Tall tales and why we tell them

We changed the format of our blog and for a brief period of time all the blogs I had written since May disappeared. My first thought: “Someone on our team doesn’t like my blogs, they’re trying to get rid of them.”

Utter nonsense of course. It was nothing more than a technical problem. But I am human and like most of you I need to make sense of my world. So when something happened that I didn’t understand, I made up a story, namely that my colleagues hated my blogs and were hell bent on getting rid of them.

We do this all the time, especially in the complex corporate world. If relationships and communication are muddy we create stories to fill in the gaps. And frequently we don’t bother to go and check the accuracy of our interpretation.

But here’s the scary part. We then go and tell friends and colleagues our stories, who in turn tell others and these stories create a new reality.
This is not healthy. The only way to stop it is through open and honest communication. The basis for which is trust; strung together in this way these are four of the most challenging letters in our alphabet.