Words can’t hurt you, but it is important to carefully choose your words. In my seminars, I suggest: “My parents weren’t poor; they just didn’t have a lot of money.” Poor is a label. Lack of money is often a temporary condition.
Labelling people as bad or good is mostly a thing of the past, but other labels still persist. Some managers make the mistake of labelling employees’ attitudes based on the manager’s assumptions about visible behavioural clues.
Employees are often labelled as “loners,” “not a team player,” “uncommitted,” etc. based on flawed interpretations of their behaviour. Employees are often shocked when they discover how their behaviour is being misinterpreted.
For example, a manager expressed dissatisfaction with an employee’s commitment, telling me: “At 5:01 she’s in the parking lot. She’s not committed!”
I asked, “Has she ever told you she was uncommitted?” “Of course not,” he replied, “but sometimes there is important work to do—and she just leaves.”
Further investigation uncovered the fact that she is a single parent with a daughter to be picked up by 5:30 p.m. Given notice by noon, the mother was willing and able to stay and complete her work.
How do you feel about her level of commitment now? Did your feelings change as you discovered the truth? Once her manager realized her situation, his view of her attitude changed.
Check your thoughts. Do you attach meaning to other people’s behaviour, calling it their attitude? (Most of us do.)
The human mind is our final frontier. We can choose to boldly go where few minds have gone before!
A friend and I play a word game especially when she gets frustrated with her fiancé. “He’s a jerk,” she says. “He is not a jerk,” I remind her: “He’s just acting like one.” Here are a few more examples of mind-reading:
• I don’t like his/her attitude.
• He/she doesn’t care about anybody else.
• All they want is our money.
• People don’t want to work hard.
• She/he is arrogant.
• No one cares about quality anymore.
• Companies don’t care about workers.
• Workers are lazy and uncommitted.
Action Tip
When you fall into the mind-reading trap, remind yourself that you really don’t know another person’s motives or their attitude, you’re simply observing their behaviour.
You could guess their motives, but before you do, remind yourself how often others make wrong guesses about your intentions and motives.
People can change their behaviour but they cannot change the essence of who they are. Commit to letting go of the bad habit of interpreting what others think or mean and see what happens.
Dave Mather is a Performance Improvement Specialist at Dale Carnegie Business Group in Toronto. His columns can be read at ept.ms/dave-mather
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