By Dilip Saraf

Why Does it Take a Herculean Effort to Overcome Prevailing Perceptions than to Just Perform Well?!

In a well-crafted and timely blog, Tony Tasca’s recent post, Perception is Reality: The Lessons from Ferguson, the author provides his insights on how the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and its aftermath has polarized the country and how this anger has now spilled over even beyond our own borders purely driven by collective perceptions. Tasca does a great job of defining perception, reality, facts, and the truth and succeeds in convincing the readers that a person’s reality is colored by their own biases, filters, insecurities, and imprinting. Most people are oblivious to their predilections to such biases and it is very difficult for them to connect their reality to the truth. Their reality often becomes their truth!

In this blog I would like to focus on how organizational perceptions can thwart a person’s efforts to perform well by doing the right thing inside an organization, yet the lingering perceptions others have about this person can vitiate the person’s efforts to overcome and succeed in an otherwise rational organization. I have many clients suffering from “discounted perceptions,” despite their heroic efforts to work hard and to do the right thing for their organization. Their refrain: How do I get my boss and others who matter to objectively judge my contributions and to merely acknowledge what I have contributed? Here, they are not necessarily looking for a reward, raise, or a promotion; just recognition for their good work!

Again, building on Tasca’s assertion (as Psychologists define it) that perception is “the conscious recognition and interpretation of sensory stimuli that serve as basis for understanding, learning, and knowing or for motivating a particular actions or reaction,” it is easy to see how in a busy organization people who matter are required to make snap judgments of events, employees, and outcomes, and then use those judgments to decide the fate of those who matter.

So, what can you do to change that and to put yourself in a positive light, knowing that you cannot always control how others form their perceptions? Here is my prescription:

1. People’s perceptions about you are formed over time. Once perceptions start crystallizing they build on that initial seed and keep on growing. So, the best way to stop from becoming a victim of misperceptions is to first become aware of how a certain outcome (or behavior) that you are responsible for can be misinterpreted by those who matter and how you can preemptively counter that misperception by taking charge of its fallout.As an example, I have manager-level client, whose skip-level boss is a tyrant, a micromanager, and just an obnoxious human being. He expected my client to be responsible for closing some key tickets resulting from QA squawks. My client was working on a critical release and he assessed—correctly—that his direct reports could easily tackle the open tickets, so he delegated them to his team. Assigned team members closed those tickets and signed their name, so no closed tickets were visible to this micromanager with my client’s name. The big boss came down hard on my client for evading work and for goofing off, even though my client was working 16-hour days to protect the release date. Yet another problem my client had was that he was also “blessed” with a feckless immediate boss.

   Here, what my client should have done, knowing fully well the disposition of his wrathful uber boss, is to first preemptively go to him and discuss his approach to getting the release out on time, which was important to everyone, and how he was going to manage to close the open tickets through that period, keeping his feckless boss in the loop all the while. Failing to do that caused unnecessary grief for my client and a way for his uber boss to hold that perception hostage to my client’s success.

2. If you are doing good work you can almost count on someone taking credit for that work or worse, hijacking your entire project when it is headed for success. One way to keep yourself in control of that success is to first present the project plan to your boss(es) and to make sure that there is clear accountability. Also, keeping your boss and others informed of the progress (or lack thereof) keeps the flow of critical information going to the right people. The idea is to avoid any surprises, which often result in misperceptions. So, keeping everyone on the same page is an important aspect of managing your perceptions.
3. One of the ways to check how others view your work is to have conversations with those that matter and check their impressions (perceptions) of what they see in your work. Proactively doing this can help you manage your own “PR” work and it is often worth your time and trouble. Besides, it is a good way to build relationships with people that matter and to build mentoring relationships with them. This strategy also enables you build alliances that can help you in troubled times.
4. One of the ways you can learn about how perceptions are formed and how they can be changed is to watch someone in your workgroup and do a reality check of what they actually do Vs. how they are perceived by others. If such a person is approachable it may be a good exercise—and a favor to that person—if you are able to reach them and tell them how they can change how others perceive them by giving them some first-hand tips. Make sure that you do not get burnt in the process of illuminating your colleague, but it may be a risk worth taking.
5. Cemented perceptions are difficult to change. Also, if they are formed over a long period they stay in people’s mind as their reality, which is almost impossible to change. So, if you have reached a stage in your workgroup or organization, where misperceptions about you are affecting your success and sanity, it is time to move on and begin with a fresh start somewhere else with a new mindset.

The subtitle of this blog is Why Does it Take a Herculean Effort to Overcome Prevailing Perceptions than to Just Perform Well?! Now you can see why that is true!

Good luck!