During a conflict, we tend to make assumptions based on our interpretation of someone’s intentions, rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt. Ann Garrido discusses the “principle of charitable interpretation” from the field of philosophy, and explains how it can help us to gain understanding and resolve conflicts in our relationships.
“When we’re listening to somebody else whose argument we oftentimes disagree with, we would go in with that principle of charitable interpretation. We would assume that the other person is sane and doing what they’re doing because it makes sense to them.”
“Part of the goal is to try to figure out with the other person, ‘you’re looking at the problem so different than the way that I look at it, but I know that from your point of view, this has to make sense.’ Part of my goal is to figure out, ‘why does that make sense for you? Not that I’m necessarily going to agree with you, but I want to try to understand better what that looks like through your eyes.’”
When we don’t understand where the other person is coming from, we will have a harder time interpreting the situation accurately. Ann speaks to the importance of making a distinction between a person’s intent and impact during a conflict.
“A tricky thing about difficult conversations is we oftentimes will entangle intent and impact. We will assume that if something’s had a bad impact on us; that the other person must have intended to have a bad impact on me, or at least that they have some sort of character flaw that made them oblivious to what kind of impact they’re going to have on me.”
“The flip side of it though is that when we ourselves have really good intentions, we will tend to think that regardless of the impact on other people, they should understand ‘I had good intentions there,’ or they shouldn’t be mad at us for what happened to them because they should know, ‘I didn’t mean for something bad to happen to you.’“
Ann says that one of the things that can be helpful during difficult conversations is to unknot or disentangle the intent and impact.
“Realize that it’s possible to have really good intentions, and the other person to be impacted negatively. It’s also possible that we might be impacted negatively, and the other person could actually have good intentions.”
One of the practical ways to unknot intent and impact is to simply ask a straightforward question such as, ‘what am I missing?’ Ann offers a practical conversation starter,
“I would say, ‘From my point of view, this is a kind of how I’m seeing it. But you’re sitting in a different place, you’ve got different information than I have, what do you think I’m missing? What do you think should be brought into the conversation that hasn’t been brought up so far?’
“‘What am I missing?’ can be a really helpful way of finding out what’s in the other person’s story.”
By practicing the principle of charitable interpretation, we will be able to gain a much better understanding of the other person’s intentions and resolve conflicts in a redemptive way.
Ann M. Garrido, DMin is associate professor of homiletics at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, MO and a consultant with Triad Consulting Group, a conflict mediation and communications team based in Cambridge, MA. She is the author of six books including, .
The principle of charitable interpretation
