Dear Crucial Skills,

I have someone in my life whose behavior is confusing, inconsistent, and honestly, kind of emotionally charged. How do you figure out what’s actually driving someone like that instead of just reacting to whatever they did five minutes ago?

Signed,
Reacting Anyway

Dear Reacting,

One way to find out is to ask them. But before we get to that I want to challenge you a bit. The thing driving you crazy isn’t their behavior. It’s the story you told yourself about their behavior in about four seconds flat, and you believed it completely.

That’s weird, I know, but it’s also completely normal. Someone does something confusing or contradictory, and our brain doesn’t sit with “Huh, that’s odd.” It jumps straight to a verdict— they’re flaky, they’re two-faced, they’re doing this on purpose—and then we react to the verdict like it’s a fact. But it never was. It was a guess, and probably not a generous one.

So before you can figure out what’s driving someone, you may have to stop doing what feels natural when you’re irritated—like reacting before thinking. Here’s how to start.

Step 1: Don’t say anything yet.

When this person’s behavior confuses, irritates, or frustrates you, you’re probably not in a great place to have a conversation. You’re likely in a place to make matters worse. So your first job isn’t to probe or fix them. It’s to NOT turn a flame into a forest fire while you’re still running on that four-second judgment.

Here’s the scary part about that four-second judgment: in the moment, you may feel like you’ve completely figured them out. And you’re certain about it. Certainty is an absolute killer to productive dialogue.

Step 2: Separate what happened from what you think it means.

Try this. You called their behavior “confusing” and “emotionally charged.” Fine…but what did they actually do? Rewind the tape.

Maybe they supported the plan on Monday, then noisily opposed it on Thursday. Maybe they tell everyone being on time matters, then show up fifteen minutes late twice a week. That’s the whole tape. Everything else: confusing, inconsistent, emotionally charged; that’s all the story you laid on top of it.

Here’s why that split matters: the same set of facts can support a dozen different stories. Maybe they got blindsided by new information between Monday and Thursday. Maybe they’re running on no sleep. Maybe they really are just inconsistent. You don’t know yet, and that’s the point. The facts don’t make you angry. The story does. Strip it back to just the facts, and your temperature drops fast, even before you’ve “solved” anything.

Step 3: Ask what a reasonable person could have been dealing with—then go write the next chapter.

I heard a line once from a restaurant leader that’s stuck with me for years: “The road to a success is paved with mistakes well handled.” Her team’s whole approach to someone messing up came down to two moves, in this order. First, make the most generous assumption you can. Not to excuse the poor performance, but to loosen your grip on the one story you’ve already decided is true. Second, go write a great next chapter. This is where you talk about your concern, what happened, and the behavior in question.

Notice the order. If you skip straight to “writing the next chapter” while you’re still convinced they’re just difficult, you’re not writing a next chapter. You’re pronouncing your initial verdict.

You’ve actually got two separate problems here, and most people try to solve them in one breath: your reaction to their behavior, and the behavior itself. You can’t fix both at once. Fix the first one—get honest about the story you’re telling—and the second one gets a lot easier to talk about.

And none of this is about letting them off the hook. They may genuinely be doing plenty they shouldn’t be doing. The goal isn’t to excuse behavior, it’s to have some influence over it. And you’ll be a lot more successful persuading someone to change their approach if you show up curiously instead of condemning them.

Step 4: Have the conversation.

If you do all the above, the good news is you don’t have to be all that polished about what you say. Your curiosity is going to show up in your tone and your face before it ever shows up in your words, and that alone will carry most of this conversation. That’s why most of my suggestions are about getting your head right instead of giving you a script.

But since you’re going to want something to say, here’s a simple structure: Intent, Facts, Story, Ask.

Start by sharing your good intent: “Hey, I want to talk to you about something that’s been kind of frustrating me, and I want to be honest about it because I want us to work well together.”

Then share the facts, just the facts: “I’ve noticed a pattern in meetings. You’ll say you support an idea, and then afterward you come tell me you actually hated it.”

Then your story—offered as a story—not as a fact: “It’s starting to feel like you’re not being consistent with the rest of the team, and honestly, I’m not sure what you really think anymore.”

Then ask: “Can you help me understand how you’re seeing this?”

Come in with real intent, lay out the facts, share your story humbly, then ask. In my experience, the vast majority of the time, that approach turns into a genuinely good conversation, and people are far more likely to actually hear you.

Now, to find out what’s driving them, listen. Here’s what you’re listening for: the reasonable explanation sitting underneath the behavior. Are they overloaded? Burned out? Missing a skill they need? Getting pulled by incentives you can’t see? Getting hit by pressure from somewhere/someone else? You don’t have to agree with the reason. You’re just trying to find the why.

Ask with curiosity, and people tend to tell you. What you’ll usually find is that you’re dealing with a reasonable person acting in an unreasonable way, for reasons that make sense once you hear them. That doesn’t let anyone off the hook. But it does make you more effective at raising the concern, and a lot more likely to help them—and the relationship—improve.

Justin