It is wise to avoid making assumptions about your client or colleague.  The assumptions you make may give the impression that you have privileged information about him or her.  When your assumptions are correct, the aura of omniscience increases the awareness of your power and is threatening to the other party.  Where your assumptions are wrong, as they often really are, you do not give your client or colleague the opportunity to say what he or she intended.

This pattern, of course, applies most directly in talking about personal matters involving the other person.

 

If you acknowledge your power (12) you can de-emphasize it by avoiding direct questions and giving information (14), assume cooperation (17) but don't expect everything to be entirely clear because you should also assume indirectness (38).