“Have you ever noticed that everyone going slower than you is an idiot and everyone going
faster than you is a maniac?” George Carlin
The late comedian George Carlin’s remarks hit home for me because I’m always carrying on imaginary conversations with the slow drivers in front of me. “What on earth are you doing grandpa?” And when someone shoots by me 15 miles over the speed limit, I just shake my head and say something like “What’s wrong with you, where’s the fire?” So obviously the only intelligent drivers are in my five-miles-an-hour-over-the-speed-limit category.
Many of us do this in other aspects of our lives as well; we consciously or unconsciously judge how someone dresses, leads a meeting, behaves in a stressful situation and on and on. If I think everyone is either an idiot or maniac on the road, how effective am I going to be if I’m making the same type of judgments during the rest of my day?
We see what we expect to see, and if we want to make real progress in working with others, it’s important to start challenging our assumptions. Let’s start assuming people are doing the best they can given their circumstances, cut them some slack when possible, and model the behavior and attitude we want in others. It’s actually not that hard to do if we get our egos out
of the way, and the results can be astonishing.
