Judging Impairs Facts
Someone new joins your team. You’ve heard through the watercooler gossip they’re arrogant – known for dominating team projects and not listening to others’ perspectives.
You meet them in a meeting. You watch closely, trying to get a sense of who they are. You notice that they speak louder and more often than everyone else. First week on the job. Some nerve. Definitely arrogant.
In future interactions, you expect arrogance. So you're short with them. Clipped. Your eyebrows narrow and nose lifts. Given your behavior, how do you expect they respond? Arrogantly, of course.
Judging doesn’t just bias perception. It distorts the facts you think you’re observing.
Your expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – your behavior elicits exactly what you expect you’ll receive. What’s rarely recognized is how much your judgments shaped the interaction. Gossip shaped what you looked for. What you looked for shaped what you found.
You don’t see people as they are. You see them through the judgments you haven’t questioned.
On The Curiosity Shop, Adam Grant and Brené Brown make the observation that judging impairs judgments. I’d sharpen that: judging impairs brutal facts.
When we judge, we add something to the facts. We predict consequences based on personal opinions, values, and assumptions – not reality. Judgments come from the mind of the observer. The problem isn't that we have them. It’s that we treat them as facts.
We are judgmental whenever we add an evaluation or worth to something we observe. “Good” and “bad” are never observed. They’re labels placed by the observer. The moment we attach them, we stop seeing clearly and start seeing selectively.
Judgments can damage relationships before they begin. Unchecked judgments shape how we behave toward another person – often unintentionally. And that person’s reaction to our behavior is then more likely to confirm what our judgments expect (demonstrating confirmation bias).
This matters beyond interpersonal dynamics. Judgments damage the relationship we have with ourselves.
We tell ourselves we’re “stupid” for an obvious typo, “dumb” for stumbling through a presentation, or “bad” for the side of fries with dinner. The result is shame – and shame, contrary to popular thought, doesn’t produce the behavior change we want.
In reality, shame activates protective behavior. It causes avoidance. It prolongs the experience we’re trying to escape. Self-judgment intensifies uncomfortable emotion, extends its duration, and blocks the corrective action that actually helps.
Hard to imagine many people choosing this. And yet, self-criticism persists (I really need to do better at taking my own advice sometimes).
DBT is grounded in a set of assumptions about human behavior that emphasize accountability and growth over evaluation and blame. One of my favorites: figuring out and changing the causes of behavior works better than judging and blaming. I think I repeat this to my clients, friends, and – honestly – to myself, on an almost daily basis.
Saying things “should” be different doesn’t help. It doesn’t change things. I call this the wishing well.
Wishing things were different isn’t where change happens. Acknowledging what’s true – without layering evaluation on top – is where change happens. That’s how we identify what to do differently next time.
Nonjudgmentalness, as DBT defines it, means describing reality as is. Stating just the facts, without evaluation. Letting go of “good” and “bad.” Letting go of “should.” It means noticing when judgment is operating and asking whether it's serving you or distorting reality.
The point isn’t to not have judgments. We’re all going to judge at times. The point is to be able to observe judgments when they occur and identify whether they are helpful or unhelpful.
If this feels abstract, it becomes obvious in practice. When I teach this concept, one exercise consistently generates the most engagement. I ask participants to pick a controversial public figure – someone everyone knows – and list everything that comes to mind. Judgments included.
The room typically comes alive. Dialogue flows. There’s laughter. People almost bond over the exercise, which is itself worth noticing.
Then the aim shifts: describe the same person using facts alone.
The vibe changes. People think harder. They pause. They reach for their phones to check whether what they think they know is actually documented. The emotional charge neutralizes. The room gets quieter.
Afterwards, I ask what differences they noticed. The same two observations come up every time: the judgmental list was easier to generate, and significantly more emotional.
There’s the dialectic of being nonjudgmental: it requires more effort, and, it stabilizes emotions. Judgments are effortless and emotionally destabilizing. Being nonjudgmental is effortful and produces emotional clarity.
Stephen Covey gets at this without naming it. Habit 5 – seek first to understand, then to be understood – requires exactly what nonjudgmentalness demands: suspending evaluation, listening without reacting, interrupting automatic interpretations.
Leaders can’t fully understand what they’ve already decided they know. They can’t respond to reality if they’re responding to assumptions.
Go back to the person who joined your team. The one you decided was arrogant before they'd earned the label. What if the loudness was nerves? What if the gossip was wrong? What if you were the variable that confirmed what you expected?
Nonjudgmentalness doesn't require certainty. It requires the willingness to hold judgment lightly enough to keep looking.