How are we perceived?

How can understanding how we're perceived help our careers?

It's probably fair to say that most of us would like to think we're good at our jobs and that we'd also like to think the people around us see what it is that we do well.

An assignment that I've been working on for a client this week has got me thinking about people's perceptions and how they impact our careers. We are half way through a project to complete a 360 degree assessment for a group of senior managers working in a technical business environment and this week I had to write an e-mail to them to accompany their completed reports. For those who haven't come across a 360 evaluation before it's an online questionnaire that asks those who work around us to assess our strengths and weaknesses and we then compare those scores against our own perception and take actions to improve our performance.

The question perhaps you're asking yourself is how would others rate me? The challenging thing when one asks this question is we have to be prepared to deal with what we find out. Therefore when we give people the reports it's important that we help them to interpret what they read. What I wrote to this group is the following:

"We find that typically when reading a report like this people tend to get a few pleasant surprises where others rate us higher than we rate ourselves and at the same time we'll identify a few areas where the people around you don't rate us as highly as we'd perhaps like to see.

The typical reaction here is to take a slightly defensive posture and generally we'll seek to rationalize and tell ourselves that the people that rated us don't fully understand what we think and all the things we have to do. That said what makes a 360 survey particularly useful as a development tool is that whether the perception expressed is right or wrong it gives us an understanding of actually how we are perceived and the focus of the coaching conversation next week will be to identify ways we can develop ourselves, address those perceptions and lead our teams in the most effective way."

As you've probably worked out the real benefit to each of us of asking other's perceptions is not in the knowing but in what actions it allows us to take. Any time I work on a project like this I'm reminded that in business and in all aspects of our life we have a responsibility over how people receive the messages that we send out not just a responsibility for the message we send.

If you'd like to know more about how people perceive you and therefore what actions you can take to develop your career please make contact with us to discuss our range of 360 survey evaluations.

David Anderson
Managing Director
Dale Carnegie London