The Story

The story.

A senior leader came into a session convinced a peer was trying to undermine her. She had evidence. The peer took on shared responsibilities. Communicated directly with their VP without copying her. Got invited to meetings she wasn’t in.

I asked her: how much of that is fact, and how much is a story you’ve built around the facts?

The observable events were real. But the intent — the motivation, the power play — was her construction. She’d organized real events into a narrative that confirmed what she already suspected.

We all do this. We take incomplete information and fill the gaps with assumptions that feel like truth. The problem isn’t that we do it. It’s that we treat the story as fact and make decisions based on it.

A feeling isn’t a fact, no matter how strongly we feel it.

What story are you carrying about someone that you’ve never verified?