Written by Nicola Richardson, Founder of The People Mentor. The People Mentor helps small employers, managers and leaders handle difficult conversations, strengthen accountability and lead with calm, practical confidence.
This article looks at jumping to conclusions at work and how quiet assumptions fuel misunderstanding between managers and their teams. It covers why your mind fills gaps with stories, how those stories drive the wrong reactions, and a simple way to check your assumptions before you act on them.
Key takeaways from The People Mentor
- Your mind hates an information gap and will fill it with a story, usually one that casts you as the wronged party.
- Most workplace misunderstandings start as an assumption that never got checked.
- Jumping to conclusions at work feels like insight, but it is often just a guess with confidence.
- One question, asked before you react, prevents most of the damage.
- Curiosity is a leadership skill, not a soft one.
The story you did not know you were telling
A colleague walks past your desk without saying good morning. Within a second, your mind has an explanation ready. They are annoyed with you. Something is wrong. What did you do?
Here is what actually happened. They did not see you. They were thinking about the meeting they are late for. The whole drama existed only in your head, and yet you might spend the next hour slightly cool with them, which they will notice, which will make things genuinely awkward. A misunderstanding, built entirely from a story you told yourself and never checked.
Jumping to conclusions at work is one of the most common ways good relationships quietly go wrong. Not through big conflicts, but through small assumptions that harden into facts before anyone has said a word out loud. Learning to catch that habit is one of the most practical things you can do as a manager.
Why you keep jumping to conclusions at work
Your brain does not like not knowing. When there is a gap in the information, a silence, a short reply, an unexplained decision, it reaches for the fastest available explanation to close the gap. And the fastest explanation is rarely the most generous one.
Under pressure, your mind defaults to the version of events that feels threatening, because it is trying to protect you. So the quiet colleague becomes the annoyed colleague. The delayed reply becomes the person who does not value your time. The manager who changed the plan becomes someone undermining you deliberately.
None of these are conclusions. They are guesses. But they do not feel like guesses, because your mind delivers them with total confidence. That is the trap. The story feels like something you have noticed, when really it is something you have invented.
For example, one manager I worked with was convinced a team member was being deliberately obstructive because he kept missing small deadlines. She had a whole narrative built around his attitude. When she finally asked, it turned out he was drowning in a workload nobody had reviewed in months. The obstruction was in her head. The overload was real. Two very different conversations, and only one of them was true.
How assumptions turn into misunderstanding
The problem is not that you have assumptions. Everyone does. The problem is when you act on them as if they were facts.
Once you have decided that a colleague is annoyed with you, you treat them as if they are. You are a bit shorter with them. You stop offering the easy warmth you normally would. They feel the change and respond in kind, and now there really is tension where there was none. Your assumption did not describe the situation. It created it.
This is how so many workplace fallings-out actually begin. Not with a real disagreement, but with a misread that neither person checked. And the longer it goes unchecked, the more evidence each person collects for their version, because we are very good at noticing what confirms the story we are already telling.
At The People Mentor, I look for the pattern beneath the behaviour before assuming someone is simply being difficult. Most of the time, the difficult person is a person who is stretched, distracted, or dealing with something you cannot see. That does not excuse everything. But it changes the conversation you have from an accusation to an enquiry, and enquiries go a great deal better.
The question that changes everything
There is one habit that defuses more of this than anything else. Before you react to your interpretation, ask what else could be true.
That is it. The person went quiet, and your first story is that they are annoyed. What else could be true? They are busy. Maybe they are unwell, or they did not register the message, or something is going on at home. Once you can hold three or four possible explanations instead of clinging to the worst one, the pressure to react drops away, and you can respond to the person in front of you rather than the villain in your head.
Then, where it matters, check it out loud. You do not have to make it heavy. A simple, “I noticed you seemed a bit quiet earlier, everything okay?” does the job. Nine times out of ten, the answer has nothing to do with you. And on the tenth, you have opened a real conversation instead of stewing on a guess.
| The moment | The story you tell yourself | What else could be true | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| A colleague is short with you | They are angry with me | They are stressed or rushing | Ask a light, genuine question |
| Someone misses a deadline | They are being lazy or obstructive | They are overloaded or unclear | Check the workload before the attitude |
| Your boss changes your plan | They are undermining me | They have information you do not | Ask what prompted the change |
| A quiet team member says little in meetings | They are disengaged | They process before they speak | Create another way for them to contribute |
Try this: name the story
For the next week, catch yourself in the act of concluding.
When you feel a reaction rising towards someone, pause and finish this sentence in your head: the story I am telling myself is… Say it plainly. The story I am telling myself is that she does not respect me. Just naming it as a story, rather than a fact, loosens its grip. Then ask your one question. What else could be true? You will be surprised how often the honest answer is, I actually do not know, which is the most useful place to start from.
Final thought
You are not a mind reader, and the moment you act like one, you usually get it wrong. The manager who asks looks far wiser than the one who assumed and was certain.
Where to go next
Checking an assumption often means opening a conversation you were not sure how to start. My self-paced course Making Difficult Conversations Easier gives you the language and structure to raise something calmly, without accusation, so a simple check does not tip into a confrontation. And if you would rather build the habit alongside other managers dealing with the same realities, The Manager’s Academy is where that ongoing support lives.
The stories your mind hands you are usually written by your inner critic, so read managing your inner critic next. And if you are just starting, go back to the Mindset Challenge for the full picture.
Frequently asked questions
Why do I keep jumping to conclusions at work? Because your mind fills information gaps with the fastest available story, and under pressure that story tends to be the threatening one. It feels like insight, but it is usually a guess delivered with false confidence.
How do I stop assuming the worst about a colleague? Ask what else could be true before you react, and hold several explanations at once instead of clinging to the worst one. Where it matters, check your assumption with a light, genuine question rather than acting on the guess.
What is the difference between an assumption and a fact at work? A fact is something you have observed or confirmed. An assumption is the meaning you have added on top of it. A short email is a fact. Deciding it means someone is angry is an assumption.
Is asking a question a sign that I lack judgement as a manager? No. Asking before concluding is judgement. The manager who checks an assumption consistently makes better decisions than the one who is confidently wrong.