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Management Development Secrets - Getting Off Being Hooked on Assumptions

Guest post by: Martin Haworth

Article Overview: We live our lives through the assumptions we make. We have to for the safety it brings us. yet in the workplace, this can create challenging problems too...

Management Development Secrets - Getting Off Being Hooked on Assumptions

When we live our lives, there are certain assumptions we make that help us survive, even though these circumstances are rarely backed up through personal experiences. Most of us assume that any motor vehicle that strikes us at speed will cause damage, though the majority of us will, fortunately, never have experienced it first-hand.

The assumptions we make for our safety can often be backed up by evidence, so in the main, we use the media, first-hand knowledge of others and a smattering of common sense not to step out into the road inappropriately.

In the work we do as managers, supervisors, team leaders and executives, we use assumptions to make decisions. Most often we back up the assumptions we make with as hard evidence as we can find.

Sometimes, it's the word of others we trust. Other times we seek unbiased opinion. We go and look for ourselves. Or we have experienced similar situations before and we use what we have been through ourselves, as a guide.

In different circumstances, some managers make decisions on subjective, face-value 'evidence' because that's all they have. Maybe they can't be bothered to delve deeper or even perhaps they are too trusting of the words of others.

Perhaps they don't have the skills to recognize that there might be a certain naivety in the way they process decisions, especially around people.

In other words, they make assumptions which are not based on the real hard evidence that enables them to make much more satisfactory decisions.

Where this involves people in their team, this can easily cause mistakes that do the organization little good at all.

On the other hand, one specific incident taken out of context might also lead to an individual being judged unfairly, because the manager took flaky evidence as absolute.

Assumptions have a value in our lives, to protect us and give us a heads-up on decisions we make. They are also dangerous when they do not make the transition to having solid and objective evidence.

And performance of individuals and the team can suffer because of this.

So, by taking the extra steps we need to, will ensure that not only do our people get the reward they are due for the capabilities they have, we become known for fairness and preparedness to overlook hearsay and its consequent flaws.

Then, we are truly ready to build effective and dynamic teams of individuals all doing a great job.

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Article Tags: assumptions, developing employees, management challenges, management development, team building



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