Perception in Business

Perception... How do you perceive your colleagues? How do your colleagues perceive you?

I am in a super crazy time right now. I'm extremely overloaded at work. I have personal things weighing on my mind. All of it is temporary, thankfully, but for the moment I am stressed to the max (and have been the last several weeks).

And I know that I am:

• Running around like a crazy person at work
• Shutting myself inside my office every spare second I have
• Declining meetings whenever humanly possible
• Delegating as much as I can

Basically, pushing as much off my plate as possible (and still working way too many hours).

Recently, I've been a little concerned about how my behavior was impacting the rest of the team (and I've been asking them!). Am I delegating too much? Am I skipping any key meetings? Etc.

But beyond just workload, I have been thinking a lot about how my behavior is being perceived, which led me to write this blog. Come join me down this mini rabbit hole - I bet you can relate! :)

What the heck does the boss do all day?

I remember when I was an individual contributor. Like most people, I think, I sometimes wondered:

• What did the top execs do behind closed doors? What were they meeting about?
• Why was the CEO always shut away in his corner office with the door closed?
• Why does my boss take so long to get back to me when reviewing my work?
• Why is my boss’s calendar so insane (what could she possibly be doing in all those meetings?! why does she get to take a 90-minute lunch?!)

The other side of the coin

But it’s funny now that I’m a manager, with my closed door, leadership team meetings, poor response times (working on this!) and jam-packed calendar. I now understand this side of the coin… but don’t often step back to consider others’ perception of me or remember how I saw things before I was a boss.

Now I've been questioning things like:

• Do I seem unavailable or absent when I’m frequently in my office with the door shut?
• Do I seem lazy or selfish or [fill-in-the-blank] when I’m skipping meetings and delegating more than usual?
• Do I seem inconsiderate when I become a bottleneck in reviewing others’ work?
• Does the leadership team seem out of touch when we meet behind closed doors?
• Do I seem unapproachable or intimidating when I run around the office in a huge rush?

I make a concerted effort to provide space for candid feedback from my team. We have quarterly conversations designed for that purpose and I solicit their feedback more often than that. I don't hear much and so I usually feel satisfied.

I certainly don't mean to be any of those things listed above. And since I haven't heard any feedback as such, I never really thought anyone perceived me that way... until recently as I've been thinking about it more.

My boss recently reminded me of this: the majority of employees may not feel comfortable giving a manager critical, candid feedback. I may feel like I'm providing an unthreatening space for it, but that's just my perception.

The other (other) side of the coin

To come full circle, I can admit that as a manager, I also sometimes catch myself making unfair judgments toward my team when I’m stressed. Why did [team member] miss a deadline, not do a task how I expected, make a mistake, etc. etc…

But then I stop to remember who I was at that level / role, that I need to be fair with the measuring stick I use, that no one is perfect (most definitely not me!) and that I need to take ownership of what I can control. Could I have given better instructions, provided a reminder, given more resources, etc...?

The bottom line

For me, this all boils down to two things:

1. Everyone is human. Employees, bosses, executives, clients, everyone. It's easy to villainize "the boss" or "the team" or "the client" but so important to remember that we are all humans who have feelings and make mistakes and have flaws as well as strengths.
2. My goal is to be much more self-aware in how others may perceive me and my actions, and also to catch myself when I make unfair judgments about others.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.