#Intention
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
This phrase has intrigued me forever. Since it was used to explain why the thing or things I did, that turned out to be a disaster or failure or below expectations; and then my subsequent use of mitigation that this was “not my intention”, was met with this response.
But where does this phrase come from and is it accurate? Useful? Justified?
Here’s Wikipedia’s take on this proverb:
So it looks like it’s taken from this Saint Bernard and Virgil, and is now been used in this way “that may have been your intended outcome, but look at the crap you’ve created…”
That doesn’t appear to be fair. Yet it seems very easy to use this phrase to imply to people:
- you were careless whatever your intention
- you were clueless whatever your intention
- you were deluded to think this would work whatever your intention
I suspect we’ve all had good intent with something and it’s turned out badly. Or someone’s jumped all over it, and maybe that IS because you were a little inattentive to something, naive, caught up in excitement whatever. Or very inattentive.
But instead of chastising you and your intent, maybe we should enquire more of the intent. So what was your intention…
- for everyone?
- for a specific group of people?
- for a specific individual?
- for this thing you did?
- in experimenting like this
- in being dogmatic about doing this?
- in seeking the advice you sought?
- in focusing on what you focused on?
- in saying it the way you said it?
Or stuff like this.
Intent, you see, is a complex thing, though it appears we have simply put it into one big lump of stuff.
And ignoring whatever levels, degrees, variations, nuances, informed, instinctive form of intent we had, we don’t seem to care.
Your intent appears to be to do something, that turned out badly and you should be criticised in perpetuity for your ill-deployed actions regardless of what good you thought it would do.
Of course we can also hide behind some serious misbehaving by using the “intent” card.
“Of course it wasn’t my intent to insult you” when in fact, I was being a bully, showing off, being arrogant, ignorant of damaging deliberately; these shouldn’t be the excuse to justifying destructive behaviours.
Let’s look at two examples which may or may not feel or sound like things you’ve experienced or seen.
Story 1: You find that article on Forbes/HBR/Inc, you know, the one that says “A Growth Mindset <or insert other thought leadership/research/new theory> helped UK-Tech-Co become the darlings of the Silicon Roundabout.”
You read it. You like it. It sounds like something you wished your organisation might do, even though they’re a public sector body. You retweet it. Your intent is share it with others because it had a positive impact on you.
Some clever so-and-so sends this tweet in response to it:
“#Rollseyes — looks like we’re still believing the snake-oil/kool-aid/hype — who writes this stuff?
You, enraged somewhat, reply with a “Who are you to call this out?”. It kicks off. Insults fly. You wish you’d never bothered. You withdraw. You don’t like this social media stuff. People were just nasty to you and they don’t even know who you are and what you stand for.
They, nor you, were looking for intent.
They didn’t see your intent in posting that. They assumed you were believing unhelpful, vacuous hype. They didn’t see that you’re working hard in a beleaguered HR team in a cash-strapped council and that this sort of approach in the article felt like it could help the people of your workplace.
You, emotionally charged, didn’t see their intent. Maybe it was to look clever, dismissive, to not consider themselves gullible with content or theories they happen to dislike or disbelieve. Or maybe it was to try and persuade you that this isn’t as helpful as the article proclaims. To protect you from phoney psychology. OK the wording gives a clue to intent but doesn’t tell the whole story.
Having that time again, you could simply say in reply “I appreciate others may have alternative views and even evidence, yet in my hard-pressed working world, this felt like it would be a useful thing to understand more about.”
They could simply say in the first place “I’d urge caution over the excessive claims in this article, so I’d recommend a deeper investigation”.
Story 2. So it may be your intent to help yourself recover from some serious mental ill health issues by starting a blog.
And then you overhear someone who says “Another blog on this subject?”
Not for ONE SECOND thinking about your intent.
Your intent may be to share your pain and help yourself heal through others knowing more about you. Your intent may be to break the stigma of people not feeling allowed or comfortable in talking about mental health issues.
You withdraw from further posts and your recovery is somewhat stunted by this response.
Their intent may have been to want to see more research based, factual and inspiring features.
Fictional but perhaps not wildly out of kilter with how we overlook intent and jump straight to criticism, judgements and retorts.
So I think we need to give intentions a break and bring them into our conscious thought process before we act.
Look at intentions a bit more before we make sinister judgements about people and sling accusations around like some sarcastic whip-crack to get others’ attention.
If it’s your intention to take on someone’s passion, agenda, outlets for their thoughts because you sense there’s harm somewhere in their intent — then you take them on — once you’re sure of their intent.
If it’s your intention to give people a break, make a choice to let them be/do their thing and perhaps understanding the lack of harm in their intent, then you’ll be doing them more of a service by just letting them be.
What’s your intention in challenging or supporting? And is it (as Michelle Obama says) so that “we go higher”? Is it virtuous? Does it help them and others? Is it factual, specific, considerate?
You may even show support for the person a little more, even if you don’t support the thing they’re saying/doing.
I think we could do with being a little more patient, tolerant and appreciative of other’s intent I suppose. Not easy in a caustic, angry, quick-fire world.
So I hope we can understand other’s intentions a little more. That’s my intent with this piece.
What’s your intention about intent?
