My wife, Carole, and I recently saw And So It Goes, a film with Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton. Michael Douglas’ behavior in the movie reminded me of one of Stephen R. Covey’s classic habits in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Simon & Schuster, anniversary edition 2013). The habit that came to me was “Seek first to understand.” It’s one that we can easily practice every day but frequently don’t.

How often we seem to default to an assumption that someone in our workplace is lazy or irresponsible, has a bad attitude, or doesn’t care, when that person behaves in a way that seems counterproductive to our working together. It’s as if we assume that some people have innate character flaws. We frequently make those assumptions without really exploring the reasons behind the counterproductive behaviors we observe.

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