The more work I do with people in organizations, the more I to realize that what often holds us back from doing meaningful work, individually and together, are the untested assumptions we make about others' motivation. There are good reasons we humans do this·if we don't make some assumptions about how the world & the people in it, we would have to respond individually to every separate event. Instead, we notice patterns and abstract from the particular to the general. You're a lot more likely to survive if you assume the loud roar you hear over the next hill is an hungry lion, rather than waiting to check to make sure that your assumption is correct. But when it comes to dealing with people, not checking assumptions can lead to trouble.

It could be something simple, like someone sending a memo to all of your team members but not to you. On the flip side, what assumptions are people making about your intentions which don't really hit the mark. Many of us assume the worst; which is understandable in a down-sized, low-trust environment. If we act based on our assumptions, we've got a better than even chance of being off-target. For example, with the "mis-sent" memo, you might have assumed it was because you were at a lower level than others, while what really happened was that the sender mis-typed your e-mail address.