Table of Contents

• Making the Charitable Assumption x WYSIATI

• Quote of the Week

• An Even Deeper Dive

In Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara champions the importance of making “the charitable assumption.” He reminds us to “assume the best of people, even when (or perhaps especially when) they weren’t behaving particularly well.”

It’s a wonderful mantra to live by and I also believe it’s an approach that can help you be a better coach. 

Why?

The brain is a machine at jumping to conclusions.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s work on biases in judgement and decision-making, explored in Thinking, Fast and Slow, captures this brilliantly. Among the many biases they covered, one stands out: “What You See Is All There Is” (WYSIATI).

WYSIATI highlights how we often draw conclusions from the information that is readily available to us, without first questioning what information we would need to make the best, most informed decision. Because we easily create a coherent narrative from the information available to us, we tend to trust our first judgement and therefore feel no need to seek out new information.

When John Terry was an assistant coach at Aston Villa, he fell into the WYSIATI trap.
He wasn’t happy with how one player was training. He organised a one-on-one and, in his words, “I dug him out…I sat him down and basically went mad at him. I said, ‘Not good enough, you’re not in the team, that’s not going to get you in the team performing like that.’” He followed up with Manager Dean Smith and Smith enquired if he had asked about the player’s family life. Terry said, “It didn’t even enter my head, not at all.”

Classic WYSIATI bias in action!

The next morning Terry text the player and asked him to catch up over breakfast. It was during COVID, the player’s family were away, he’d just had a baby, and he hadn’t seen his mum or dad.  That new information completely changed Terry’s perspective. The club ended up giving him a day off to spend time with his family, and when the player came back, Terry said, “It was incredible—after that he was like a new player, fighting to get back in the team.”

In coaching, our judgements and decisions can have serious long-term impacts on players and their careers. Yet this example highlights how quickly we can judge without considering the key information we may not have, simply because it is not readily available to us.

Making the charitable assumption helps combat WYSIATI by anchoring you in:

1. Humility – Recognising we don’t always have the information we need and our judgements often have bias attached to them.

2. Curiosity – constantly seeking out new information

3. Compassion – striving to understand and listen to others without judgement.

Take John Terry’s example—if he had made the charitable assumption when he saw the player underperforming in training, his first thought might have been one of humility: “I don’t have all the answers. Maybe something’s going on that’s holding this player back.”
That naturally leads to curiosity: “I wonder what’s going on? I should check in with him.”

And then comes compassion—approaching the check-in without judgement, so the player feels safe to share.

The coaching sage Ted Lasso was onto something when he quoted Walt Whitman: “Be curious. Not judgemental.” As Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have shown, our wiring often pulls us in the opposite direction. But making the charitable assumption might just be the best approach to support your players—and overcome your own cognitive biases.

It’s not just a way to live with kindness. It’s a coaching advantage.

You can find John Terry recount his WYSIATI moment via the link below. Watch the video from the start until 1min 29sec.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/16823032/john-terry-advice-dean-smith/

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