High trust, low trust, and meetings gone bad

I loved the unpleasant familiarity of Gretchen Rubin’s Seven things to say in a meeting to make yourself look good and someone else look bad. Sometimes we really shoot ourselves in the foot, don’t we?

What I’ve been mulling over ever since reading her post is one of the comments (the fourth one), which repositions each of the statements with a high trust interpretation.

For example, given the statement “I don’t need all the details. Let’s just get to the bottom line,” Gretchen offers the interpretation: “You imply that others are quibblers and small-minded technicians, while deflecting the possible need to master complicated details yourself.”

The commenter offers the alternative high trust interpretation: “I trust you did your job perfectly. I need to hear only your conclusion.”

Ever since reading that, I’ve been noticing what my default interpretation of someone’s statement is, and then asking myself what the high trust interpretation would be. It’s been educational – uncomfortably so – to realize how foreign the high trust interpretation is for me in some contexts. I’m making a conscious effort to have that high trust interpretation come as my first (or, at least, my dominant) reaction.