Intention and Performance

[Apologies.  There is no picture with this post because I am still confined to dialup.]

Most of the time we feel that there is a public me and a private me. The public me goes about doing things and the private me has thoughts and feelings that I don’t necessarily want others to know about.

This division probably isn’t as neat as we think it is. We pick up other’s cues quite subtley. When some people say they are, “Just fine”, we may think they are either trying to kid us or themselves. We get the feeling that their words are saying one thing and their body posture or tone of voice is saying something else.

Some of the time our private world is more public than we expect. Other times we can trouble communicating in the public world what our private world is like. This can be true even of what is most important to us: how easy is it to communicate to another how we feel about our lover or child? What it is that we find fascinating in our hobbies and other interests? Once we get beyond the general and cliches (“I love them”, “I find it interesting”) it is hard to communicate our private world.

While the division between our public and private world may not be absolute, it does seem to exist. One of the ways we think of bridging these two worlds is our intentions. Our intentions cover everything from elaborate plans to momentary whims. We intend to go for a walk before we do so. We want to move house and so we start the process of looking at other places, investigating transport options and much else.

Intention doesn’t guarantee performance – Mal Garvin.

[Mal is an Australian Christian broadcaster and the most mature individual I have personally known.]

Usually our intentions bridge our private and public worlds pretty successfully. And sometimes they don’t. These moments can be awfully embarrassing.

I intend to help someone with a problem and end up making it worse.  I intend to reach a goal and find there are factors I didn’t take into account.  I intend to learn a new skill and find that it is harder than I thought.  There are all kinds of areas where our intention doesn’t guarantee performance.

One of the biggest implications of this is how it affects our relationships.  To make the point another quote from Mal.

We judge others by their behaviour and ouselves by our intention.

We have, to some extent, special access to our own intentions.  We may not be clear on all our motives, but we usually have a pretty good idea about what we intend.  With others we often do not know their intention, we rely on them to tell us – at least most of the time.

It is useful to remember this in moments of conflict.  We often here people say, “That’s not what I meant”.  It often helps to resolve a disagreement when the other person tells us what they did intend.  When we understand what someone was trying to do it can change completely how we respond to them. 

The tricky thing is to remember this in times of conflict.  So here are a couple of things you can do to help at times of conflict.

1.      State your own intention.  We are often so close to our intention – especially if we have put a lot of thought into what we are doing – that we just assume people know why we are doing something.

2.      Enquire what the other person’s intention is.

It is possible to find more than one way to satisfy some intentions.  It may be possible to find compromises or new ways that both people can have their intentions met.  But we won’t know this until we know each other’s intentions.  It is a simple thing – and it can make a very big difference to our relationships; especially resolving conflict.

Have you had experiences when finding out someone’s intention has changed your perception of them?  Have you had times when understanding the other’s intention has led to resolving conflict.  I’d love to hear your experience in the comments.

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