The Patronizing Power of 'Good Intentions'

Why a popular workplace mantra is actually corrosive, not helpful

I opened the email and there it was: the phrase that sticks in my craw.

Every.

Damn.

Time.

"I try to assume good intentions."

My reaction was visceral. I wanted to swat someone.

Pretty strong reaction, right? Aren't we supposed to give people the benefit of the doubt, and assume good intentions? After all, it's standard workplace advice for handling difficult conversations, and part of the compassionate approach I advocate for. But here was me having a VERY strong reaction!

Something about this phrase was triggering me, and I needed to understand why.

Intent vs Impact

It’s become standard advice to tell people to “focus on impact, not intention. Assume their intentions are good”.

And it’s not wrong.

But.

Of course there’s a but.

Just like there’s an implicit “but” in “I know you had the best intention…” and then what follows is usually some kind of criticism about the impact that they had!

Problem #1: We Assume We Know Someone Else's Intentions

Think about the last time someone did something that frustrated you at work. How quickly did you jump to conclusions about why they did it?

We make these leaps constantly (it’s called the fundamental attribution error, as we leap up the ladder of inference). A colleague misses a deadline, and we assume they don't value our time. Someone speaks over us in a meeting, and we assume they're deliberately trying to diminish our contribution. Your direct report submits a report with errors, and you assume they were careless or rushing.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: we are absolutely sure we know someone's intention; it is so crystally, abundantly, self-evidently clear they must have meant or intended ABC, any reasonable person would agree.

And the more sure we are, the more likely we are to be wrong.

I once coached a senior leader who was livid about a team member who had "deliberately undermined" her by presenting data that contradicted her strategy in a board meeting. Her certainty about this person's malicious intent was absolute.

"How do you know that was their intention?" I asked.

"It's obvious! They waited until I wasn't there to present. They chose the most damaging metrics. They knew exactly what they were doing."

"Have you asked them about it?"

Long pause. "No, but I don't need to. It's crystal clear."

"Humor me," I said. "What if – and this is just a possibility – what if his intentions were different than what you're assuming?"

"They weren't," she insisted, but I could hear a flicker of doubt.

Three days later, she called me.

"I talked to him," she said, her voice quiet.

"How did it go?"

"Well... it turns out the CEO directly asked him to prepare those metrics. He actually tried to get postponed until I was back, but the CEO insisted. And he told me he spent hours trying to frame the data in the most constructive way possible."

"So his intentions..."

"Were completely different than I assumed," she admitted. "He was actually terrified about presenting without me there. He thought I'd be angry – which I was, but for all the wrong reasons. I was so convinced I knew exactly what he was thinking."

"And how did it feel to discover you were wrong about his intentions?"

A long pause. "Humbling. Really humbling. I was so certain..."

Unless you are a bona fide psychic and mind reader, take it as a given: you do not know their intentions. The only way to know someone's intention is to ask them, and they tell you.

But there’s more to it than that.

A conversation goes sideways

"Chris, can we talk about what happened in yesterday's client meeting?" asks Marcus, the project manager, his tone already edged with frustration.

"Sure," Chris replies, looking up from his laptop.

"When you interrupted me during my presentation, it made me look unprepared. It’s like you were trying to undermine me in front of the client,” Marcus says accusingly.

"I was just trying to help," Chris says, defending himself. “It looked like you were getting flustered with their questions.”

"I know you think you were helping, but it felt like you were trying to take over my presentation," Marcus responds testily. "It's not the first time you've done this."

Chis’s expression hardens. "That might have been what you felt, but it wasn’t what I was trying to do.”

"Well, that's certainly how it came across."

"So now I'm lying about my own intentions?" Chris flings back, starting to get angry. "I was literally just trying to add useful information!"

"If you were really trying to help, you would have waited until I asked for input," Marcus counters. "But you didn't, because you wanted to show off your expertise."

"So I was supposed to let incorrect information to the client stand?" Chris retorts sharply.

"Ah, there it is," Marcus says with a knowing look. "You thought I was wrong, so you had to swoop in and save the day. Your defensiveness just proves my point."

See what happened there? Marcus assumed he knew Chris’s intentions from the start. When Chris (naturally) defended his actual intentions, Marcus took his defense as further evidence that his assumption was correct. Now they're both dug in, neither of them are listening to each other, and they’re further from resolution than when they started.

