I was one week away from letting a capable person go. She hadn’t done anything wrong. I had.

I had built a story about her in my head, and I was sure it was true.

You probably know someone on your team who is carrying a story like that. “Difficult.” “Not a team player.” “Doesn’t care.” Nobody remembers who gave it to them, and almost nobody checked if it was true.

Here’s the simple version: most trust problems start with a story nobody checked.

Your people are smart and committed. What’s usually missing is a shared way to separate what happened from what we think it means.

How a Story Turns Into a “Fact”

In the 1970s, Harvard psychologist Chris Argyris described the Ladder of Inference. At the bottom is what a camera would have recorded. Then your brain starts climbing. It picks a few details, adds meaning, reaches a conclusion, and acts on it.

It happens in seconds. And at the top, it doesn’t feel like a story. It feels like seeing clearly.

That isn’t a flaw. It’s how a healthy brain works.

The goal isn’t to stop the story.

It’s to notice it before you act on it.

A Story: The Hire Who “Didn’t Get It”

She was new, and I was sure she was a great fit. Then things started going wrong.

She sat through onboarding, nodded, took notes, and never asked a single question. Then her work came back wrong. I trained her again myself. Same result.

Slowly, the story took over: she just doesn’t get it. She’s not the right fit.

What stopped me was a question about myself, not about her. I’m very direct. I get to the point and assume the other person is keeping up. Maybe my speed made her nervous, and nervous people don’t ask questions.

So I sat down with her and asked, with no decision in my pocket. In about ten minutes, it all came out. She wanted to ask. She just didn’t feel she could.

I had read a nod as understanding. She had read my speed as “you should already know this.”

The Two-Column Check

Next time you catch yourself labeling someone, draw a line down a page.

Left column, the story: the conclusion in your head, unedited.
Right column, the facts: only what a camera would have recorded.

For example:

• Story: “She’s not a team player.”

• Fact: “She disagreed with the plan in three meetings.”

If your right column is shorter than your left, you don’t have a forecast. You have a story.

Then say what you noticed, say you might be wrong, and ask one question: “I noticed you’ve been quieter in meetings lately. I might be reading too much into it. What’s going on?”

Where to Start

Pick one label on your team this week. Write the two columns. Then have the conversation.

Trust grows when people address tension early, say things clearly, assume good intent, and share context. This check practices all four, because it makes you test the story before you act on it.

When a whole team does this, fewer issues travel up to you to be translated. People settle misunderstandings at the source, and you stop being the last set of eyes on every one.

This is Step 2 of the five steps in Collaborative Conversations™, which walk you through a hard conversation from before you walk in to the follow-through. I put the full approach in my new best-selling book. Get your free copy of Collaborative Conversations.

Think of one label on your team right now. What’s the fact, and what’s the story?