Making assumptions examples - Why assumptions are bad?
In business, communication is always better than an assumption. We make assumptions when we don't really understand something. It is a natural reaction to make up our own story to fill in any missing information. We do this to try to make sense of people and situations. The problem is, most of the time our story is wrong, and it causes lots of issues and limits our understanding. The truth is, we don't know what the truth is unless we ask.
This understanding was branded into my brain one night while I was sitting in class listening to a lecture at the University of Southern California (USC). I sat in a graduate class with about eight other students listening intently to my professor, when a man ran into our classroom and started cursing and arguing with our professor. In fifteen years of university, I have never had an experience like this one, and I certainly did not expect it at a top university like USC. Every one of us sat with our mouths open, stunned, and staring at what was unfolding before us. I stood up and approached them as the disagreement got heated. I wanted to be able to break them up in case they started getting physical. As I approached, the guest pushed my professor in the chest, yelled some profane words, and ran out the door. My professor then turned and told everyone to pull out a pen and paper and without anyone talking describe what had just happened. After about five minutes, he told us to put our pens down, and he called on us one by one to read our description of what we had just seen. It seemed like a silly question, because we all saw the same thing, and it had just happened. Why would we describe the obvious? As we went around the room and I heard explanations about gay lovers quarrel, gambling debt owed, professor having sex with the guy's wife, and extortion. No two people had the same description.
The professor's staged activity made its point; no matter what you feel you know about someone, you'll never know what or how they think. I looked around the room surprised that everyone saw something so totally different. I figured we were all around the same age, studying the same topics, at the same school. I thought we would think the same, but we absolutely did not. This understanding has carried over to every part of my life and helped me enormously with interpersonal communication. This type of insight is what can make you an outlier filled with overwhelming success.