A manager once shared a moment that stayed with him longer than he expected.
During several team meetings, he noticed one employee typing on her phone while he was presenting. At first he ignored it, but after seeing it happen several times he began to feel irritated. To him the message seemed obvious. She must not be paying attention.
Eventually he decided to address it. After one meeting he pulled her aside and explained that using a phone during a presentation appeared disrespectful and suggested she was disengaged.
Her response surprised him.
She explained that she had been sharing quotes and key ideas from the meeting with a group of clients and followers online. She believed she was helping promote the team’s work and extend the ideas from the meeting to a wider audience.
In that moment the manager realized something uncomfortable.
The only thing he had truly observed was that she was using her phone.
Everything else had been created in his mind. The meaning, the assumption, and the conclusion were interpretations he had added to a small piece of information.
Situations like this happen constantly at work. A delayed email becomes a sign of poor commitment. A quiet employee is labeled uninterested. A short message feels rude.
Often the facts are simple. The story we attach to those facts is what changes everything.
Learning how those stories form is important because they quietly influence leadership decisions. In the second article in this series we will explore practical ways to interrupt these assumptions before they affect judgment, but first it helps to understand how the mind reaches those conclusions in the first place.
Modern workplaces move quickly. Employees often make decisions without detailed instructions, and leaders must respond to new information constantly. In these environments the human brain relies heavily on quick judgments.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains that people frequently depend on fast thinking when interpreting events. This mental system allows people to react quickly, but it can also lead to mistaken conclusions when situations are complex (Kahneman, 2011).
Because of this, people often react not to reality itself but to their interpretation of reality.
There are two common ways people reach conclusions.
Sometimes a decision begins with reliable information and moves step by step toward a clear outcome. Imagine a company conducts an employee survey and learns that many workers struggle with childcare responsibilities. Research shows that flexible schedules reduce stress and improve retention. Based on that evidence, offering flexible work options becomes a reasonable decision.
In that situation the conclusion grows from verified information.
In other cases, people begin with observations and then form conclusions from what they see. A manager might notice that several employees appear stressed and occasionally mention childcare challenges. From those patterns the manager may believe flexible schedules would help.
That conclusion could still be correct.
However, it is based on impressions rather than confirmed data.
Both approaches can be useful. Observations often highlight problems before formal data exists. The difficulty appears when impressions are treated as proven facts.
Organizational psychologist Chris Argyris described a pattern that explains how this happens. He called it the Ladder of Inference (Argyris, 1990). The concept explains how people move from observing something to acting on it, often within seconds.
The process begins with a simple observation. People then select certain details while ignoring others. They assign meaning to those details and develop assumptions. Those assumptions lead to conclusions, and those conclusions influence actions.
Most of this process happens automatically.
In the meeting example, the manager saw an employee using her phone. That was the only confirmed fact. From there his mind filled in the rest of the story. He assumed she was texting socially. He concluded she was disengaged. Then he confronted her.
The brain fills gaps quickly because speed helps us navigate the world. Yet in complex environments like workplaces, missing details can matter.
Recognizing this pattern helps explain why misunderstandings happen so easily. But awareness alone does not change behavior. The next step is learning how to interrupt this thinking process before assumptions turn into decisions.
That is where the practical side of leadership begins.
If assumptions form in seconds, learning how to pause before acting becomes one of the most valuable skills a leader can develop.
In the next article we explore simple habits that help leaders separate facts from interpretations, ask better questions, and make clearer decisions.
Continue reading:
When Smart People Make Wrong Assumptions – Part 2: How Better Questions Lead to Better Decisions
Sources
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Argyris, C. (1990). Overcoming Organizational Defenses.