This is exactly why so many workplace conversations go sideways. We assume we know someone's intentions (and we’re wrong), they naturally react against that assumption, and then we use that reaction as further evidence against them – that they're lacking self-awareness, are defensive, can't take feedback, etc.

Meanwhile, we're the ones responsible for our obstinate insistence that our assumptions about their intentions are correct.

Yes, sometimes we might be right ( maybe a completely unstatistical 1% of the time!) but the overwhelming majority of the time, we're not. And our certainty says more about us than them.

Problem #2: We Use "Good Intentions" as a Shield

So you've embraced problem number one. You agree it's better to always assume the person means well, intended only the best, didn't intend to be malicious, mean, or harsh.

But you still don't like something they did. It still hurt and landed badly. It still had a negative impact on you, or someone else.

What do you do?

As it so happened, a few days after that email I was sitting as an observer during a performance review between a manager (Alicia) and her direct report (James). I'd been brought in to help this leadership team improve their feedback conversations.

After discussing James's strengths, Alicia transitioned to areas for improvement with what seemed like a textbook approach: "I know you had good intentions with the Anderson project, but the way you handled the client communication caused some problems."

I watched as James's expression shifted immediately. His body language closed, his eyes narrowed slightly, and the openness that had characterized the conversation up to that point vanished.

“James,” I said, “I just noticed a big change in your body and expression right now, can you share what’s going on for you?”

"When Alicia said she 'knew I had good intentions,'” he said slowly, like he was feeling his way to the express what he was feeling, “it felt like she was talking down to me," he said. "Like she was the judge of my inner thoughts and was being generous enough to give me a passing grade on them before criticizing my work. It made me feel defensive, even though I wasn't consciously sure why."

“Alicia, how does that land for you?” I asked.

"Oh, wow," she said. "James, thank you for having the courage to say that. As soon as you said that I remembered all the times I’ve felt the same, but hadn’t been able to express it so well. I was trying to be kind, but I was actually putting myself in a position of judgment over your intentions. No wonder you had a reaction."

“Shall we try that again?” I asked Alicia.

"James,” she gamely tried again after thinking for a moment, “there seems to have been some confusion with client communication on the Anderson project. I'd like to understand your perspective on what’s been happening and how we might improve things going forward."

James smiled, and relaxed. And they went on to have an open, collaborative conversation that yielded rich insights for both of them, and fresh insights about the project and client that Alicia had not been aware of before.

It was James who helped me understand my visceral reaction to seeing "I try to assume good intentions" in that email. I wasn't just reacting to the phrase – I was reacting to the unintended but real power dynamic it creates.

Why "I Try to Assume Good Intentions" Feels So Problematic

When someone says "I try to assume good intentions" or "I'm sure your intentions were good," it often comes across as patronizing rather than genuinely empathetic.

Instead of genuine empathy and curiosity it conveys:

Implied Judgment: By saying "I assume good intentions," you're actually positioning yourself as the moral arbiter who must deliberately choose to be generous. This implies there's something potentially questionable about the other person's actions that requires a conscious act of forgiveness or understanding.

Hierarchical Tone: The phrase creates an unspoken power dynamic where one person is magnanimously "allowing" that the other's intentions might be pure. It suggests a kind of intellectual or moral superiority.

Emotional Distance: These statements create emotional separation rather than connection. They sound like a clinical assessment rather than genuine empathy or understanding.

Presumptive Narrative: You're inserting a presumptive narrative about their motivations – even if that narrative is supposedly positive.

Implicit Power Dynamic: "Look at how good and noble I am by assuming you have good intentions" is the subtext that many people hear.

Self-Deception: When We Can't See Our Own Intentions

Here's where things get really interesting. Most humans are masters of self-deception and self-rationalization. We're so good at it, we don't even realize we're doing it!

This is a huge reason why our impact can be so different from our intention. We are masters of deceiving ourselves, rationalizing the reasons for what we said and did…because we have a strong (very strong!) human need to feel noble, right, "the good guy," justified in our actions and behaviours.

