A cousin to the concept of “assign meaning slowly” is “assume positive intent.” Assume the best in a situation instead of the worst. Why not? We usually don’t have all of the information anyway. No email response yet? It’s probably not because they hate you. They’re probably just busy. No green light yet on that project you want to get started on? Again, it’s probably not because they hate you. Maybe the right stakeholders just haven’t been brought up to speed. The concepts of “assign meaning slowly” and “assume positive intent” equate to just letting things breathe a little. What would happen if we allowed things just a little bit space to develop?
With your teams, don’t get out of the way, do this instead
"Get out of the way!" I often hear some version of this sentiment when talking about building a culture to incentivize high performance teams. "You have to find the right people, equip them, and then get out of the way." People who talk about getting out of the way...