How best intentions show up in the Bottom world

There is an illuminating tale in the Financial Times of how our best intentions can be fundamentally misunderstood. The Top sends a message to the workers that they no longer need to come over to the canteen for their tea break, that they can take the break at their work areas. His intention is to save the workers the bother of coming to the canteen. The workers took his message to mean: No tea break; just drink you tea and continue working. The only way this Top learned about the confusion was by disguising himself as a worker. Short of that, we need to understand the contexts of people's lives and how our best intentions are likely to be received in those contexts. Front line workers are generally living in a Bottom context, that is, a world of Vulnerability in which the Tops are always doing things to them - changing healthcare plans, coming up with new initiatives, changing work requirements, shutting down operations; they're on the receiving end of decisions that affect their lives in major and minor ways. So even the best intention can be experienced as THEM DOING IT TO US AGAIN! The challenge is to get heard in the context, recognize how in that context messages can be understood, be very clear in the message, say it more than once, check to be sure that it has been understood. At a more general level do whatever you can to reduce that experience of vulnerability in the Bottom space.