After leading teams of all shapes and sizes for over 20 years (and that’s just professionally! See my leadership story here), what I’ve come to realise is that behind the skills that you need to learn are a set of beliefs that will enable you to not only learn the skills but also practice them, learn from your experience and keep on improving. In this series, I’m going to share with you what those beliefs are and how they are going to make you so much more successful with any team you lead.
The first of these is The Law of Positive Intent.
What does this law state?
“No one will do anything to harm themselves”
Let’s go to an extreme example in order to illustrate this point.
Take someone who is contemplating suicide – are they doing so because they want to hurt themselves? No. They are doing so because it is the only choice they see for getting out of a situation that is so painful that they can no longer bear it. They want pain to stop, not inflict more pain on themselves.
So let’s take this to a situation at work.
Say you have someone on your team who is not delivering, picking fights with others on the team and generally making your life a misery! Is this person doing it in order to get into trouble with you? Are they doing it in order to get fired? Are they looking for a bad performance review? Very unlikely. So what is the positive intention they are looking for, for themselves?
There are a multitude of answers to that question. Some could be:
- They feel insecure and unsafe because they are struggling to do the work and don’t want to admit it
- They are looking for attention and this is the only way they get it
- They don’t understand what’s required and they don’t know how to ask
- They are bored or unmotivated by the work and don’t know how to express it
And so many more…
The reason assuming positive intent will be helpful to you in your leadership, is that it is going to help you ask yourself the question “What is really going on? What’s behind the behaviour that I’m seeing? How can I make sure that this person gets what they need as well as deliver on what the team needs?”
These questions will enable you to reach a level of understanding with your team members that will engender trust – the foundation of every team – and will ensure that your people feel seen and understood. It will also make you feel like you’re getting somewhere and that you are able to understand and help your people achieve.
When you believe that people are doing the best they can “for themselves” with the resources they have, it gives you so many more options and ideas to move forward.
So tell me, who in your team is behaving in a way that you’re struggling to understand? What do you believe is their positive intention for themselves? How can you start a conversation with them about it?
Comment below, I really do read every comment, or email me at sonia@soniagavira.com
