Borrowed Opinions

It’s difficult to see clearly when you’re looking through someone else’s lens.

Like most of you, I’ve spent quite a bit of time watching the World Cup over the past few weeks. While watching the American team lose last week wasn’t the outcome I hoped for, I’m still very invested in the tournament - and it has very little to do with the games on the pitch.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the pageantry, passion, and global nature of the event. To me, there’s something unquestionably cool about watching different cultures from around the world come together for a game that means so much to so many people. But what really captivated me were the comments from visitors from other countries who seemed genuinely surprised by how friendly Americans were.

Here’s my favorite quote from one German fan, and one that really sums up the opinion so many have expressed: “I feel like I’ve been lied to. If you want to hate America, watch the news. If you want to learn to love America, get out and meet the people.” That’s just one of countless versions of the same sentiment: Americans are kind, welcoming, funny, generous, and far more approachable than anyone expected.

At first, this made me swell with pride as an American. After I thought about it for a while, I wondered why so many people expected something different. The answer, of course, is that they had been told a story. Maybe from traditional media, social platforms, politicians, long-believed stereotypes, or the current loudest voice in the room. Regardless of where it came from, many fans descended upon the United States with expectations about who Americans were supposed to be, only to discover that their actual experience was far more nuanced, positive, and, frankly, human.

Of course, as things often do, that got me to thinking about the lesson in business: we borrow opinions.

We hear that a certain type of prospect only buys on price, so we never call them. We’re told a company is impossible to work with, so we keep them at arm's length. Someone posts on social media that a supplier is difficult, so we approach every interaction with suspicion. We hear that a generation is lazy, entitled, impatient, or challenging to manage, and suddenly we start seeing individuals through the lens of an unearned stereotype.

To be clear, that doesn’t mean every warning is wrong. Experience matters, and when someone we trust shares a personal perspective, we should listen. But listening and adopting their worldview as your own are not the same thing. There is an enormous difference between considering someone else’s experience and allowing it to become our reality. The fact is that people are almost always far too complex to fit inside someone else's opinion of them. The same goes for companies, industries, nationalities, and communities.

In the world of branded merchandise, I’ve seen this play out more times than my feeble math brain can count:

• A salesperson inherits a territory and gets told which accounts are worth pursuing and which ones are a waste of time.

• A distributor reads that a supplier wronged a faceless keyboard warrior and never gives them a fair shake.

• A supplier decides a distributor is too small, too demanding, or too transactional before ever asking the right questions.

In each case, someone else’s story becomes the filter through which everything is viewed. That is the real problem: borrowed opinions can become missed opportunities. The prospect someone told you was impossible might simply have been misunderstood. The company that “only buys on price” might never have been given a reason to value anything else. The employee who seems detached and disengaged might be bored, underutilized, or waiting for someone to see what they’re capable of becoming with the right mentorship.

That’s the danger of accepting a secondhand opinion too quickly. While it can save us from wasting time, it can also prevent us from discovering something different and meaningful. I wrote a few weeks ago about the importance of curiosity, and it bears mentioning again here. Curiosity gives us permission to challenge the story we’ve been told, to wonder whether there’s more to the person, company, or situation we haven’t been exposed to, and to create space for possibility to enter the conversation.

One of the unexpected gifts of the World Cup was watching people experience a different version of America than the one they expected. They didn’t discover perfection because perfection doesn’t really even exist. What they did discover, however, was humanity, as they met real people rather than caricatures. In doing so, many of the stories they had been told began to fall apart.

I wonder how many opportunities we miss by accepting someone else’s version of reality instead of discovering it for ourselves. Perhaps the lesson is simple: the next great client, employee, partnership, friendship, or opportunity may be hiding behind an opinion that didn’t originate with us. That doesn’t mean we should ignore wisdom, dismiss experience, or pretend every person or company deserves unlimited chances. It means we should always exercise caution when confusing someone else’s conclusion with our own.

Seeing people and situations for what they really are requires more than hearing about them - it requires experiencing them. So before we borrow an opinion, let’s go see for ourselves.