Judgment Fog

As human beings we tend to overestimate the power of our empathy. While we can easily project our own situation onto others, we find it much harder to truly step into their shoes. As a result, we constantly judge how poorly others are doing and how much better we would do in their place. But the moment we actually slip into the shoes of the person we’ve criticized—and truly feel how big they are—we realize how wrong and premature our judgment was.

Yet just as quickly as we come to understand the dark side of being the person above us once we occupy a similar position, we seem to forget what it was like to be below.

I’ve seen it too often: we tend to create a narrative that justifies the merit of our promotion, exaggerating our efforts and decisions while downplaying the judgment and work ethic of those who were once our peers. We may quickly forget the days we were burnt out by endless projects and instead blame others’ low performance on laziness. We don’t recall feeling stuck in a routine or unmotivated due to a lack of incentives, and we attribute others’ slow progress to a lack of ambition. Not to mention how we were once left in the dark about company decisions—and how easy it now feels to call out disinterest or disengagement in others.

The moral is simple: it’s impossible to fully understand everyone from our limited perspective. But what we can do is try not to judge—and instead, help however we can, whether from above or below. Helping is a universal language that transcends hierarchies.

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