Assumptions: Why being right is wrong

Being Right

I used to think that if I showed up intentionally and listened carefully, I would accurately understand what someone was saying. I was wrong.

While researching my book What? I discovered that when listening to others, we naturally assume we understand what’s meant and don’t question that assumption. But due to the way sound vibrations enter our ears, we actually only accurately understand some unknowable percentage of what is being said. Turns out our listening is pretty subjective.

Here’s what happens that makes accurate understanding so difficult:

  1. We only retain words we hear for approximately 3 seconds, and since spoken words have no spaces between them, our brains must also listen for breaks in breath, tone, and rhythm to differentiate words and meaning.
  2. Throughout our lives, the neural pathways we use when hearing others speak become habituated and normalized, limiting and biasing what we hear as per our comfort and beliefs. What we think we hear has been interpreted by brain circuits that historically interpreted similar-enough incoming messages – hence, we interpret what we hear the same way we interpret what we’ve heard before, thereby restricting and misinterpreting new content accordingly.
  3. When listening, our brain automatically and haphazardly deletes incoming ideas that are foreign to our beliefs and our brains fail to tell us what’s been deleted.
  4. Whatever is left after being interpreted subjectively by familiar circuits (potentially different from what was said), and with some unknown number of deletions, is what we think we’ve heard.

A simple example of this just happened today when I was introduced to someone:

Joe: Hey V. I’d like you to meet my friend Sharon-Drew.
V: Hi Sharon.
SDM: Actually, my first name is Sharon-Drew and I always use them both together.
V: Oh. I don’t know anyone who calls themselves by their first name AND last name.
SDM: Neither do I.
V: But you just told me that’s how you refer to yourself!

Because my type of double first name (vs Mary Ann which already has circuits in most brains) was foreign to her, her brain used a habituated pathway for ‘name’, deleting both how Joe introduced us and my correction.

Like all of us, she believed what her brain told her, and acted on the assumption that she was ‘right’.

ASSUMPTIONS RESTRICT AUTHENTIC COMMUNICATION

We all do this. Using conventional listening practices, using our normalized subjectivity that we’ve finely honed during our lifetimes, we assume our brain circuits offer us accurate interpretations, making it pretty difficult to know for sure if what we think we’ve heard is accurate. We end up making assumptions based on our own mental models. But it’s not our fault.

Although we prefer to hear accurately, our brains are set up to routinize and habituate most of what we do and hear – it makes the flow of our daily activities and relationships easy.

But there is a downside: we end up restricting, harming, or diminishing authentic communication, and proceed to self-righteously huff and puff when we believe we’ve heard accurately, deeming any correction ‘wrong’. When I asked a magazine editor to correct the name Sharon Morgan that appeared under my photo he said (and I can’t make this stuff up!): “I didn’t get it wrong. You must have sent it to me wrong.” True story.

So: our brain tells us what it wants us to hear and doesn’t tell us what it left out or altered, potentially getting the context, the outcome, the description, or the communication, wrong.

Sometimes we assume the speaker meant something they didn’t mean at all and then act on flawed information. In business it gets costly when, for example, implementations don’t get done accurately, or people are deemed prospects’ and put into the sales pipeline when it could be discovered on the first call that they were never prospects at all.

Sample

THE COST OF ASSUMING

Assumptions cost us greatly, harming relationships, business success, and health:

  • Sellers assume prospects are buyers when they ‘hear’ a ‘need’ based on their biased questions and end up wasting a huge amount of time chasing prospects who will never buy;
  • Consultants assume they know what a client needs from discussions with a few top decision makers while potentially overlooking influencers or influences, causing resistance to change when they try to push their outcomes into a system that doesn’t yet know how to change;
  • Decision scientists assume they gather accurate data from the people that hired them and discount important data held by employees lower down the management chain, inadvertently skewering the results and making implementation difficult;
  • Doctors, lawyers, dentists assume problems that may not be accurate merely because some of the symptoms are familiar, potentially causing harm – especially when these assumptions keep them from finding out the real problems; they also offer important advice that clients/patients don’t heed when the patients themselves hear inaccurately, or when offered advice runs counter to their assumptions that their self-care is adequate;
  • Coaches assume clients mean something they are not really saying or skewering the focus of the conversation, ending up biasing the outcome with inappropriate questions that lead the client away from the real issues that never get resolved;
  • Influencers and leaders assume they have THE solution, followed by matching reasons or rational behind their requests. They then blame the Other for resisting, ignoring, or sabotaging, when the assumed solution procures resistance.