Nearly 30 years ago , I reduced my first direct report—a grown man—to tears. I was a young South African diplomat, stationed in Ramallah. I was struggling with managing someone for the first time. As I noted in my journals at the time I found him "obstinate," "slow," and "entirely too full of himself." Yeah, ouch. Do you want to be managed by me? Probably not!

During one particularly tense meeting, I threatened to fire him if he didn't follow procedures exactly as instructed. When he began to cry and plead for his job, explaining his family depended on him, I felt smugly satisfied that I'd punctured his inflated sense of self. At the time I justified my behavior to myself: "I was just doing what my boss asked. He told me to 'make him get it.' I was just doing my job. He needed that reality check. He has to learn, and fast. We can't afford his mistakes." I was convinced my actions were justified, necessary even.

Oh the tangled web of self-justification we weave for ourselves.

With some mellowing, wisdom and maturity and learning about abrasive behaviours and defensiveness, I can be more honest with myself about what my real intentions were. My intention hadn't really been kind and focussed on "helping him learn" – there had also been a desire to assert dominance, to put him in his place, to humble him. This is (still!) painful to acknowledge. It doesn’t match my self-image as a fair, just person. Only with time and greater experience and maturity was I finally ready to see and admit what I was doing then in a way I simply couldn't at the time. Back then, I was fully bought into my own self-deception about my motives and intentions.

“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.” T.S. Eliot

A Step Ladder to Better Conversations About Intentions

So how do we move beyond the problematic framing of “assuming “good intentions”? Here are some ideas:

1. Drop the "I assume good intentions" preface entirely

Instead of: "I'm sure you didn't mean to undermine me in that meeting, but..."

Try: "When you shared those concerns in the meeting before I had a chance to address them, I felt blindsided."

2. Ask about intention rather than assuming it

Instead of: "I know you were trying to help, but..."

Try: "I'm curious what you were hoping would happen when you stepped in during my presentation?"

3. Acknowledge your own uncertainty about their intentions

Instead of: "I try to assume good intentions, but that comment felt inappropriate."

Try: "I don't know what your intention was, and I want to understand it better. The comment landed as dismissive to me."

4. Focus on what you need moving forward

Instead of: "I'm sure you meant well when you took over that project, but it made me feel sidelined."

Try: "When the project direction changed without my input, I felt sidelined. In the future, I'd appreciate being included in those decisions."

5. Make room for both/and conversations

Instead of: "I know you had good intentions, but the impact was harmful."

Try: "I'd like to talk about what happened in a way that honors both your perspective and mine. Can we explore what you were hoping to accomplish and also how it affected me?"

The Real Work: Looking at Our Own Intentions

The harder, but more transformative, work is to examine our own intentions with rigorous honesty.

When you find yourself about to say "I assume good intentions," pause and ask yourself:

• What am I really trying to accomplish with this conversation?

• Am I truly curious about their perspective, or am I convinced I already know it?

• What might be my hidden intentions here? Am I trying to be seen as reasonable? To establish dominance? To protect my ego?

• How might this conversation go if I approach it with genuine curiosity and not assuming anything?

One executive I coached had a breakthrough when she realized her habit of prefacing feedback with "I know you meant well" was actually her way of avoiding conflict. By positioning herself as benevolent, she could deliver criticism while making it harder for the other person to push back.

Once she recognized this pattern, she shifted to more authentic language: "I noticed X happened, and I'm trying to understand your perspective on it."

The resulting conversations became dramatically more productive – and less defensive – on both sides.

A Closing Reflection

The next time you feel that urge to say "I assume good intentions," pause. Take a breath. Ask yourself what you're really trying to say, and whether there's a more authentic way to say it.

Perhaps the intention behind "I assume good intentions" was always good – to create space for understanding and to avoid blame. But now that we understand the impact of this phrasing, we can find better ways to reach for connection.

After all, that's the heart of compassion in the workplace: not assuming we know what others intend, but remaining curious enough to discover it together.

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Other articles you may enjoy reading:

• The Tragedy of the Fundamental Attribution Error: It's why so much of the feedback we receive just feels wrong.

• The art of giving and receiving feedback: How to give real feedback that doesn't suck. How to take it when it does.

• Where Feedback Fails: The How Vs. The What Thoughts from a recent experience of being an observer of some poorly delivered feedback…and deciding to say something.

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