The Problems of Not Understanding
Blake came to me and said, “My boss hates me.”
My response was simple. I didn’t argue with him. I didn’t try to tell him that surely he must be wrong. I didn’t try to make him feel better. I didn’t sympathize with him.
I simply said, “Prove it.” In other words, show me the evidence to support what you’ve just said. If you want to live in a world of truth—where solutions are possible—you don’t get to just complain about something without justification.
Blake gave me some examples of his boss’s behavior:
“He never sufficiently explains what I need to know in order to accomplish a task. He gives me half the information I need, and then he’s annoyed when I didn’t use necessary information he didn’t give me.”
“He acts like he can’t wait to finish every conversation with me. He’s always in a hurry—often doing more than one thing at the same time—and never has enough time for me.”
“He gets irritated when I make mistakes.”
He continued with quite a list of evidence that his boss didn’t like him, and for each one I created a small paper square, like a building block, and I fashioned a big two-dimensional house with them.
Finally, looking at the building, constructed of negative evidence, I said, “That’s a lot of material proving that you have to work for somebody who doesn’t like you.”
BECAUSE of all the blocks of evidence, Blake had created a mountain of dislike and distrust.
Gathering Information to Understand Another
I knew more than one other person at Blake’s workplace, so I asked one of them if he would be willing to talk to me about his boss—NOT to gather evidence of his character but only to learn about the work environment. This employee knew me well, so he trusted my motives and agreed.
I asked the second employee questions derived directly from the descriptions offered by Blake—without mentioning Blake’s name—and the results were not surprising:
- The boss was not a happy man. He had no friends. He was going through a divorce.
- He took upon himself far too much responsibility for tasks that needed to be done, so he didn’t have enough time—by a lot—to function as a leader for others. He was always in a hurry, and didn’t spend time with any of his employees training and guiding them.
- He became quite irritated with anyone who made a mistake.
In short, the boss was an empty and unhappy man whose anger and inability to connect or communicate were affecting everyone in the business.
I talked to Blake about what I had learned. To his credit, he recognized that he had accurately judged HOW his boss behaved, but he had WRONGLY judged the reasons for the behaviors to be about himself (Blake).
We went through all the blocks in the building described above, and he admitted that each block was now invalid for the purpose of creating that mountain of evidence. He saw that he had a pile of evidence that the boss was an unhappy man, NOT that the boss didn’t like him personally.
Blake went further. He recognized that he had physically and emotionally withdrawn from the boss because of his judgments, and he committed to finding ways to be more of an asset to the man. As he did that in following weeks, the boss became noticeably appreciative and kinder toward Blake.
Incorrect Judgment vs Understanding
We all do versions of this. We make an incorrect judgment, and then we build a case of evidence to support the judgment we’ve already made.
Sometimes we parents do this with our children. We look at the evidence, and judge that they are lazy, irresponsible, and irritating.
When we step back, however, and look at all the evidence, with perhaps the help of a parent who understands loving and teaching, we see that our children simply have been insufficiently loved and poorly trained—unloved and untaught. Suddenly all our evidence disappears, and our children are not as we had thought.
Teaching Children that it is Wiser to Understand than to Judge
Our children often do this routine of misjudgment with each other—all quite similar to the examples above—leading to negative feelings and interactions. We need to help them see the truth about people and relationships:
Almost everyone feels empty or afraid to some degree, which is the true motivation for much of their behavior—to minimize their pain or earn approval for THEMSELVES.
So, rarely are people doing things TO US. Not everything is about us, even though some behaviors might affect us.
As we love and teach our children in this way, they learn that it’s much wiser to UNDERSTAND a particular behavior than to stack it on other pieces of misinformation to create an entire pile or building made from errors or misinterpretations.
These are practical approaches we can teach our children that will influence the way they see everything for a lifetime. They will be wiser and more loving at home, with friends, at school, at work, and in future committed relationships.
Understand it, don’t stack it.
