Guy Reams (00:00.302)
Today is day 195, intent matters. So you simply cannot hide your intent. You think you can. You think you can fool people into thinking you have one intent when you really have another. But reality shows that our intent comes across in a myriad of ways. It comes across in your tone, your cadence, your expression, your word choice, your actions, what you choose to focus on.
what you choose to ignore. There's a million ways that intent flows through a conversation. People will always figure out what your intent is, and your intent will have the greatest impact on your relationship with other people. People will judge you by your intent more than anything else. So intent really matters. I think it's important to also clarify our intent. Many people...
myself included, will go into conversations with people without really understanding what our intent is. We're guessing as to our intent just as much as the other person. So as a consequence, when we don't really know our intent for our own selves, we go into a conversation without a lot of clarity. That leaves the other person, including ourselves, to fill in the gaps. And oftentimes those gaps are not filled in with good intent.
So this seems very obvious. Clarify your intent.
You'd be shocked to realize how many people that are under the management of a leader will not know what their leader intends. They will be left guessing. The leader will ask them to do things, engage in things, do certain things in a certain way, but they will never understand what the leader's intent is. They will be left to fill in the blanks when it comes to the leader's intent.
Guy Reams (01:58.862)
They simply do not understand what the leader is trying to accomplish on a personal or professional level. So this develops into a lack of trust because they simply do not know the intent. I don't think leaders really understand how powerful it is for them to very clearly and with conviction state their honest and true intent. That goes a long way because people are no longer left to fill in the blanks and guess.
Clarifying your intent is a powerful way to build trust with your team.
We oftentimes think about trust in terms of credibility. We think that we have to build our credibility by showing people our expertise. This is definitely one side of the equation. People need to know that you actually know what you're talking about, right? That is important. But we tend to lean on this too much. What we forget is that there's another component to the equation, and that equation is intent. Intent.
plus expertise is what equals a trust relationship. So if we focus too much on the credibility side, we tend to not focus on the intent side. Recently, I had somebody present to me an investment opportunity. And the person spent a lot of time talking about the credibility of the leaders, which was definitely very important. I wanted to know about that. And the other people in the call wanted to know about that. But.
They spent way too much time on that. And the whole time we were kind of wondering, what are they trying to do here? What's their purpose? What are they trying to achieve? What's the goal? We were left to fill in the blanks. And that was not a good outcome. You never want people to fill in the blanks when it comes to your intent. So remember, expertise is important, but intent is the most important.
Guy Reams (03:54.446)
So I cannot overstate the importance of intent in any relationship. Intent should be stated, understood, and clarified before any real progress in a human relationship can exist. This seems to be an obvious concept to me, but the problem is we ignore it, oftentimes altogether. I'm guilty of it myself. I'll go into a serious discussion with somebody and I'll forget to think about my intent before doing so.
People will always figure out your intent. So therefore, intent really matters.