My wife and I are both on our second marriage.
One of the things we’ve learned is that a good marriage doesn’t just happen because you found the right person.
It takes work.
It takes communication. Patience. Forgiveness. A willingness to recognize your own bullshit once in a while.
And it takes learning.
Over the years, we’ve read relationship books together because we’re both interested in getting better at this thing I call relationshiping.
That’s my word. I’m sticking with it.
Every once in a while, I’ll come across something in one of those books that applies to a whole lot more than marriage.
One of those ideas has stuck with me for years.
It’s called Sentiment Override.
The Filter We See People Through
The concept was originally proposed by psychologist Robert Weiss and later studied extensively by relationship guru Dr. John Gottman.
At its simplest, there are two versions:
Positive Sentiment Override, or PSO.
And…
Negative Sentiment Override, or NSO.
Here’s how I understand it.
When you’re operating from Positive Sentiment Override, you generally believe the other person has good intentions.
So when something happens that could be interpreted a couple of different ways, you’re more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Your spouse walks through the door and doesn’t say hello.
You might think:
She must have had a rough day.
But when you’re operating from Negative Sentiment Override, the exact same event can produce an entirely different response:
She’s pissed at me again.
Same Event.
Different interpretation.
Potentially VERY different Outcome.
Sound familiar?
E + R = O
I’ve taught a simple concept for years:
Event + Response = Outcome.
We don’t always get to choose the Event.
But we have tremendous influence over our Response.
And our Response helps determine the Outcome.
Sentiment Override adds an interesting wrinkle to that equation.
Because between the E and the R, something happens.
We interpret the Event.
We tell ourselves a story about what just happened.
And that story has a tremendous influence on our Response.
The unanswered email.
The short text message.
The employee who walked past without saying hello.
The customer who questioned an invoice.
The business partner who made a decision without calling you first.
None of those Events necessarily tell us what the other person intended.
We fill in that blank.
And the sentiment we already carry toward that person often determines what we put in it.
We Had a Code of Values About This
Years ago, one of our company Codes of Values said:
“We acknowledge everyone as right from their own perspective.”
I always loved that one.
It doesn’t mean everyone is factually right.
They’re not.
It doesn’t mean we have to agree with everyone.
We won’t.
It means there’s usually a reason someone sees a situation the way they do.
Their information.
Their experiences.
Their priorities.
Their fears.
Their expectations.
Their perspective.
If I start a difficult conversation believing:
This guy is an idiot.
I’ve already predetermined quite a bit about where that conversation is going.
If instead I start with:
There’s probably a reason this makes sense from his perspective. Let me understand what he’s seeing.
Everything changes.
Same disagreement.
Different Response.
Different probability of a productive Outcome.
What If We Practiced PSO at Work?
This is where the relationship lesson really started resonating with me as an entrepreneur.
What would happen if we deliberately approached our business relationships with a little more Positive Sentiment Override?
An employee screws something up.
Instead of:
He doesn’t care.
Try:
He’s a good employee. Something went wrong. Let’s figure out what happened.
A customer gets upset.
Instead of:
She’s impossible to please.
Try:
Something about this experience didn’t meet her expectations. Let’s understand what that was.
Your business partner challenges your idea.
Instead of:
He never supports me.
Try:
He sees something I don’t see yet.
A vendor misses a deadline.
Instead of immediately assuming incompetence or dishonesty:
There’s probably more to this story. Let’s find out.
Notice what PSO doesn’t require.
It doesn’t require pretending the mistake didn’t happen.
It doesn’t require tolerating poor performance.
It doesn’t require agreeing with the customer.
And it certainly doesn’t require allowing people to take advantage of you.
Positive Sentiment Override isn’t blindness.
It’s choosing not to assign negative intent before you have the information to justify it.
That’s a big difference.
NSO Can Become a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
I’ve seen the opposite happen plenty of times in business.
Once we decide an employee is lazy, we start noticing everything that confirms it.
Once we decide a customer is difficult, every request becomes another example.
Once we stop trusting a business partner, every decision starts looking suspicious.
And once someone realizes we’ve already decided who they are?
They often start responding accordingly.
Defensiveness creates defensiveness.
Suspicion creates suspicion.
Hostility creates hostility.
Pretty soon, both people have accumulated enough evidence to prove they were right about the other person all along.
That’s one hell of a way to build a relationship.
Marriage or business.
There’s Another Relationship Where This Matters
There’s one more place I’ve been thinking about this.
The relationship we have with ourselves.
I don’t think Gottman’s research was intended to describe our internal dialogue, so I’ll own this application rather than putting it on him.
But I wonder if we don’t sometimes create our own version of Negative Sentiment Override.
We screw something up.
See? I knew I wasn’t ready.
An opportunity doesn’t work out.
Nothing ever works out for me.
Someone doesn’t return the call.
They probably don’t think I belong in the room.
I’ve caught myself doing some of that over the last several years.
And if you’ve read my thoughts about Chris 2.0, you know I’m working on it.
Maybe Positive Sentiment Override applies internally too.
Maybe instead of assuming the worst about myself, I can say:
I’ve handled difficult things before. Let’s figure this one out.
Same Event.
Different Response.
Different Outcome.
Assume Positive Intent
I don’t think the lesson is complicated.
Maybe that’s why it stuck with me.
Assume positive intent until you’re given a legitimate reason not to.
With your spouse.
With your employees.
With your customers.
With your business partners.
With your friends.
And maybe even with yourself.
That doesn’t mean being naive.
Experience should teach us.
Battle Scars should make us wiser.
But there’s a difference between allowing experience to make us wiser and allowing it to make us cynical.
I’ve spent nearly four decades building businesses and working with people.
And most problems between people aren’t improved by entering the conversation assuming the other person is the enemy.
So the next time something happens and you feel yourself starting to react, maybe insert one question between the E and the R:
What if I’m interpreting this wrong?
Give the other person a little room.
Try to understand their perspective.
Assume positive intent.
Then choose your Response.
Because what we’re looking for in other people has a funny way of becoming exactly what we find.
Chris Shurian is an entrepreneur, speaker, mentor and founder of Bootstraps & Battle Scars. After nearly four decades of entrepreneurship, he shares the wins, failures and Battle Scars from his journey to help other founders navigate their own.