A short YouTube talk arguing for making generous assumptions about others' intentions—especially in workplace and personal interactions—by imagining their life experiences and context. The speaker uses everyday examples (agents, presenters) and a personal admission of past missteps to show that assuming positive intent improves relationships and helps people do better when forgiven or understood.
Your assistant didn't wake up and be like, I want to upset my boss today. Your buyer agent didn't wake up and say, I just want to piss off all the clients so that my boss is upset with me. Or, I want to screw this presentation up. Like that doesn't nobody wakes up in the morning or is sitting around when they're four years old and says, that's what I want to do when I'm an adult. Right? And when we put ourselves truly in the shoes of other people, my guess is it's if we had the same life experience as them, if we had the same conversation with our spouse the night before, if we had the same upbringing and parents and life journey as them, we'd probably feel and do some of the exact same things as they did at the moment. That frustrated us. And I think that there's just a lot to say about having generous assumptions with the people around us when they make missteps, because I know in my own experience, I've made a lot of missteps, and it goes a long way for me to do better when people have generous assumptions about me.
