Clearly something that should never be attempted – BUT – something we do all the time. I don’t expect we are very good at it either, so perhaps it would be better to find alternatives. In every relationship – personal or business or whatever – we often find ourselves in the position of trying to figure out what the other person is thinking.
I would like to describe a reasonably typical business situation to illustrate the dangers and difficulties. I should stress that this is an entirely fictitious example although I use the real context of an exchange with a colleague in the Italian part of the company to make some sense of the example.
Luigi has contacted me regarding the possibility of doing a presentation for some Italian colleagues. I know what role Luigi has in the company but we have never actually met, so we have exchanged a few emails to establish some sort of relationship. He had been told by a mutual friend, Paolo, that I would be the ideal person to make this presentation.
Eventually, Luigi asks me if it would be possible to send him a draft copy of my presentation so that he could have a look at the material before confirming that we would go ahead and this I do almost immediately.
We had, up until this point, been sending emails every couple of days to each other, but there is no reply from Luigi for a couple of weeks.
So, what is the reason for no replies from Luigi? Well as this is a fictitious example I am able to make up a number of different options, however, lets examine the sort of things that I might be thinking at this point.
Top of the list, almost certainly, is that I have not measured up to his expectations and he has decided to get someone else. Alternatively, I could simply assume that he has been very busy and not had time to read my, somewhat involved, presentation. Should I send another email asking what he thought of the presentation? Would that be seen as a bit ‘pushy’? Should I decide not to bother pursuing it any longer.
Let’s look at a few options as to why there has been no reply – Luigi has gone on leave and has yet to see the email; My email with the presentation was too large and was never delivered; Luigi has asked someone to translate the presentation for him so that he can understand the nuances and that person hasn’t yet managed to complete that task; and so we could go on.
I am in the position of trying to see inside Luigi’s mind to figure out whether or not to send another email – he may well be getting annoyed that he hasn’t yet received the presentation if a scenario that resulted in my original email remaining undelivered has transpired. He might be so disappointed by the standard of my work that he is embarrassed to contact me again!
So it goes on – and this is just one encounter out of many that we experience from day to day – although hopefully in most cases we will have a bit more to go on. I suspect that most people will not consider more than a couple of options and they will be predicated on their own character (and mental models) rather than that of the other person. I think that is often the source of arguments and disagreements. Jumping to conclusions.
We would do well to remember that relationships are complex and must be fully understood before we can make a success of reading each other’s thoughts – even then the task is near impossible to achieve with any consistency.