We all do it. We meet someone new – a prospect, a donor, a Board member, a staff member, or others. We quickly learn a few brief things about them and then we make our own assumptions, based on our knowledge, beliefs, past experiences, and other factors. In one sense we build a box for each person, put in what we learned from them, and then fill in more of the box with our own assumptions which later may prove correct or wrong as we learn more about them.
Several years ago I was interviewing an...