Dr Livingstone, I presume?
So go the famous words allegedly uttered by explorer and journalist, Henry Stanley upon finding Dr. Livingstone alive near Lake Tanganyika in October 1871. Dr. David Livingstone was one of the most famous adventurers of Victorian era Britain and on his third expedition to discover the source of the River Nile, he had gone missing and was presumed dead.
I'm not looking to explore the life of a colonial-era celebrity here. Rather I'm using this as a famous example of what it means to make a presumption rather than an assumption and the difference between the two. Let's unpack the two words a bit more without going into the cliche of providing dictionary definitions.
To assume is to make a judgement with little or no evidence. To presume however is to make a more rationalised judgement where there is a greater degree of certainty.
How does this play out in the historical example above? Stanley explicitly knew that Livingstone was in searching for the Nile in the area that he himself was exploring. He probably also had a fairly good idea of what Livingstone looked like given his fame. He also implicitly knew that the likelihood of encountering another white man in Africa was incredibly slim, so Livingstone was likely the only caucasion in that part of the continent, hence presume.
If Stanley had instead said "Dr Livingstone, I assume?" on meeting him, the meaning would be more or less the same conversationally but in the absence of historical context, we could reasonably infer that Stanley knew little of the above other than perhaps having seen Livinstone's face in the pages of some Victorian explorer's almanac (Popular Eugenics?).
So, to recap. Making assumptions is a bit like making conversation. It's performative guesswork at best to grease the wheels of social interactions. But it that what we mean in more professional context where there is acknowledged expertise at play?
When assumptions are presumptions
We often talk about assumptions in a professional context when we are encouraging people to make their concerns explicit. Those concerns might relate to an understanding of a current situation, a belief that certain things might happen in the future or an opinion how something should be done.
Often these concerns are just pure guesswork with little or no supporting evidence when challenged. But most of the time I don't think we really know if there is a reasonable basis for them as we treats them as assumptions and move on. Asking whether something is an assumption or a presumption forces us to not only understand what the concern is but also the degree of certainty that exists.
Why is this important? Well for two reasons I think.
Avoiding arrogance
There is always a risk of not taking someone else's concerns as seriously as we should and, as a result, being perceived as being arrogant. We don't deliberately set out to be seen this way but it is often a consequence of someone feeling like they have not been heard. We should acknowledge concerns but also the experience which is the basis for the concern.
Positioning expertise
When we are brought in to help people as "experts". I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with this idea as it suggests a kind of social hierarchy but this is more to do with our strategic positioning as a business. Clients would not typically hire consultants like myself if they were not in need of expertise.
It's therefore important that we cultivate and express our expertise with confidence and find ways to overcome those feelings. When we suggest courses of action to our clients that are based on past expertise or domain knowledge, these are more likely to be presumptions than assumptions. Acknowledging this can give us the inner confidence we need to support our outward appearance and not feel like we are faking it.
No such thing as imposter syndrome?
I am inclined to believe that what we call imposter syndrome is not some intermittent disease of the mind but a function of the professional and social context we typically find ourselves in. This is described as learning-credibility tension in this informative article from HBR.
To summarise briefly - consultants must simultaneously project expertise whilst learning at the same time. They need to talk and walk. The way this works is by identifying threats and crafting the appropriate response, esssentially designing the interaction we need to succeed.
Overcome "imposter syndrome" by remembering that you wouldn't be in the situation in the first place if you weren't the right person at the right time to deal with it and that there is always a way to deal with it. I'll here with Myron's Maxims, some simple rules for complex change that sum up the confident attitude that is the one thing we should assume in the face of uncertainty.
Myron's Maxims
People own what they help create
Real change happens in real work
Those who do the work, do the change
Connect the system to more of itself
Start anywhere, follow everywhere
The process you use to get to the future is the future you get.
(from "A Simpler Way")