Surprising behaviour
Octavian Graf Pilati
The Antifragile Family?: Build a muscle to thrive for generations.
How do you deal with someone's surprising behaviour?
Do you get angry, frustrated, shocked or sad?
Do you end up building a monster in your head?
Do you ever just ask them politely, what is going on?
Do you try to understand their position and possible reason?
We are awful at accurately interpreting surprising behaviour. It helps to take a step back and try to understand before we decide on any actions.
It’s a prediction error we need to deal with. We would be better off to analyse the error by introspection and by joining the other person in his or his mental model of the world. Sadly, we often react with judgment that inhibits investigative processes.