Last week, a manager vented to me about one of her team members.
“He’s just lazy,” she said. “He missed another deadline.”
A few days later, she learned what she hadn’t seen: His father had been hospitalized. He was juggling doctor visits, childcare, and late nights trying to keep up. The missed deadline wasn’t about laziness. It was about exhaustion and fear.
Nothing about the facts changed — only the story.
That gap between what we see and what we assume is where fundamental attribution error lives.
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