I’ve developed a few rules for myself. I’m reliably bad at following them — that’s how I know they’re the right ones.
One of them comes from attribution error theory. It sounds abstract, but in practice it’s just one question. Before I give feedback, start a hard conversation, or jump to conclusions, I try to ask:
Is this about will, skill, or circumstance?
Almost every time, I bet on will. They don’t care. They’re difficult. Just arrogant. It’s fast, seductive and it absolves me.
And almost every time, I’m wrong. It turns out to be skill. Or circumstance. And circumstance — let’s be honest — includes me: how I framed things, the space I created (or didn’t), the expectations I never said out loud.
The will question matters most, though. Because, by and large, I believe people want to do good work. Not all of them, not always. But as a working hypothesis, assuming good intent holds up surprisingly well.
Until the context makes effort feel pointless. Until the environment creates enough doubt, strips enough agency, punishes enough initiative, that the rational move is to stop trying.
At that point, won’t and can’t become indistinguishable. From the outside, it looks like indifference. From the inside, it’s a rational response to an irrational situation.
Somewhere, someone reading this is thinking about a difficult colleague. That colleague is in a meeting, thinking about their difficult manager. And that manager wrote a post like this once, back when they had time to think. We’re all doing our best with a framework we apply to everyone except the person currently annoying us.