Positive intent leads to good management - Cultivated Management Newsletter
Hi,
Welcome to this week's Cultivated Management newsletter. Sorry it is later than usual - hectic day and I've been thrown off my calendar this week!
Assume Positive Intent
As a manager the single best way to approach people and their actions, is assume people always try to do the right thing. They always do things with positive intent. You will be wrong with this assumption occasionally, but for all those many times when you are not wrong, and people did indeed assume positive intent, you will lead and manage in a very different way.
Instead of people making mistakes because they don't care, you will see they made a mistake whilst trying to do the right thing.
Instead of people needing to be motivated by you, you will see people who are already trying to do the right thing.
Instead of trying to drive change through extrinsic motivators, you will find intrinsically motivated people who are eager to achieve.
Instead of people making your job hard, you will see hard working people.
Instead of adding layers of red tape to stop people doing the wrong things, you will remove barriers and let people do what they know is right.
People don't do the wrong things on purpose. They don't go out of your way to make your day challenging. They don't make mistakes on purpose.
Of course, you will find a small percentage of people who don't have positive intent. But the majority of the time, if you assume positive intent, you will be a far better manager than assuming people aren't trying to do the right thing.
Sadly, many managers assume people are lazy, incompetent, de-motivated, unskilled, not passionate, disorganised, don't know how to do good work and are out to ruin their managerial day. When you manage like this you get standards, command and control and micromanagement.
Cultivated Managers don't do this - they seek another way. Assume positive intent and you'll get the very best of everyone you manage :)
Until next time...
rob..