Assuming positive intent isn't naive — it's a leadership discipline. The habit that rebuilds trust, defuses conflict, and transforms culture from the inside out.
A few years ago, I was in a meeting with a leadership team that was quietly falling apart. Not dramatically — no one was yelling, no one had quit. It was subtler than that. People were showing up late to calls. Emails were going unanswered for days. Side conversations were happening that weren't making it into the room.
The leader pulled me aside afterward and said, "I don't know what's going on. Nobody seems to care anymore."
I asked him one question: "When someone on your team does something that frustrates you, what's your first instinct?"
He thought about it for a second. "Honestly? I assume they're being lazy. Or that they don't respect my time."
There it was.
He wasn't a bad leader. He was a leader who had stopped assuming positive intent — and his team could feel it. Not in anything he said out loud. In the way he looked at people when they walked in late. In the tone of his follow-up emails. In the way he asked questions that sounded like accusations.
Culture is contagious. And so is suspicion.
Let me be clear about something: assuming positive intent is not the same as being naive.
It doesn't mean you ignore patterns. It doesn't mean you let people off the hook for chronic underperformance. It doesn't mean you pretend everything is fine when it isn't.
What it means is this: before you have all the information, you choose to believe that the person in front of you is acting from a place of good faith.
That's it. That's the whole practice.
Someone misses a deadline. Before you fire off an email, you pause and ask yourself: what is the most generous interpretation of what just happened? Maybe they're overwhelmed and didn't want to admit it. Maybe there was a miscommunication about the timeline. Maybe something is going on at home that you don't know about yet.
You don't know. And the moment you act like you do — the moment you lead from suspicion instead of curiosity — you've already done damage that's hard to undo.
"Assume positive intent is not a personality trait. It's a practice. And like any practice, it gets easier the more you do it."— Eric Brooker
I have seven kids. If you've heard me speak, you know that. And if you've raised kids, you know that assuming positive intent is something you practice about forty times a day before breakfast.
My daughter Abby went through a stretch a few years back where she was pulling away. Less talkative at dinner. Spending more time in her room. I noticed it, and my first instinct — if I'm being honest — was to wonder if I'd done something wrong. Or if she was being difficult on purpose.
I almost had that conversation. The one where you come in a little defensive, a little accusatory, and the other person immediately shuts down because they can feel that you've already decided what the story is.
Instead, I sat with it. I assumed she was going through something — not doing something to me. And I showed up differently. More curious. Less reactive. I asked questions instead of making statements.
What came out of that conversation changed our relationship. She was dealing with something at school she hadn't known how to bring to me. She wasn't pulling away from me. She was trying to figure out if I was safe to come to.
That's what assuming positive intent creates. Safety. The kind of safety where people bring you the real stuff instead of the version they think you can handle.
Here's what I've watched happen in organizations that operate from a default of suspicion:
People stop taking risks. When you know that a mistake will be met with judgment instead of curiosity, you stop doing anything that might result in a mistake. You play it safe. You do the minimum. You protect yourself.
Communication breaks down. When people don't feel safe telling the truth, they stop telling it. They give you the answer they think you want. They say "I'm fine" when they're not. They agree in the meeting and complain in the parking lot.
Relationship Capital drains. Trust is built in deposits — small, consistent moments of choosing to believe the best about someone. When you stop making those deposits, the account empties. And when the account is empty, you have no currency left for the hard conversations, the big asks, the moments when you really need people to run through a wall for you.
The math is simple. Suspicion costs more than it saves.
Assuming positive intent is not a personality trait. Some people are naturally more charitable in their interpretations. Most of us aren't — especially under pressure, especially when we're tired, especially when we've been burned before.
It's a practice. And like any practice, it gets easier the more you do it.
Here's where I'd start:
When something frustrates you, build in a gap between the trigger and your reaction. Even thirty seconds. Use that gap to ask: what's the most generous interpretation of what just happened?
Instead of acting on your interpretation, get curious. "Hey, I noticed you missed the deadline — what happened?" Not accusatory. Genuinely curious. You'll be surprised how often the answer changes everything.
I've worked with leaders who literally put "assume positive intent" on the wall in their team spaces. Not as a platitude — as a commitment. When it's named, it becomes a standard. And when it's a standard, people hold each other to it.
This one's harder. When you make a mistake, do you assume positive intent about yourself? Or do you spiral into self-judgment? The way you treat yourself under pressure is usually the way you treat others. Work on both.
Here's what I've seen happen in teams that commit to this practice over time.
The conversations get more honest. When people know they won't be judged for bringing a problem, they bring problems earlier — before they become crises. The leader gets better information. Better decisions get made.
The culture gets more resilient. Teams that assume positive intent don't fracture under pressure the way suspicious teams do. When things go wrong — and they always go wrong — they move toward the problem together instead of looking for someone to blame.
And the Relationship Capital compounds. Every time you choose curiosity over judgment, you make a deposit. Every deposit builds trust. And trust, as I've said a thousand times, is the currency of performance.
It's not a soft idea. It's a hard-nosed business strategy dressed in human clothing.
That leader I mentioned at the beginning — the one whose team had gone quiet? We worked on this together for about six months. He started pausing before he reacted. He started asking questions instead of making assumptions. He started naming what he was doing, out loud, with his team.
About four months in, one of his direct reports said something to him that he shared with me later. She said: "I don't know what changed, but I actually want to come to work now."
That's it. That's the whole thing.
Assume positive intent. Watch what happens.
Eric's keynote Relationship Capital turns this into a Monday-morning practice your managers can actually use.