I love the following story. It has application for all leaders. With so much negative coming to those of us in positions of leadership it is sometimes easy to think the worst in people.
Leaders should assume positive intent until given a reason otherwise. The following story I recently heard illustrates how thinking negatively can impact a leaders decisions. Beware! The stories we create in our heads can impact the way we communicate with others.
Once there was a farmer whose plow had recently broke. He needed to plow his fields quickly before they dried. He decided to ask his neighbor, an old man several fields away, to borrow his machine. He thought to himself, “My neighbor is a good man, I am sure he has his field plowed by now and will be more than happy to let me borrow his machine.”
So the farmer began to walk the several fields to his neighbors house. After the first field he walked, he started to think, “I hope my neighbor has actually finished all of his plowing, or I won’t...
