Rethinking the Stories We Tell Ourselves About Our Colleagues

Consider a few familiar scenarios. A colleague speaks over you in a meeting for the second time, and a thought arrives almost instantly in your head: she must think I’m incapable. A coworker seems unusually quiet during a hallway exchange, and the thought that follows is that he’s avoiding me for some reason, or I must have done something wrong. A manager reorganizes a team’s workload, and one team member concludes: they are trying to push me out. In each case, a single observed behavior is followed by an interpretation of what that behavior means, and the interpretation is treated, from that point forward, as though it were simply what happened.

This post examines what happens during the gap between an observed behavior and the interpretation assigned to it, why that gap is so easy to overlook, and what a more deliberate response can look like in a workplace setting.

The Narrative Feels Like Fact, but It Is an Interpretation

Nguyen (2022) opened his discussion of this pattern with a claim attributed to philosopher Sydney Banks: “Thought is not reality; yet it is through thought that our realities are created” (as cited in Nguyen, 2022, p. 15). Nguyen illustrated the claim with a simple exercise: ask one hundred different people what one identical thing, money, a public figure, a shared event, means to them, and the result is close to 100 different answers, despite everyone having encountered the exact same fact (p. 15). In this sense, a colleague’s behavior in a meeting is closer to a shared event. What the colleague’s behavior means is determined, through thought, by the observer, not by the behavior itself. The gap is easy to overlook because thoughts create a sense of reality instantly and without effort (Nguyen, 2022, p. 15). Interpretation of behavior is separate from reality.

This distinction matters because the emotional weight of a workplace narrative rarely comes from the observed behavior alone. Nguyen (2022) argued that psychological distress, what most people experience as self-doubt, anxiety, or resentment, is generated less by an event itself than by the sustained, repetitive thinking that follows it (p. 28). Being interrupted once in a meeting is an event; deciding that the interruption means a colleague thinks less of someone is a single thought about that event. Returning to that conclusion across the rest of the day is the thinking that follows, and it is that second layer, not the first, that tends to shape how a person behaves in every subsequent meeting, hallway exchange, or email exchange with that colleague.

The Empty Boat

A story Nguyen (2022) recounted from Zen tradition offers a useful test for this pattern. A young monk, unable to meditate amid his monastery’s noise, rows a boat to the middle of a quiet lake. On the third day, another boat drifts into his and knocks it off course. Furious, he shouts at the other boat to steer away; when nothing changes, he stands to confront whoever is responsible, only to find the boat empty. It had simply drifted on the wind (Nguyen, 2022, pp. 19–21). Nguyen later explained a thought the young monk encountered:

The workplace version of this test is straightforward. Of the behavior just observed, how much is confirmed fact? A colleague who spoke over someone in a meeting may indeed have intended to diminish them; the same behavior is equally consistent with someone who is anxious, distracted, unaware of the interruption, or simply excited about the point being made. Nguyen (2022) explained fear through the same mechanism. “Thinking is the root cause of fear. If you don’t think, there is no fear” (p. 99). The fear that often accompanies a hostile workplace narrative, that a colleague is a threat, a rival, or an obstacle, is generated at the moment the narrative is constructed, not at the moment the original behavior occurred.

A Small Question Asked Before the Narrative Sets In

Maurer (2004) documented a technique well suited to interrupting the pattern of creating unconfirmed narratives before it becomes a habit or negatively affects your own behavior. Maurer recommended asking yourself a small question. This technique is recommended for anyone caught in a “festering conflict” with another person. Ask yourself, frequently, “What’s one good thing about this person?” (p. 45). As Maurer puts it, doing so consistently means “you may soon find yourself seeing the person’s strengths with the same clarity and in the same detail as you do their weaknesses” (p. 45). The technique works because a small, low-threat question is easier to answer honestly than a larger, more threatening one, such as “Am I wrong about this person?”

A small question like this can be followed by three more targeted ones before a workplace narrative shapes behavior in a meeting, a hallway greeting, or a performance conversation.

• Is the observer constructing this narrative to protect something about themselves? A conclusion that a colleague is trying to make someone look bad is, on examination, sometimes less about the colleague’s behavior than about an existing insecurity the observer is protecting.
• Is the observer filling a gap in missing information with the narrative? Nguyen’s (2022) hundred-people illustration (p. 15) applies directly here: An unanswered question about a colleague’s intentions or workload will be answered by the observer’s own thinking, whether or not that answer is accurate, so it is worth seeking the missing information directly rather than supplying it independently.
• Has the observer borrowed this narrative from someone else’s perspective? A narrative that closely tracks what a colleague has said about that same person, rather than one’s own direct observation, is worth naming the narrative as inherited rather than treating it as independently confirmed.

Not one of these three questions is designed to settle whether the original behavior was, in fact, hostile, dismissive, or well-intentioned; that question may never be fully answered. The three questions are narrower and more immediate. Each question interrupts the moment when an unconfirmed interpretation could become settled fact, pulling attention back to the gap between what was observed and what was assumed.

Choosing Grace

Most professionals want to do competent, meaningful work and, in some form, make the people who matter to them proud of that work. A workplace narrative built on assumed hostility rarely serves that goal, even when it feels, in the moment, like self-protection. Maurer (2004) closed his own discussion of this territory with a related point about scale, urging readers to be “generous in daily thoughts and actions, so that we don’t hoard our kindness for important people or events, but spend it freely when an employee deserves a small compliment,” and to “respect others by asking them small questions” rather than assuming answers about them (p. 109). A greeting offered without qualification to a difficult colleague, or a small, specific acknowledgment of their contribution, costs little and follows the same principle: Don’t reserve kindness only for people who have already earned it through an existing narrative.

The alternative, discussed by Brown (2007), is a familiar one: the temptation to relieve discomfort about a colleague by talking about that colleague to others rather than with them, a pattern Brown described as one of the “incredibly hurtful and destructive ways” people seek connection under stress (Brown, 2007, p. 33). Brown’s research pointed to empathy as the more durable alternative, describing it as capable of creating “a hostile environment for shame” strong enough that shame “can’t survive” it (p. 54). A colleague discussed in their absence is best served by one genuine, specific observation in their favor and, short of that, better served by silence than by a narrative confirmed and extended without them.

None of this requires believing every workplace behavior is well-intentioned; some will not be. It requires holding the story loosely enough, and long enough, to ask whether your own thinking has gotten out of control. An unconfirmed narrative does not stop at misjudging a colleague. It reaches back and reshapes how you think, feel, and act, long before anyone confirms your narrative as true.

Three Reminders for Rethinking the Narrative

Below are a few habits professionals could practice to keep an unconfirmed narrative from settling into fact before it shapes behavior. The central claim explored above is that a behavior’s meaning comes from the observer’s own thinking rather than from the behavior itself (Nguyen, 2022, p. 15). Left unchecked, that meaning can harden into a fixed view of a colleague’s character and reshape your actions toward them.

• Separate the behavior observed from the interpretation of the behavior. Doing so keeps a single observed behavior from quietly hardening into an assumed motive or character judgment.
• Ask yourself the small question, often. This low-threat habit can shift how much weight you give a colleague’s weaknesses relative to their strengths.
• Choose to have a conversation directly with the colleague instead of smoldering in an unsubstantiated narrative. Doing so may yield accurate information and an improved professional relationship over time.