[HN Gopher] Assume Positive Intent (2017)
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Assume Positive Intent (2017)
Author : vxxzy
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-04-04 15:08 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rickmanelius.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rickmanelius.com)
| kuharich wrote:
| Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040525
| cryptica wrote:
| I like it when other people assume positive intent.
| tpoacher wrote:
| This generally works until you meet your first
| narcissist/sociopath.
|
| After that it's all "once bitten twice shy" all the way down.
| nicoco wrote:
| A great philosopher once said:
|
| > If you put your trust out there... if you give people the
| benefit of the doubt, see their best intentions... people will
| rise to the occasion.
|
| (Okay I lied, it's not from a great philosopher, it's Paul Rudd
| playing Ned in 'Our Idiot Brother'.)
|
| I would like to add one thing: doing the opposite is just too
| tiring, don't do it. Yes, some might try to take advantage of
| you, others might call you naive. As long as you have a
| functional brain, I bet you can avoid dramatic consequences. And
| you'll be happier and more relaxed.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Its been my experience that the "dramatic consequences" you
| talk about can be avoided by not participation in behavior that
| falls into the "[Competitive Laws](https://en.wikisource.org/wi
| ki/Entering_the_Kingdom/The_Comp...)" Camp.
|
| But there is a certain momentum of "cause and effect" that
| needs to be transcended first.
| d23 wrote:
| I think this was the single most damaging bit of fortune cookie
| wisdom I experienced in my entire time at my previous job.
| Blatantly toxic behavior was constantly brushed aside with the
| phrase "assume positive intent!"
|
| > There are con artists and sociopaths out there. Marth Stout
| claims 4% of the population falls into this category.
|
| That's the general population. What do you think the proportions
| are at high-growth tech companies? What about the further and
| higher-up you get in your career? Sociopaths are attracted to
| places where they can wield power and domineer over others.
|
| My general philosophy: start from a place of neutrality to mild
| positivity. As your interactions with a person increases, gather
| datapoints and weigh them based on their context and severity of
| the behavior. Build up a picture based on actions and evidence
| and then, for God's sake, remember it.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I think "assume positive intent" can often fall into the bucket
| of "you shouldn't feel bad because this is a good person." I
| just don't think emotions work that way. Even if someone has
| the best intentions, I may still feel
| hurt/angry/sad/confused/jealous/etc.
|
| For example, someone may spend a full day cooking a meal that
| they believe is the perfect meal for me. I may go to eat it and
| find out it has an ingredient in it, say peanuts, to which I'm
| deathly allergic. The person may have had the best intentions
| in cooking that meal and yet that meal may have killed me. So
| in this, I still try to assume good intentions, so I don't
| accumulate bitterness and resentment towards the individual
| person, however, I also want to be very open and honest about
| how scared I feel when I think about eating that meal.
|
| So I hear you in that "assume positive intent" may be another
| way for organizations to say "avoid conflict." So, even if
| their intentions with saying "assume positive intent" are
| positive, the effect of those behaviors may not be positive for
| everyone, and as I mentioned in another comment, I think
| "assume positive intent" should be followed with "and tell
| people how you feel."
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Discussion from before:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040525
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| I generally agree and here is something a little more fleshed
| out.
|
| 1. Postulate positive intent. 2. Verify intent when outcomes are
| negative. 3. Don't ignore a pattern. 4. Intent stops being
| relevant and strength of desire becomes more import with repeated
| negative outcomes. 5. Outcomes have to be evaluated separately
| when a dark triad person is involved.
| shampto3 wrote:
| GitLab has "Assume Positive Intent" as a sub-value of
| Collaboration [1]. This has been extremely helpful for me because
| we work in an all-remote environment and rely a lot on text
| communication. Sometimes I read a comment from someone that looks
| to be more harsh than was likely intended, and I have to remind
| myself that I should assume they don't mean any ill-will towards
| me. This is especially helpful when working with people of
| different cultures and languages.
|
| 1. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#assume-positive-
| in...
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| This is a mindset I think is very valuable to apply to yourself,
| but moderately dangerous to officially encourage in other people
| especially as a corporate policy or value, which I have seen.
|
| Particularly if someone is expressing a specific grievance,
| asking them to assume positive intent from the other party is
| dismissing their experience of what happened and how they should
| feel about it.
|
| Sometimes people don't act with positive intent and sometimes
| _you can fucking tell_. You don 't want to be telling, for
| example, a woman in tech who has had a coworker take credit for
| her work, that she should assume positive intent in that
| situation.
|
| Good general guideline for self, but be careful when asking
| others to follow it imo.
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| I don't think the policy means "pretend it's positive intent
| even when you know it isn't". If you have actual reasons for
| why it is not positive intent, you should be able to explain
| them (and your employer should listen, obviously). You should
| be able to still talk to that employee about taking credit for
| the work. It just might help the tone of that meeting to be not
| completely accusatory at first. If your employer is ignoring
| you and telling you to assume it is positive intent, then that
| would be an abuse of it.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Rereading my comment now I think I wasn't very clear. If
| someone comes to you with a problem and you say "well you
| should assume positive intent" that is probably bad.
|
| I know that's not what the writer of this, or these policies,
| intends, and not what people here mean either.
|
| But I have seen this, a lot, at places that have "assume
| positive intent" as an official company value.
| DanHulton wrote:
| I prefer the phrase "Trust, but verify."
|
| Trust someone will get something done on time when they say
| they will, but verify they actually did. Trust that someone is
| communicating something in a positive way, but verify if
| there's confusion. Etc.
