Impact vs Intent
Impact vs Intent separates what you meant to do from what the other person actually experienced, because the two routinely differ and the gap is where working relationships go wrong.
Five steps run in sequence, from naming the split between intent and impact through to agreeing exactly what changes.
Reach for this when…
- Someone is defensive about feedback because they know their intent was good.
- A leader is baffled that a decisive move read as dismissive.
- Two people are in the same disagreement and each is only defending their own intent.
How to run it
- Introduce the distinction: your intention and your impact on someone else can differ.
- Give an example that separates them, such as decisive intent landing as dismissive impact.
- Have each person recall a recent interaction where they suspect the two diverged.
- Let the other party name the actual impact, without the first person defending intent.
- Debrief: what specific behaviour would change the impact without changing the intent.
A worked example
Situation. Daniela Solano led product at a SaaS company in San Jose, Costa Rica, and could not understand why her engineers went quiet in her planning meetings when she thought she was just being efficient.
Applied. In a one-to-one, her lead engineer described the impact: her fast, closed questions felt like decisions already made, not real requests for input.
Result. Daniela kept her pace but changed one habit: ending questions with 'what am I missing' instead of moving straight to the next point. The quiet stopped within two sprints.
The catch
Naming the gap does not close it by itself - someone still has to change a specific behaviour, and that step gets skipped if the conversation stays at the level of feelings. It also risks being used as a shield ('that wasn't my intent') that lets the impact go unaddressed. It works best one relationship at a time, not as a slogan pinned to a wall.
'That wasn't my intent' is true and irrelevant. The impact happened regardless.
Origin: Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton & Sheila Heen (Difficult Conversations, Harvard Negotiation Project)