You "ask to understand" their perspective & motivations because the alternative is for you to assume you know their perspective which is always worse. Imagine an employee does X, which is explicitly against company policy and causes a major headache for you. You assume the employee just doesn't care about the policy or worse, is disgruntled and violated the policy on purpose. Either of these motivations warrants a pretty serious reprimand.
Instead, you ask the employee why they did that thing when it goes against company policy. "What policy?" Oops, it turns out you forgot to go over this during onboarding and there was no negligence or ill intent on the employee's part, they simply did not know about the policy and are sorry and embarrassed for inadvertently violating it.
Aren't you glad you asked them about this before coming down on them with a reprimand, blindsiding and angering them and ultimately making yourself look stupid for blaming them for your mistake?
If it turns out the employee did in fact have a grudge or was negligent, there is still time to reprimand them after hearing "their side of the story." But if you never ask you will miss explanations and needlessly escalate conflicts.
You "ask to understand" their perspective & motivations because the alternative is for you to assume you know their perspective which is always worse.
An interesting counterpoint I've heard from respected management trainers: it _is_ impossible to correctly infer intent and motivation, but fortunately intent doesn't matter here. You don't need to know it, and it focuses on the wrong thing. You don't want to know _why_, and your intervention can easily assume positive intent. What you want is to change future behavior. So assume positive intent, and focus on what to do next time.
In your example scenario, where an employee has broken corporate policy you would just say something to the effect "I'm sure you meant well here, but our policy on this is X. What can you do differently next time?" That is the conversation you should be having, rather than the blame distribution game that 'why did you do that bad thing?' invites.
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You "ask to understand" their perspective & motivations because the alternative is for you to assume you know their perspective which is always worse. Imagine an employee does X, which is explicitly against company policy and causes a major headache for you. You assume the employee just doesn't care about the policy or worse, is disgruntled and violated the policy on purpose. Either of these motivations warrants a pretty serious reprimand.
Instead, you ask the employee why they did that thing when it goes against company policy. "What policy?" Oops, it turns out you forgot to go over this during onboarding and there was no negligence or ill intent on the employee's part, they simply did not know about the policy and are sorry and embarrassed for inadvertently violating it.
Aren't you glad you asked them about this before coming down on them with a reprimand, blindsiding and angering them and ultimately making yourself look stupid for blaming them for your mistake?
If it turns out the employee did in fact have a grudge or was negligent, there is still time to reprimand them after hearing "their side of the story." But if you never ask you will miss explanations and needlessly escalate conflicts.
An interesting counterpoint I've heard from respected management trainers: it _is_ impossible to correctly infer intent and motivation, but fortunately intent doesn't matter here. You don't need to know it, and it focuses on the wrong thing. You don't want to know _why_, and your intervention can easily assume positive intent. What you want is to change future behavior. So assume positive intent, and focus on what to do next time.
In your example scenario, where an employee has broken corporate policy you would just say something to the effect "I'm sure you meant well here, but our policy on this is X. What can you do differently next time?" That is the conversation you should be having, rather than the blame distribution game that 'why did you do that bad thing?' invites.