Assuming the Best About Others is Hard—But Necessary

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Communication, Business, Harvard, Strategy, Business/management, Teams, Business/marketing, Management, Leadership, Finance, Marketing, Hbr, Economics, Innovation, Business/entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship

4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are you guilty of bracing for the worst when it comes to your clients, colleagues, and bosses? Amer Kaissi, professor at Trinity University, explains why bringing that negative mindset to work will quietly undermine your team, organization, and career. He wants leaders to instead adopt a "positive intent mindset," which means giving everyone -- even people who disappoint you or with whom you vehemently disagree -- the benefit of the doubt. He shares five key capabilities we can all build to improve trust and performance without sacrificing accountability. Kaissi's book is called The Positive Intent Mindset: Exceptional Leadership Through Trust and Accountability.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Alison Beard.
0:11.9	And I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR Ideacast.
0:26.5	Adi, today let's talk about how to get along with people who make our lives harder,
0:31.3	whose views conflict with our own, who we can't seem to find common ground with,
0:34.6	who maybe we don't even really like or respect.
0:37.0	Okay, this one's going to get us in trouble, but okay.
0:38.5	No, don't worry.
0:43.8	It's still very much a conversation about good management because it's about getting in the right headspace to overcome all of these challenges at work, build better relationships,
0:48.1	and foster more productive collaboration. Oh, okay, few. I was actually worried where you
0:53.2	were going to go with that. So our guest today is Trinity University professor Amr Kaisi, and he's going to explain why more of us need to adopt a positive intent mindset. Assuming that the people around us, bosses, peers, employees, clients, suppliers, competitors, all the stakeholders have good intentions even when
1:13.1	they make mistakes or they don't behave the way we think they should. All right. So I think we've all
1:17.5	heard the old joke about what happens when you assume, not safe for work. I don't know. I'm not
1:24.6	sure organizations really benefit from constant positivity to avoid conflict,
1:29.5	but tell me more. Okay, so Kaisi would agree that you don't want to be so upbeat all the time
1:35.6	that you ignore bad behavior or let people off the hook for it. But he argues that there's a way
1:41.7	to adopt this mindset and improve teamwork, negotiations,
1:45.7	all your workplace interactions, while still insisting on accountability.
1:50.3	He's going to share both research on how this can help you and your team and then also
1:55.1	practical advice for making it work.
1:58.2	He's the author of the positive intent mindset, exceptional leadership
2:01.8	through trust and accountability. And here's our conversation.
2:09.8	So we are living in a really divisive time. There's lots of negativity in the headlines
	...

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