|
| It's not perfect, nothing is, but "assume positive intent"
| doesn't have any fallback for when bad actors start to take
| advantage of it.
| Shatnerz wrote:
| As with everything it requires discretion, but avoid
| attributing bad intentions especially on first offenses.
|
| If someone forgets to credit you for work done, reach out and
| let them know so they can correct it. There is a good chance
| that they just forgot. Now if this happens every time without
| fail, something is up and blindly assuming positive intent
| would just be naive.
|
| > asking them to assume positive intent from the other party is
| dismissing their experience of what happened and how they
| should feel about it.
|
| I'd disagree here. It isn't immediately dismissive but it is a
| chance to change their perspective. Should you let them stew in
| their anger because they think Bob hates them, or should you
| perhaps suggest that Bob's actions were a result of outside
| information unknown to them (obviously depends on each case)?
| derbOac wrote:
| Yeah I was going to say there's a kind of metacorollary to this
| which is important to keep in mind: sometimes when someone is
| describing negative intent in others, it's accurate and
| genuine. They might not be hostile themselves, or pessimistic,
| or negativistic, they might actually be a victim of someone not
| acting in good faith. They may have positive intent in asking
| for help around negative intent.
| epage wrote:
| I have a bad taste in my mouth or the phrase because I saw
| someone wielding it as a weapon at others. Its been a few
| years, so I don't quite remember the details unfortunately. The
| funny part is the person wielding it was playing politics in
| every avenue and was continually degrading trust and yet
| demanding our trust back by saying we should "assume positive
| intent".
|
| (they came into our project without understanding the
| challenges we had or the problem we were solving, tried to
| throw everything out, and then with upper management present,
| gave a "decision making" presentation that only led to their
| solution as being picked)
| amelius wrote:
| But when dealing with companies, always assume greedy intent.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| Doing so will help embitter and then destroy those companies
| which do have good intent.
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| I'd assume good intent from people working at a company and
| greedy intent when working with "a company".
|
| People are generally trying to be helpful and doing things
| that make things better. People can be embittered if they
| aren't treated with respect.
|
| The faceless abstraction of a company is almost always set up
| to extract money from you. It's often set up to also provide
| something useful, since that's one of the most sustainable
| ways to get people to hand over money. Companies can't become
| embittered.
|
| Assuming greedy intent is a way to be wise about making sure
| you get a fair trade for your money.
| [deleted]
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| No corporate policy is more toxic than "assume positive intent."
|
| A less qualified manager clones constantly being promoted over
| more qualified minorities/women/etc? "Assume positive intent!"
|
| Coworkers taking credit for your work? "Assume positive intent!"
|
| Promised raises never materialize? "Assume positive intent!"
|
| Pushed untested code to production? "Assume positive intent!"
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I think you may be misinterpreting it. Intent != outcomes. If
| someone's screwing up, they can do bad with good intent. You're
| taking examples of things with bad outcomes, but that don't
| imply bad intent. You still need to deal with harmful actions,
| but it's still useful to go in with the mindset that they're
| just trying to do their job (and failing) rather than thinking
| that they're cackling gleefully about the harm they've caused.
| pjscott wrote:
| "Assume positive intent" doesn't mean to never update your
| priors; that would be ridiculous, as your examples illustrate.
| It just means to start out with an initially charitable view of
| someone's behavior that can shift over time as you get to know
| them better.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I think the phrase "assume positive intent" does not explicitly
| say how to address the impact of someone's behavior, and
| therefore can imply that assuming positive intent means
| ignoring the impact. I don't think it has to mean that.
|
| The way I try to see it is that I try to assume positive intent
| while also letting people know of the impact their (in)actions
| had on me. If a coworker takes credit for my work, I can assume
| that their intention wasn't to hurt me, however, I can also let
| people know that what they did hurt me.
|
| So I wish there were a secondary policy of "and say how you
| feel," but this may be a lot more taboo in corporate
| environments than assuming positive intent.
| Shatnerz wrote:
| I first ran into this concept maybe 4-5 years ago while reading
| the GitLab handbook[1]. I have to say that I am a fan. I've been
| repeating this idea to every company and team that I have worked
| with since.
|
| Lol, I recently had a potential issue where I switched teams and
| the team lead was new to the company. We had a daily standup
| thread in Slack. I would make the key ideas bold so it is easy to
| skim. The manager reached out a few weeks later and was taken
| aback by my "attitude" in these threads. He/she was assuming the
| bold text for anger and impatience (despite happening with both
| positive and negative ideas) while the original intent was to
| just ease reading comprehension. Now "assume positive intent" is
| always part of my intro spiel when working with new people.
|
| 1. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#assume-positive-
| in...
| john_cogs wrote:
| GitLab team member here. Thanks for sharing.
|
| Assuming positive intent works well outside of professional
| settings, too.
|
| Bringing this mindset to relationships with significant others,
| family members, friends, and people in my community has proven
| to improve those relationships.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Slightly more pragmatic version for those situations where many
| people do, in fact, have negative/selfish/manipulative intent:
| play dumb and play along with fake cheer if you have to. Assume
| Positive Intent, but find a way to verify it. If they have bad
| intent, you might be able to get them to reveal it first. If you
| act first by being uncooperative or calling them out, you will
| lose because you are now the bad guy. In fact, articles and
| attitudes like this submission will be used to paint you as such,
| regardless of whether there really was positive intent! If
| "Assume Positive Intent" is a principle that is promoted in your
| organization, it can be weaponized and one-sided.
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