🔥 5 Minutes of Leadership Fuel
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Welcome to The 5-Minute Mentor — your weekly dose of leadership inspiration, curated resources, and practical action. All in under 5 minutes.
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🫶 A Dose of Inspiration
“Every thought a person dwells upon, whether he expresses it or not, either damages or improves his life.”
— Lucy Mallory, writer and suffragist
Lucy Mallory wrote those words more than a century ago, yet they still echo into our leadership and lives today.
The assumptions you carry into a meeting. The story you tell yourself about why a team member has been off. The narrative you’ve been rehearsing about a difficult colleague, the one you haven’t said out loud but have thought.
Those thoughts are doing something. To your relationships. To your culture. To you.
Assuming positive intent isn’t just a communication strategy. It’s a decision about what you choose to dwell on… and who you become as a result.
📥 Download the quote graphic to use in your next staff email or meeting.
🤓 A Dose of Learning
What if the terse email, the colleague who didn’t respond, the boss who seemed dismissive… what if none of it meant what you thought it meant?
In a recent episode of the HBR IdeaCast, Amer Kaissi makes a compelling case that most of us are walking around with a hidden default setting: assuming negative intent. And it’s costing us. Our relationships, our teams, and our well-being are being affected.
The culprit isn’t bad character. It’s actually hardwired psychology.
Why We Default to the Negative
Kaissi points to two forces working against us. The first is evolutionary; our ancestors survived by treating the unknown as a threat. That instinct kept them alive. In our modern workplaces, it just keeps us guarded and in a stress loop that never closes.
The second is what psychologists call the fundamental attribution error: when someone else does something questionable, we judge them by their actions. When we do the same thing, we judge ourselves by our intentions. The colleague who doesn’t respond to your email for 24 hours is rude and checked out. You didn’t respond to theirs because you were slammed and doing your best. It happens in life, too. Remember that jerk driver who cut you off in traffic? But the morning you were running late to a meeting, the same action was totally justified.
Sound familiar?
The Positive Intent Mindset… and Why It’s Not What You Think
Kaissi isn’t asking leaders to be naive or let bad behavior slide. He calls his approach accountable positivity: start with the provisional assumption that people are trying their best, then check. Replace judgment with curiosity. Ask “What were the reasons that led you here?” rather than “Why did you do that?” Just that small shift in language (using “what” questions instead of “why”) can change the entire temperature of a conversation.
A Culture of Belief lives not in the absence of hard conversations, but in the quality of the assumptions we bring into them.
Five Capabilities to Build Accountable Positivity
Kaissi identifies five skills that strengthen a positive intent mindset over time:
- Realistic optimism — See others’ mistakes as short-term, specific, and impersonal. One error doesn’t define someone’s character or predict their future performance.
- Empathy — Start by humanizing others. You don’t have to take on their emotions, but you do have to see them as full human beings trying to navigate their own complexity, much of which you are likely unaware.
- Humility — Replace judgmental certainty with curiosity. Leaders who assume they already know why someone acted a certain way cut off the chance to learn something true and useful.
- Reality testing — Check your assumptions. Ask the person. Ask someone who was in the room. Factor in their track record before deciding on next steps.
- Forgiveness — Not for them. For you. Carrying old resentments means giving someone who may not deserve it permanent real estate in your head.
The Leadership Ripple 🌀
Here’s what’s most compelling for leaders: positivity begets positivity. When you consistently walk in assuming people are trying their best, they start to confirm that assumption. Cycles of trust form. Collaboration deepens. Commitment grows. And people… including you, feel better at work.
🎧 Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: “Assuming the Best About Others is Hard — But Necessary” featuring Dr. Amer Kaissi
🎬 A Dose of Action
Start with yourself.
This week, find opportunity in the moment of assumption. When a colleague’s email reads as short, when someone goes quiet in a meeting, when a team member misses the mark… pause before you land on a conclusion. Ask yourself two things: Have I ever done something similar? And what might a reasonable person’s reason be for this?
Then get curious. Swap your “why” questions for “what” questions. “What’s been getting in the way for you?” opens a door that “Why didn’t you finish this?” slams shut.
Then bring it to your team.
Axios, the media company known as much for its culture as its content, has made assume positive intent an official organizational core value. Not a suggestion. A standard.
What would it look like to make that standard visible on your team? Start by naming it. Share these takeaways in your next team meeting or weekly staff email. Open a conversation around these questions: What does assuming the worst cost us? What becomes possible when we assume the best?
That one conversation could be the beginning of a trust cycle your team didn’t know it was missing.
You got this. Let’s lead with belief.
In your corner,
Melody
Founder, Culture of Belief
PS: Rocked it… 🪨🔑😂
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