If he'd want to make work work better, then join us for a mini workshop where we share three things you can do today to apply the principle of assuming positive intent. I'm your host, doctor Mark Reynolds. Today's workshop, following Matt Widow's interview, is focusing on this principle of assuming positive intent. It is such a powerful principle that can transform how you interact with your employees and sometimes with yourself. Here's what your problem might look like.
Team members make a mistake, or they say an insensitive comment or do something that rubs you wrong. You may already not get along with that person, or they have given you every reason to believe that the problem they're creating for you is intentional. Even if it is, it doesn't serve you to start there. The problem is yours as a leader until you offer training, resources, and mentorship that they refuse to incorporate.
If you take someone at their word, if you assume positive intent and they know that is what you always do, then they will learn to start communicating with you. With that in mind, they'll stop trying to make you mind read or be manipulative, and they'll learn to start speaking with you much more directly and honestly. What are three things you can do today to start implementing this principle of assuming positive intent? First, create a positive intent policy.
We hate adding more policies and procedures, but these policies and procedures, these expectations, if written down, save so much time. It means HR, you or someone else can be like, hey, I just wanted to point out this piece of our handbook or the beginning of each of your meetings. Just pull one of these policies out just to remind everyone and have it on their radar.
What this does is introduce a company wide policy that explicitly encourages the practice of assuming positive intent in all interactions. And so if someone feels like someone's not or they're being wronged, they can point to this and be like, hey, our company policy is to assume positive intent. I think we've drifted from that here for a second. Can we retry how we started approaching this from the angle of assuming positive intent? It allows leaders to train employees and give feedback.
Rarely. And it gets your wording and what you really mean by that down in a clear, concise way. Communicate the importance of this principle through internal memos, team meetings, and training sessions. You can reinforce policy by showing examples of how something positive intent can improve communication. Collaboration. I like stories where this approach led to positive outcomes, especially if it happened right in front of you during the week.
The key with policy is in meetings or other training sessions to share with the company how you are thinking about it, how you are applying these principles in the policy in your own mind and trying to improve on it and make it better, and how it's proving to be a positive influence. And if it's not, change the policy. Second, offer training and workshops. Conduct training sessions and workshops focused on principles of assuming positive intent.
Emphasize the benefits such as reducing conflicts, improving relationships, and fostering a more supportive work environment. Provide tools and techniques for employees to use when they find it challenging to assume positive intent. One of the things we do and offer is a service where we come in, will present workshops, and this could be an hour long workshop. This can be paired with a bunch of other skills and workshops that we offer.
The other service we offer that dovetails with this is doing skip level interviews. Not only is a chance for us to get information from employees, but to offer feedback and training of how they can make difficult situations better, how they can communicate more clearly and effectively, and how they can provide solutions to problems rather than adding fuel to the drama fire. Third is leadership modeling. Lead by example. Right?
Make a conscious effort to approach conversations and decisions with an open mind, and demonstrate empathy and understanding when addressing misunderstandings or conflict. That doesn't mean you need to tolerate bad behavior. It doesn't mean you need to tolerate anything less than excellent. What it does mean is you are separating the person, the human, from the behavior that you're trying to correct. Address that. This behavior or this action or this thing created a problem.
One of the best things you can do is to recognize and praise instances where employees assume positive intent, creating a culture that values and reinforces this principle. What you talk about, what you highlight, shows what you value. Set aside time to value. Assume positive intent. Regularly share stories and examples in team meetings or internal communications to keep the principle top of mind.
One of the things that I like to encourage executives to do is when they're in meetings, choose the top three stories from any previous week and find a way to weave those top three stories of where people exemplified a trait or a principle, or did something excellent, and weave those in through each meeting. Those will help reinforce and make otherwise one long, 1111 meetings valuable, and make them stick in your employees mind.
If you apply these three tips, you will make work work better for yourself and your teams. Don't forget to click like, subscribe, follow, comment, share what you agree with, what you disagree with, what you wish we'd talk about. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love even more to work with you, and to spend some time with you and your teams to make work work better. See you next time.
Where we're going to talk about promoting better work life balance and preventing burnout or neglect of family or self. See you then.