With out even realizing it, we’re continually making selections and taking actions primarily based on our assumptions concerning the individuals and conditions in our lives. We’re positive we all know the true purpose our colleague has been dropping the ball currently (he’s lazy and assumes I’ll choose up the slack). We enact a strategic plan we predict will win (we all know what clients will need). We ignore indicators that somebody near us is withdrawing (it’s only a part they usually need to be left alone).
After we make selections primarily based on assumptions and partial data, we’re, in essence, betting. Whether or not we’re hiring a brand new worker or launching a brand new product, we’re betting that our learn of the scenario (he’s a terrific match for my workforce or this product is best than anything in the marketplace), is the proper one. There’s nothing inherently flawed with making an informed guess—it’s typically the one choice when there are unknowns and plenty of doable outcomes.
However once we are so sure of our conclusions, we fail to consider the implications if we’re flawed. We fail to contemplate what else may be true, or what data we’re lacking. We don’t hunt down alternate interpretations or totally different views. As they are saying, while you assume, you make an… nicely, you realize the remaining.
One among my favourite episodes from Ted Lasso illustrates the perils of staying caught in our certainty and forgetting to get curious.
Ted and Rupert
Supply: Picture from Apple TV+ Honest Use
In a single scene, Ted challenges Rupert, the merciless ex-husband of Ted’s boss and a minority proprietor of the Richmond workforce, to a sport of darts on the native pub. The stakes are excessive. If Rupert wins, he will get to choose the beginning lineup of Richmond’s final two video games, a call with big repercussions for the coaches. If Ted wins, Rupert has to keep away from the proprietor’s field, and due to this fact from his ex-wife, for the remainder of the season. Rupert agrees to the match, clearly assuming that this ridiculous, impossibly pleasant American who barely is aware of the principles of soccer poses no risk to him.
Murmurs unfold by way of the crowded pub because the darts match begins. It’s shut, however after 5 rounds Rupert has taken the lead and is gloating loudly. Ted wants two triple twenties and a bullseye to win—an almost inconceivable mixture. Rupert snickers and sips his champagne, however Ted appears unphased.
As he prepares for his closing flip, Ted tells Rupert a couple of Walt Whitman quote he as soon as noticed painted on a wall again in Kansas Metropolis: Be curious, not judgmental. “I like that,” Ted says as he throws his first dart, hitting the triple twenty completely.
He continues, “I get again in my automobile and I’m driving to work and impulsively it hits me: all them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one in all them was curious. , they thought that they had every thing all found out, so that they judged every thing, they usually judged everybody. And I noticed that their underestimating me [and] who I used to be had nothing to do with it.”
Ted goals once more. “As a result of in the event that they have been curious, they might’ve requested questions. Questions like, ‘Have you ever performed a whole lot of darts, Ted?’”
The dart lands proper subsequent to the primary.
The pub is silent.
Ted smiles, “To which I’d have answered, ‘Sure sir. Each Sunday afternoon at a sports activities bar with my father from age 10 till I used to be 16 when he handed away.’”
The dart strikes the double bullseye. An ideal shot to win the wager.
Now don’t get me flawed, I liked watching Rupert fall flat as a lot as the subsequent Ted Lasso fan, however as a query nerd, I couldn’t assist pondering what classes could possibly be realized from this face-off. May understanding Ted’s darts prowess have saved Rupert from defeat? Perhaps not, however maybe if he had been open to the likelihood that there was extra to Ted than he assumed, Rupert would have thought somewhat more durable concerning the wager he was making. And he wouldn’t have appeared fairly so dumb when he misplaced in any case that boasting.
Do this: The following time making a decision, pause for a second and reframe the selection as a wager. What assumptions are you making? What data may you be lacking? Who might you ask to seek out out that data? This lets you be sure you aren’t letting certainty cloud your judgment, and as a substitute permit your curiosity to do your due diligence earlier than you act.
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