6 ms·

Assume Positive Intent (2017)

65 points by vxxzy 5y ago

amelius 5y ago
But when dealing with companies, always assume greedy intent.
- zasdffaa 5y ago
  Doing so will help embitter and then destroy those companies which do have good intent.
  - NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    [deleted]
Shatnerz 5y ago
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-intent https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#assume-positive-in...
- john_cogs 5y ago
  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.
giraffe_lady 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
- Shatnerz 5y ago
  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)?
kuharich 5y ago
Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040525
nicoco 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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/wiki/Entering_the_Kingdom/The_Competitive_Laws_and_The_Law_of_Love https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Entering_the_Kingdom/The_Comp...)" Camp. But there is a certain momentum of "cause and effect" that needs to be transcended first.
shampto3 5y ago
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-intent https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#assume-positive-in...
cryptica 5y ago
I like it when other people assume positive intent.
jrootabega 5y ago
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.
jacobsenscott 5y ago
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!"
- pjscott 5y ago
  "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 5y ago
  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.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  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.
d23 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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."
- drc500free 5y ago
  > Sociopaths are attracted to places where they can wield power and domineer over others. One of the failure modes of the systems we build is when they provide leverage for bullies. Any system that wields power (which is basically all of them) needs oversight baked in from the beginning.
fellowniusmonk 5y ago
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.
tpoacher 5y ago
This generally works until you meet your first narcissist/sociopath. After that it's all "once bitten twice shy" all the way down.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Discussion from before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040525
traviswt 5y ago
In practice, this becomes “good intentions prevent punishment of bad behaviors.” It becomes a way for kind incompetence to belittle wise disagreement. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
thimkerbell 5y ago
Does this mean to assume that when the person consistently makes wrong decisions, it's due to a shortage of competence?
- creakingstairs 5y ago
  I mean it depends. But I’d say one should try to assume that the reason they are consistently making wrong decisions are basing their decisions on wrong assumptions are using wrong heuristics. Have a nice talk with the person. Ask them what went into making this decision. A lot of the times you might find that there was a misunderstanding. Or they simply might not know what to because they weren’t taught. Now I’m not saying doing above is easy. Even with best wordings, peeps might and will get offended. In that case, you may need to establish trust with them first. Finally, I want to say that some people are not up to the task (e.g I am not up for being a pro golfer) or just don’t give a shit. The really hard part is knowing when that is the case so that you don’t burn out trying to foster trust in your relationship that’s going nowhere. But I’d say the best play to start is to assume good intention.
rramadass 5y ago
Don't! It depends on the People involved and the Specific Context, else you will be played for a "Sucker". See Robert Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation
- Doxin 5y ago
  It's "Assume Positive Intent", not "Assume Positive Intent And Never Update Your Assumptions"
  - rramadass 5y ago
    Right. But even here, one has to be careful and look at the "Context" in totality (application of Game Theory not withstanding). This is where people fail to "adapt" but expect the World to operate in the way it does in their "Home Context".

65 points by vxxzy 5y ago

amelius 5y ago

But when dealing with companies, always assume greedy intent.

zasdffaa 5y ago
Doing so will help embitter and then destroy those companies which do have good intent.
- NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  [deleted]

Shatnerz 5y ago

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-intent https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#assume-positive-in...

john_cogs 5y ago
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.

giraffe_lady 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
Shatnerz 5y ago
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)?

kuharich 5y ago

Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040525

nicoco 5y ago

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 5y ago
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/wiki/Entering_the_Kingdom/The_Competitive_Laws_and_The_Law_of_Love https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Entering_the_Kingdom/The_Comp...)" Camp. But there is a certain momentum of "cause and effect" that needs to be transcended first.

shampto3 5y ago

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-intent https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#assume-positive-in...

cryptica 5y ago

I like it when other people assume positive intent.

jrootabega 5y ago

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.

jacobsenscott 5y ago

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!"

pjscott 5y ago
"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 5y ago
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.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
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.

d23 5y ago

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 5y ago
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."
drc500free 5y ago
> Sociopaths are attracted to places where they can wield power and domineer over others. One of the failure modes of the systems we build is when they provide leverage for bullies. Any system that wields power (which is basically all of them) needs oversight baked in from the beginning.

fellowniusmonk 5y ago

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.

tpoacher 5y ago

This generally works until you meet your first narcissist/sociopath. After that it's all "once bitten twice shy" all the way down.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

Discussion from before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040525

traviswt 5y ago

In practice, this becomes “good intentions prevent punishment of bad behaviors.” It becomes a way for kind incompetence to belittle wise disagreement. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

thimkerbell 5y ago

Does this mean to assume that when the person consistently makes wrong decisions, it's due to a shortage of competence?

creakingstairs 5y ago
I mean it depends. But I’d say one should try to assume that the reason they are consistently making wrong decisions are basing their decisions on wrong assumptions are using wrong heuristics. Have a nice talk with the person. Ask them what went into making this decision. A lot of the times you might find that there was a misunderstanding. Or they simply might not know what to because they weren’t taught. Now I’m not saying doing above is easy. Even with best wordings, peeps might and will get offended. In that case, you may need to establish trust with them first. Finally, I want to say that some people are not up to the task (e.g I am not up for being a pro golfer) or just don’t give a shit. The really hard part is knowing when that is the case so that you don’t burn out trying to foster trust in your relationship that’s going nowhere. But I’d say the best play to start is to assume good intention.

rramadass 5y ago

Don't! It depends on the People involved and the Specific Context, else you will be played for a "Sucker". See Robert Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation

Doxin 5y ago
It's "Assume Positive Intent", not "Assume Positive Intent And Never Update Your Assumptions"
- rramadass 5y ago
  Right. But even here, one has to be careful and look at the "Context" in totality (application of Game Theory not withstanding). This is where people fail to "adapt" but expect the World to operate in the way it does in their "Home Context".