Impact vs. Intention: 3 Things You Can do to Untangle the Mess
Photo by Valeriia Miller on Unsplash
“I didn’t intend to hurt you,” he said. My heart yelled out (albeit internally), I don’t care if you meant to or not, you did hurt me!
Do you know the difference between your intentions and their impact? The first time I remember learning about this concept was while reading Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Stone, Patton and Heen. That is one of my favorite books on interpersonal relationships. It’s full of gems, and one of them is the importance of separating impact from intent.
Have you noticed how when you explain that hurting someone wasn’t intentional, it feels like the explanation should take care of the problem and make it easy for the person to move on?
On the other hand, have you also noticed that hurt and pain can linger when we are the ones receiving those words?
Why the disconnect? It’s because when we judge ourselves, we look at our intentions, but when we judge others, we consider the impact.
We excuse ourselves when we say something a bit “off” because it wasn’t our intention to hurt, or because we had a reason we forgot that important deadline. However, when we are on the receiving end, we tend to attribute negative intent to the other person, which leads to hurt or anger.
Sorting Through the Mess
Let’s think about this with a concrete example. I rolled the car door window up without noticing my friend's hand was there. Was it my intention to crunch her fingers? Of course not. Did it still hurt? Of course, it did. It’s easy to see here that while my intent was good (secure the car after parking it), the impact (her bruised hand) was still painful.
But what about when I shared some feedback with my colleague and it hurt them? I may feel they really needed to hear that feedback for the good of the team, or maybe for their growth. I may think that the feedback was accurate, and I needed to deliver it at that time (all debatable, I might add). Does my acknowledgement that I didn’t mean to hurt them take away the hurt?
No.
Consider the following situation.
Emily: I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about what was happening on our team. I have a right to know. This has had a huge impact on my life.
Stephanie: I didn’t say anything to you about it because I didn’t think it would be helpful.
Emily: You didn’t say anything because you don’t trust me. I don’t get what you have against me!
Stephanie: That’s just not true. I didn’t think it was my place to tell, and I couldn’t see how it would be helpful.
“We assume intentions from the impact on us,” share authors Stone, Patton, and Heen. In our example, Emily assumes that Stephanie doesn’t trust her and has something against her. Emily assumes bad intentions. This is incredibly easy to do when we’re hurt. We feel the impact, and we translate it into bad intentions.
You can see again how we judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge others by their impact. When I forget to do the laundry, it’s because I had too much going on, but when my husband forgets to do the dishes, it’s because he’s selfish—he was watching his favorite sport, you know!
When we are thinking about ourselves, we think that sharing our good intentions should erase the negative impact, because we know our heart didn’t mean to hurt.
However, we don’t tend to erase the impact if it’s others' good intentions that wounded us.
So, What Can We Do?
Stone, Patton, and Heen offer a very helpful step-by-step guide in Chapter 3: “Don’t Assume They Meant It: Disentangle Intent from Impact.” They say to start by making a mental distinction between the following:
Actions: “What did the other person actually say or do?”
Impact: “What was the impact of this on me?”
Assumption: “Based on this impact, what assumption am I making about what the other person intended?”
Then hold your hypothesis of their intentions loosely, remembering you could be wrong. When you speak to the other person, the authors add, you want to share:
The action: The observable facts of what occurred.
The impact: How the action effected me.
And then inquire about their intentions and possibly share the assumed intentions I thought they had. Listen humbly. (Difficult Conversations)
Separating these pieces helps to untangle a mess that can quickly become a hurtful, chaotic dilemma.
But what about when I’m the one who hurt someone despite my good (or mostly good) intentions?
Let’s reverse the scenario. What is Stephanie to do? Her decision hurt Emily. She still believes it wasn’t the right thing to have shared with Emily. What can she do now?
1. Truly listen and acknowledge the impact. “Emily, I hadn’t thought about it before but I can see how not knowing about the situation had a big impact on your life. What else would you like to share with me about the impact it had on you?”
Then she can listen again and reflect with empathy the meaning of the specifics that were shared. “I can see that you might have made different choices had you known, and that you are now living with the decisions you had to make in the dark.”
2. Look for and acknowledge contribution rather than blame. This might take some time to discover. If you’re willing to listen, the other person may help you.
“Emily, while I intended to reduce harm and gossip on the team, I can see where my choice to leave you out of the loop had very real and negative consequences for you. I can understand why you feel hurt. While I felt I made the best decision I could at the time with the information I had, I am truly sad about the consequences you’ve experienced and I’m sorry that my decision contributed to your experience.”
You may notice that Stephanie doesn’t say that she made the wrong decision—she actually says it was the best decision she could make at the time. She expresses regret not for the decision, but for the impact.
I’ve found these steps tremendously helpful for clarifying what is going on in sticky situations, parsing out the pieces, and considering how I can acknowledge my contribution to the hurt, even when I think I made the right decision.
There are more nuances to consider, and I recommend Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Stone, Patton, and Heen for a deeper look into navigating these tricky conversations and, dare I say, loving others better.