Positive Intent Is Hard: Improving Culture Without Fighting Human Nature

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Author: Kasandra Murray

As the owner of Unlucky Umbrella Studio, Kasandra focuses on the importance of growing marketing and operations together. She has over a decade of experience in management, operations, and marketing. She aims to help businesses resolve critical issues and increase revenue, which leads to happier clients and a better work culture.

Positive intent isn’t natural

When I managed a print marketing firm, I always started onboarding by introducing the new hire to the team. After that, we’d step into a private office, and I’d explain that our team was full of high performers, which could be a culture shock for newcomers. I reassured them that leadership and I were there to help them succeed, then said, “Here, we don’t have people problems, we have process problems.” My goal was to set this tone from day one. If someone came to us blaming others, we would guide them to focus on the process instead.

During one onboarding, the new hire said, “Oh, you mean positive intent! I love that.” I was new to the phrase at the time; it immediately caught my attention, and I adopted it in my leadership style.

Positive intent means assuming that others act in good faith and with honest motives. Former Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi helped make this idea popular, and now it’s common in work culture, leadership programs, and organizations of all sizes.

Even though teams understand the idea and leaders try to reinforce it through values and training, it’s not always easy to assume positive intent. Even years after learning about positive intent, I still find it difficult at times to put it into practice.

This challenge exists because our brains are naturally wired to spot risks and assign blame quickly. Over time, we’ve learned to pay more attention to “bad actions” than “good actions.” In the wild, assuming a rustling bush or a predator had “good intentions” could have been dangerous.

Also, not everyone has good intentions. If you keep giving someone the benefit of the doubt when they don’t deserve it, it can end up hurting you, your team, and your organization.

So if mindset alone isn’t enough to change behavior and improve culture, how can you put positive intent into practice in a way that fits our natural tendencies?

Create a Common Bad Guy without Hurting Accountability

Blame helps our brains process bad experiences and protect us. When we blame, it releases negative feelings and helps us manage our emotions. The challenge is letting your team blame productively while still making sure people take responsibility when needed. You can do this by setting up a process and training that creates a common “bad guy.”

When you focus on the process instead of blaming people, you naturally start practicing positive intent.

John didn’t miss the deadline because he is lazy. It was missed because we don’t have a good process for handing off responsibilities and defining clear due dates.

Jane didn’t fail to convert a lead because she was disorganized. It’s hard for her to keep up with the volume of leads in the current process, which is outdated and requires many unnecessary steps.

Blaming the process shows you’re practicing positive intent, but it also gives you something concrete to work on to solve the problem.

Accountability Starts with Leadership

You might notice there are two “bad guys”: process and training. When things go wrong, leadership should be the first to take responsibility. If leaders assume the training wasn’t enough, they can work with their teams to clarify processes.

When leaders show accountability and admit they could have trained better, it tells the team it’s okay to make mistakes as long as you work to improve.

We go into more detail on the troubleshooting process and training missteps in our Operations Improvement Funnel blog.

Build an Environment that Supports Positive Intent

To shift your focus from people to process, you need to build systems that reduce uncertainty. Here are some common areas where you can improve processes to help your team keep a positive intent.

• Clarify Ownership: Who is responsible for what? When does handoff occur? What should handoff look like? Ownership should be narrowed down to an individual whenever possible. If everyone is the owner, then no one is the owner.

• Define Expectations: Due dates, dependencies, quality, execution, and communication must be documented in writing and easily accessible.

• Increase Visibility: Use tools to centralize your workflow, show statuses and next steps, and highlight any roadblocks for the whole team. Also, make sure everyone knows how to quickly find their own responsibilities in the tool.

• Have Post-Mortem Meetings: When things go wrong or don’t go as planned, meet with your team to review what happened and discuss fixes you can implement right away. Focus on asking, “What is the process?” instead of “Who did what?”

How positive intent rewires your team

When your team stops blaming each other and focuses on process and training instead, the environment becomes more collaborative. Over time, it will feel natural to look at processes first, not people. High performers will have more autonomy, and new hires will get a clear path to success.

Making these changes in your business will naturally shape your culture, without it feeling forced or like a top-down order from leadership.

If your team is facing challenges or wants help making positive intent feel more natural, reach out to us.