the executive meeting last week. In that meeting was a colleague who also applied for your position – unsuccessfully. She asked you some challenging questions about your budget that you were not prepared for, and you felt embarrassed. You have spent the last week ruminating about the fact that she intended to embarrass you; that she only asked these questions because her nose is out of joint for not being appointed. You need to present your budget again because her questions necessitated some rework. You are anxious that she will find some other way to make you look bad when you do so this afternoon.
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What aspects of the scenario I have described are facts, and which are assumptions for which you have no proof?

Once you have separated facts from assumptions, it is useful to remind yourself that, no matter how strongly you hold your assumptions, they are just beliefs for which you have no proof. They might be true but, then again, they might not. You have a few options for dealing with your negative assumptions:

1. You can do NOTHING and carry on getting yourself bent out of shape;
2. You can test your assumptions with the person about whom you are making assumptions. You could say to them “When you questioned my budget in the way that you did, I felt embarrassed. The story I told myself is that you were trying to make me look bad because I got the job that you wanted. Is that what was happening?” And then you will need to listen and have a constructive conversation.
3. You can remind yourself that you are probably telling yourself a story, and then you can attribute more generous assumptions to your colleague: she has the interests of the business at heart; she was sincere in asking those questions and she was right because I hadn’t thought about those things; she has always been a good colleague and I don’t see any reason why that would change.

Option 1 is a bit of a loser’s game – it is a choice to be the victim of your story. Option 2 is great, but might turn out to be a completely unnecessary conversation – which you may find out if you just exercise Option 3. While there is no proof of the more positive and generous assumptions I’ve offered in 3 above, they simply lead to more productive engagements with your colleague than the original negative assumptions. Just assuming the best of people leads to positive outcomes (even if they themselves were not being as generous in their behaviour as you have assumed).

The way to test your assumptions is to ask yourself the following:

1. Is it logical based on what you know about yourself, the other person or the situation?
2. Is it a fact? Do you have evidence for it?
3. Is it based on a positive philosophical choice? Positive philosophical choices are that the universe is supportive, people are basically good, and you are deserving of all good.

If your assumption is not logical (makes no sense), change it to an assumption that does make sense. If you have no evidence for your assumption, replace it with a positive assumption. If your assumption is based on a negative philosophical choice, replace it with something that is based on a positive philosophical choice.

The key to any change starts with self-awareness. Pay attention to yourself when you get upset or triggered. Are you telling yourself a story based on negative assumptions? If so, the attached downloadable document will take you through a process that will enable you to test your negative assumptions and replace them with more constructive and positive assumptions that not only make you feel happier, but also foster productive engagements with your colleagues, family and friends.
 
The pdf below will take you through a guided process of testing your unhelpful assumptions. Give it a try!
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Reference:
Kline, Nancy. Time to Think. Octopus Books. United Kingdom. 1999