Using normal listening habits we can’t avoid making assumptions. The belief that sharing, pushing, presenting, offering ‘good’ (Rational! Necessary! Tested!) information – based on what we believe we heard – will cause behavior change has proven faulty time and time again, across industries.

In my book What? there are chapters devoted to explaining how we make the assumptions we make, and how to resolve the problem. Ask yourself:

  • How do I know if my assumptions are accurate? And if they’re inaccurate, how will I know?
  • What would I need to believe differently to ‘assume’ I might not be correct, and be willing to ask more questions to elicit accurate data?
  • What is making inaccurate assumptions costing me?

Assumptions are costly when they’re inaccurate. How will you know when it’s time to make them, and when to avoid them?

____________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision makingthe NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

39 thoughts on “Assumptions: Why being right is wrong”

  1. Pingback: Communication Competence: the case for enhanced soft skills for our new digital world | Sharon-Drew Morgen

  2. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » Anatomy of a Lost Sale: Case Study

  3. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » We Don’t Know How to Hear Each Other: how biases distort our conversations

  4. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » Checklist for Influencers: questions for sellers, coaches, leaders, change agents.

  5. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » Sellers Ask the Wrong Questions

  6. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » What Makes A Decision Irrational?

  7. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » Do We Forget Our Values With ‘Different’ People?

  8. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » Training vs. Learning: do you want to train? Or have someone learn?

  9. Pingback: Communication Competence: the case for enhanced soft skills for our new digital world | What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

  10. Pingback: Training vs. Learning: do you want to train? Or have someone learn? | What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

  11. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » Diversity And Bias: How to Hear ‘Different’ People Differently

  12. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » Speaker or Listener: Who’s Responsible For Misunderstandings?

  13. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » Resolving Unconscious Bias

  14. Pingback: Resolving Unconscious Bias | What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

  15. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » Upselling: find additional business in existing accounts

  16. Pingback: Sharon-Drew Morgen » We Don’t Know How to Hear Each Other: how natural biases distort our conversations

  17. Pingback: Beyond Empathetic Listening | Sharon-Drew Morgen

  18. Pingback: What, Exactly, is Facilitation? Plans for an Institute | Sharon-Drew Morgen

  19. Pingback: The Business of Kindness | Sharon-Drew Morgen

  20. Pingback: The Business of Kindness | What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

  21. Pingback: Beyond Empathetic Listening | What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

  22. Pingback: What Makes A Decision Irrational? | Sharon-Drew Morgen

  23. Pingback: What Makes A Decision Irrational? | What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

  24. Pingback: Resolving Unconscious Bias - Sharon-Drew

  25. Pingback: Sellers Ask the Wrong Questions - Sharon-Drew

  26. Pingback: Checklist for Influencers: questions for sellers, coaches, leaders, change agents - Sharon-Drew

  27. Pingback: ‘No Decision’ isn’t Indecision: people won't buy until they're buyers - Sharon-Drew

  28. Pingback: ‘No Decision’ isn’t Indecision: people won’t buy until they’re buyers – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

  29. Pingback: The Cost of Perceived Wisdom: why we really don't like innovation - Sharon-Drew

  30. Pingback: The Noise of Subjectivity: how our personal biases shape and restrict our worlds - Sharon-Drew

  31. Pingback: The Noise of Subjectivity: how our personal biases shape and restrict our worlds – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

  32. Raphael Osazogie

    Thanks fornthis great job, this is the position that i am now, but with this eye opening teaching am out of the box.
    Thanks Raphael Owens Osazogie

  33. Pingback: Conscious Failing - Sharon-Drew

  34. Pingback: Conscious Failing – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

  35. Pingback: You Can’t Lead If You Can’t Follow - Sharon-Drew

  36. Pingback: What Should Coaches Be Listening For? – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

  37. Pingback: Why Women Make Great Leaders - Sharon-Drew

  38. Pingback: Why Women Make Great Leaders, by Sharon-Drew Morgen – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top