Written by: Cahide Akkuzu<\/p>\n
Reading time: 5 minutes<\/p>\n
We must accept that there is always a difference between how we see ourselves and how others see us. Sometimes, there can be a huge gap between our self-perception and how others perceive us. This is our blind spot. And, how we are perceived by others is a reality that we must accept!<\/p>\n
The way you are perceived as a leader plays an important role in your influence on others and has an impact on your success. If the trust in you as a successful leader is high, you will have more impact on others and you will need less effort to get your team or other people into action. If you are constantly facing resistance, things don\u2019t move forward as fast as they should, even though you are investing a lot of effort in your team you cannot get the results that you are expecting, it may be time to take a closer look at how you are perceived!<\/p>\n
Many leaders understand their own perceptions but are often either ignorant or intolerant to how others perceive them. Success as a leader has very little to do with your self-perception, but rather it has everything to do with how others perceive you. There are obviously other traits that play very important roles like leadership skills, character or integrity. The reality of a leader\u2019s success, however, may depend more on how you are viewed by others than it does on what you do as a leader.\u00a0 Let\u2019 s see how!<\/p>\n
A survey done by\u00a0VitalSmarts, which is a leadership training company that has been renamed to Crucial Learning last year, uncovered a huge gap between how management and employees view the company’s\u00a0leadership style and culture. Let\u2019s look at a few areas where leaders\u2019 perception of themselves differ significantly from how they are perceived by employees.<\/p>\n
Conformity versus\u00a0innovation<\/u> – Many leaders think they encourage employees to innovate and approach them with new ideas. Surprisingly, the VitalSmarts survey found that majority of employees feel as if they should\u00a0think inside the box and not outside the box! Employees were 53 percent more likely than leaders to say the office-culture norm is to conform, follow the rules and make a good impression. No matter how much leaders think they ask employees for new ideas, employees often believe their leaders are not listening and are not interested in new ideas. Why do employees feel this way? How comes that they are perceiving their leaders in such a<\/span> way?<\/p>\n Transparency versus closed communication<\/u> – Leaders tend to think they are open and honest with employees, but the VitalSmarts survey shows that employees don\u2019t feel the same way. Leaders were 67 percent more likely than employees to say the norm in the office is to speak up immediately whenever there is a question or concern that could affect performance. While leaders expect employees to be open and transparent and to come to them with questions or concerns, the leaders themselves don\u2019t do the same! The main disconnect happens in the feedback phase.\u00a0 37 percent of managers are uncomfortable with giving direct feedback and criticism when they anticipate employees to respond poorly.<\/p>\n Goal-oriented versus task-oriented<\/u> – Many leaders believe they are\u00a0helping employees set goals and establish\u00a0plans to reach them, but employees from VitalSmarts’ survey were 18 percent less likely to agree that this is true. Setting goals isn’t enough. These objectives sometimes get lost in the flood of day-to-day responsibilities.<\/p>\n Competition versus\u00a0teamwork<\/u> – Collaboration and teamwork have become large areas of focus for leaders, but employees aren\u2019t seeing the change. Surprisingly, respondents of the VitalSmarts survey said they felt competition with peers was valued by leaders and their company culture.<\/p>\n These research results clearly illustrate the gap between how leaders perceive themselves and how they are perceived by their employees. This gap in perception can lead to many unwanted consequences. One of the important consequences is the negative impact it creates on employee engagement, which I discussed in one of my previous articles. You can find my article about employee engagement from the following link: \u00a0https:\/\/www.contextprofessionals.com\/en\/do-you-care-about-how-engaged-your-team-is-part1\/<\/a><\/p>\n Without a doubt, the most important thing to do is to face the facts. Be aware of and accept other people’s perceptions and understand how these perceptions are formed.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start by looking at the definitional differences between \u201cperception\u201d and \u201creality\u201d. Perception is a belief, theory, hypothesis, feeling, appearance, opinion, observation, insight, awareness or sensitivity. It may or may not constitute reality, and initial perceptions often change with the passing of time, the changing of circumstances, or with receiving additional information. On the other side, reality is\u00a0certain, authentic, actual, true, and factual. True reality is\u00a0undeniable, factually indisputable, and not subject to debate.<\/p>\n According to this definition, others\u2019 perception about us is a reality that we must accept. We may not agree with that perception or different people may have different perceptions of us. We must accept their perception of us as a reality, because they will behave in a certain way due to how they perceive us! They may say \u201cI don\u2019t think my boss likes to be challenged therefore I am holding back from sharing my true opinions\u201d. We must accept this feeling and the associated behavior of our team member as our reality. It is important that we accept others perception of us as our reality because we now know that these perceptions have important effects on our results. If we do not see our blind spot, we cannot do anything about it, and it will continue to impact us negatively.<\/p>\n Since perception is so important, let\u2019s take a closer look at how perception is formed. People can be at the same place, observe the same event and still form different opinions about what happened. And since everyone perceives the world differently, everyone thinks that their version of interpretation is correct. Just like the visual we used at the beginning of this article. Some may only see black and white spots, some may see a tree, some may see flowers, and some may see two people facing each other. How we perceive something we see changes according to the filters we have created over time. As a leader, your behavior, words, facial expression, reactions, approach, attitudes; in summary all your verbal or non-verbal messages are interpreted by the people at the receiving end through their filters, and as a result, certain judgments about you emerge. For more detailed information on this topic, you can read my post on Unconscious Bias from the following link:<\/p>\n