'Infamously Flaky and Enigmatic'
How would you like this to be your professional -- or personal -- reputation?
We can be perceived in ways that are not accurate assessments yet it’s also true that we can influence the perceptions and judgments people develop about us.
How would you feel, react or thoughtfully respond to finding out you are considered, judged even, as flaky and enigmatic and not just flaky but “infamously” so?
One highly accomplished professional athlete (Kyrie Irving, pictured above) was written about in that manner recently. You and I may not have a journalist or writer spread the word of our behavior in a similar fashion as Irving has experienced but such communication could still be circulating about us in business, the workplace or in our personal lives.
Maybe it doesn’t affect the quality of our life experience but it might hurt if we found out or witnessed people treating us in a manner aligned with that thinking.
The reality is this type of perception and judgment could impact us to the point where business opportunities, career promotions or even getting hired doesn’t come to us.
Friendships or romantic relationships might not happen or if they do they could fizzle out or be less enjoyable than they could be.
The point being that yes, sometimes we are misjudged and yes, sometimes we do the damage to ourselves with decisions and habits that don’t fully consider how others will experience us, how it will look and be analyzed in other people’s minds and how they will likely react immediately and later respond over the long term.
The onus however is not on them to change. It’s on us to learn, make responsible, respectable adjustments and help ethically, morally inspire new and better narratives.
If this sounds like a lecture, it’s not meant to be. Really. You know why? Because I am confident, regrettably, that I too have been and probably still am this type of person myself in the minds of other people. So I too have had work to do, still do and will likely have to do so in the future.
Like Irving I suspect, I don’t always understand why people have, do or may look at me the way they do but that’s far less important than what happens and what needs to be done if I and others and maybe you too (?) to prove impressions are incomplete or inaccurate.
Michael Toebe writes “Reputation Notes” and is the founder and specialist at Reputation Quality, a practice that serves and assists successful people and organizations in further building reputation as an asset and responsibly, ethically protecting, restoring or reconstructing it.
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