The Invisible Mentor

Recently someone who I know asked me where the food court was in the mall close by, so I started giving him directions. He asked if I could go with him and I thought about it and said yes, not much arm twisting needed. We go into the mall and he tells me that he has never been inside before. I am quite astonished because he works right beside the mall. He adds that he would have gotten lost had I not been with him, and when I thought about it he was correct. I  have been going to that mall for nearly 15 years so I do not even have to think about it, I know where everything is. I assumed that because the food court was easy for me to find that it would be easy for others to find as well. The reality is that there are many aisles that you could get lost in and the layout isn’t perfect. And, it doesn’t help that three malls are connected to each other underground.

What assumptions do you make that could possibly trip up others? Are the instructions for your training products clear? When you give directions from point A to B, do you leave out landmarks, distance and possible time it takes, to help others gauge if they are on track? Have you ever been frustrated when the instructions to perform a task wasn’t clear? The assumptions you make, are they friends or foe? Do they assist you or hamper you? Do they make you appear credible?

The next time you have to explain something, write or  give instructions or directions, before you begin, pause and think before you do anything. Also think about what you would like if you were the recipient of the explanation, directions or instructions.

We can take making assumptions even further, what assumptions do we make daily? What assumptions do we bring to the table? What assumptions do we make about others? What assumptions do we make about how things get done? And so on and so on… Do all these assumptions that we make cloud our judgment and prevent us from being creative?

In Did You Spot the Gorilla by Richard Wiseman, which I have talked about before, there is an exercise with the face of a clock in Roman numerals. A few of the numbers are missing and you are asked to fill in the missing numbers. I finished the exercise in record time and found much to my dismay, that just like everyone, for the number four which we are taught is IV, on all watches and clocks it is IIII, except for the Big Ben in London. I made a reasonable assumption, but it was an incorrect one. Please read Could You Swear to It?

One of the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz is to don’t make assumptions, but as an information professional, I have to make assumptions because I never have all the information that I require so I have to fill in the gaps based on experience, so perhaps the agreement should be make assumptions with caution. Are there specific instances where you are forced to make assumptions, how do you handle them? So, the way you deal with assumptions in instances like these, is to state what you do know, what you don’t know, and what you think.

What are your thoughts? Please keep the information flowing, click on the comment link below and leave a note for me. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

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Photo Credit: Zemanta and Apture (The photo is of Richard Wiseman)

Related posts:

1. Could You Swear to It?
2. Things I have Learned

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