7 EASY Steps to Control people’s Perception of You at your New Firm
Are you enjoying the first few days at your new firm? Well, I am sure you are as excited as I am to be able to present a guide on ‘building the best version of yourself on how your colleagues perceive you at your new firm’. This article intends to help all those of you who have started working at a new firm within 60 days from today. I will write another piece soon on how to methodologically change your problematic image if you are in an organisation for quite a while. You can follow me to be notified about it and for many other stories like it.
Some of you may have read my previous article on Workplace Politics 101 (link below), where, I touched upon the importance of people’s perception of you to successfully navigate yourself amidst the politics at a workplace.
First, let us define the word ‘perception’. Perception, in a corporate setting, is the mental image of yourself in the minds of your colleagues. People build this image based on your behaviour inside or outside of your corporate environment. The things you do, things you say, your opinions on topics, your habits, your attire, and even the car you drive contribute to your image in other people’s minds. “Why does this happen in a logic-driven & seemingly rational business environment?”, one might ask. The answer is that humans, by design, are very quick to categorise you, a new person at a firm, into a few sets of personas. They do that to avoid a huge amount of mental effort required to understand you and anticipate your behaviour. It is very similar to why a marketer segments her target customers into several personas. If you are working in this field, then you know that segmentation is commonly done on the Demographic, Behavioural & Psychographic traits of users.
Similarly, with you, your faintest traits, rarest behaviour or even some random events can build that said mental image. Sometimes good but most of the time, bad. When you miss your bus to work a couple of times, people will be quick to brand you a ‘late-comer’ or ‘lethargic’ or ‘unprofessional’. The tiniest coffee mark on your tie can lead you to be perceived as ‘sloppy’. All right! Yes, I am probably giving some exaggerated examples, but it is important to understand that small things in the early days of your career define how you are going to be perceived during your time in the organisation. It doesn’t matter how far away from reality it is, people’s perception of you will now govern how they think you are, in terms of your expertise, your professionalism and even your credibility.
“Perception is real even when it is not reality.” — Edward de Bono
So you need to carefully guide people to perceive yourself in the way, you want. The key here is to portray yourself as who you really are. Trying to portray someone you are not will never work. People will eventually see through you and the perception will probably be destroyed forever.
So here is my 8-step guide to get people’s perception about you, ‘first-time right’:
Step 1: Plan the hell out of it — If you are like me, who struggles to deal with random, chaotic to-do’s, you will need a plan. Like any project, create a ‘perception-setting’ plan, spanning 3 to 6 months. Add milestones and write down tasks to achieve those.
Step 2: Set up Recurring Communication — Introduce yourself and set up recurring communication channels with your manager and important stakeholders including the employees that are reporting to you. Ask them about their work, challenges, expectations from your role etc. Use these channels to also show your work and get feedback.
Step 3: Adjust your plan — Work on the feedback. Add, edit or reprioritise your tasks wherever you see a red flag along the way. Using this, you will be able to rectify your mistakes early in the perception-setting process
Step 4: Build the larger view — Many times, in eagerness to prove that they are a good hire, a new employee starts to get in the thick of things a little too early. And hence, they start to get a myopic view of the things around them, leaving them unaware of the ‘How’ and ‘why’ parts of the process. Very rarely you will be expected to start performing from day 1. So take your time, meet people as much as you can and understand the terrain to get a larger view of the things around you. But do complete the tasks that are expected from you during this time
Step 5: Don’t be a cry-baby — Unless unavoidable, do not (for now) complain about and criticise anybody or any process at your new firm. You are still new here, nobody likes a new employee complaining about the people they barely know or a process they haven’t even worked on. After you have established your credibility, you will get your chance to right all the wrongs.
Step 6: Make friends but open carefully — A friend in your new organisation will help you in getting honest and early feedback on people’s perceptions of you. For many of you, and in many organisational settings, opening up to someone so early might be a little difficult. In such cases, your manager is your best bet. But don’t just blindly trust anybody. You probably don’t know, to whom this person might be connected. Be professional and careful in what you say about others in front of them
Step 6: Don’t forget your subordinates — Your subordinates (if it applies) are some of your biggest stakeholders. How they think of you will govern how effective you will be in leading them. The theory of leadership development taught in business schools says that you need to make sure your employees are; a) inspired by the knowledge and expertise you bring, b) idealised by your experience and achievements & c) intellectually challenged on what they do in their role. Keep in mind that they too will be working on how your perception (about them) is getting built during the early days of your new job
And Finally, Step 7: Be good at your job — Following the above steps will only help you make people start believing in you. They will begin to trust you and will gradually perceive that you are actually good at your job. None of this matters when you are terribly underperforming. Your stakeholders are aware that a new employee might hit a few road bumps along the way, early on. They will forego most of the mistakes you make. But if you are extraordinarily bad at your job, their perception of you will start deteriorating. They will understand that you are trying to project someone, you are clearly not.
Well, that is it!
Some experienced folks might find this guide to be quite basic and ‘nothing new’. Trust me, I know! I learned these steps the hard way very late in my career. This guide is intended to help those people who haven’t really gotten into the ring of workplace politics yet. It is not very hard. After some time, you will get a hang of it and it will come naturally to you wherever you go.
Please give your feedback on this article in the comment section. I will be happy to hear your stories and experiences on perception.
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