A community leader was sent a letter after a town hall meeting where the leader indicated he was hopeful that they would get rain to help the farmers’ crops which had been experiencing a drought during the late summer months. Farmers cheered at his support.

The next week he was sent a letter from a resort owner asking why he had expressed his desire for rain? Didn’t he know that it had rained all spring, adversely impacting the overall resort business? More rain would mean one of the worst resort seasons in recent history!

It sure is hard to please everyone. How often do you have good intent, but someone in the audience assumes the opposite? I’m sure this community leader was not wishing doom on the resort business, but how telling it is that the resort owner assumed as such. We all get so entrenched in our own perspective, from our own lens. We’re all resort owners, to some extent.

As leaders, our words matter. Choosing the right words and understanding all of the perspectives can make the difference between a happy farmer and a disgruntled resort owner.

So what did the community leader do the next time he mentioned the weather? He said, “I’m hoping that in the next few weeks we all have favorable weather.”