Observations vs Judgements
People Management, Theory, Basic ·Think back to the last meal you had, how would you describe it? No, really, take a moment to describe that meal, I’ll wait.
Now do the same for one of your reportees or co-workers, describe them.
Was it any different?
When describing food most people tend to use observations: “It was a plate of pasta with tomato sauce and some garlic”. But when describing people we’ll often use judgements: “She’s hardworking, smart, and assertive”.
What’s the difference? We all know what a tomato is, but we will probably have different definitions for hardworking or smart.
Observations
Observations are qualities that people can perceive with their senses. Things that we can agree upon easily, because, for example, we saw them.
Jane came to work at 9am and left at 8pm, Phil wore a black suit for the meeting with the client, Adam’s presentation had six slides with typos.
Observations describe the reality. If you find six slides with wrongly spelled words on Adam’s presentation, nobody will disagree with the affirmation that Adam’s presentations had six slides with typos.
On the other hand, if you said “Adam presentation was sloppy”, that’s not an observation, it’s a judgement.
Judgements
Judgements are what we think about a situation we perceived.
Some people might see Jane arriving at the office at 9am and leaving at 8pm and say that she’s hardwiring. Others may say she’s inefficient. Some others might even say that she doesn’t enjoy being with her family. Or that she is really committed to the job. The truth is that we don’t know why Jane is behaving the way she does.
We tend to use judgements as if they were observations, so they are easily confused. When someone arrives late, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they didn’t care.
Why does this matter
This matters because it shapes the way we see the world.
If we can’t separate observations from judgements, we start assuming things that are not true, and that can lead us to unpleasant situations.
Maybe we got angry at our boss because they didn’t care about our presentation. We don’t know that. We only know that they didn’t give us any positive feedback on it. If we can understand that the only truth is the observation, we can then calm down and look for validation on our judgement. For example, we could ask our boss what they thought about the presentation. Maybe they liked it a lot and didn’t say anything.
Starting a conversation with “you are being sloppy” is very different from saying “your presentation had typos”. The former is a judgement, which can feel like an attack. The latter is an observation, much less likely to make the receiver feel open to discussion.