During my recent 10-day silent meditation retreat, I was reminded just how quickly we make assumptions about others—often without having all the facts—and how often those assumptions are completely wrong. In the silence, all we had to judge each other by were appearances: the clothes we wore, the way we walked, our behaviours and actions. We knew nothing of each other’s voices, backgrounds, jobs, hopes, fears, or stories.
Yet despite this limited view, it’s natural—and habitual—to fill in the blanks with our own imagined stories about others. The meditation instructors called this tendency ‘Ignorance.’ This habit of inventing and believing incomplete narratives keeps us—and those we lead, work with, or live alongside—trapped in old patterns, misunderstandings, conflicts, and limitations.
I found myself doing exactly this, attributing qualities based on expressions, pace of walking, or whether someone yielded in a doorway. These small details painted only a partial picture, yet at work and in life we often make big decisions about people with similarly limited information. Interestingly, we might judge ourselves very differently for the same actions because our own perspective is the only full story we have.
Leadership and Humility: Breaking Free from Assumptions
All assumptions I held based on surface impressions dissolved on the last day of the retreat when we finally spoke and shared our stories. Suddenly, the strangers revealed themselves as richly complex human beings—a young Ukrainian poet, a quirky French woman with self-deprecating humor, a lively Irish pair, entrepreneurial identical twins. The contrast between my assumptions and their real selves was humbling.
As leaders, colleagues, friends, and human beings, when we make negative assumptions about others or situations, we immediately create barriers—limitations that block possibilities for ourselves, the other person, the relationship, and future opportunities.
While we can never know the full story behind someone’s actions, we can choose to stay humble, open, and curious. So much suffering and misunderstanding could be avoided simply by asking, “What else could this mean?”
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”
— Alan Alda
