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4 Ways to Overcome a Bad First Impression

We’ve all been there — accidentally alienated a new coworker with a bad joke, underwhelmed the new boss by botching our first assignment, or had a client we didn’t just click with. The trouble is that initial impressions are hard to shake.

In a psychological phenomenon known as the “fundamental attribution error,” humans are quick to “essentialize” the behaviors of others. You might have simply been having a bad day, or you might have been off your game because of a recent breakup or death in the family, but your new colleague isn’t likely to extend that generous of an explanation. Instead, they’re far more likely to assume that your subpar performance is an essential trait — making it extremely challenging to overcome their negative perception. But, as I discuss in my book Reinventing You, it’s not impossible to change how others view you. Here are four ways you can begin to overturn their entrenched beliefs.

Surprise them. The reason people don’t often change their initial impressions is that our brain is optimized to conserve energy; if there’s not a compelling reason to re-evaluate something, then we won’t. So you need to manufacture a reason by surprising them. Your colleagues may have built up a certain, inaccurate impression of you — that you’re not leadership material because you’re too mousy and quiet, for instance.

You can’t expect to overturn that thinking with subtle gestures. You need a bolder strategy to force them to re-evaluate what they thought they knew about you. If you’ve developed a reputation for being quiet and never speaking up, it won’t suffice to talk once in a meeting. Instead, make a point of being the first person to speak, and making multiple comments. If your colleagues have to ask themselves, “What got into him?” then you’re on the right track in beginning to change their views.

Overcompensate over time. A forceful change in behavior may get your colleagues to take notice. But if you only do it once, they can write it off as an aberration: He must have had too much coffee that morning. Instead, keep up your new behavior over time, and recognize that in order to change perceptions, you’ll need to do it far longer than the original behavior for which you were pigeonholed.

As Heidi Grant Halvorson, the author of Nobody Understands You and What to Do About It, told me in an interview,it’s essential to “bombard them with a lot of evidence to suggest that their first impression of you was wrong. It can’t be subtle.” For instance, if you have a reputation for tardiness at work, “What you have to do is be early and be early for weeks. You need to make the evidence that you’ve changed, or that you’re not who they think you are, abundant and eye-catching. If you just keep that up for a while, eventually people will change their opinion of you.”

Get closer to them. If you’ve started out on the wrong foot with a colleague, it can be tempting to avoid the problem by staying away from them. But keeping a distance is likely to exacerbate the problem, because — since they’re not receiving any new inputs about who you are — it will only reinforce their existing perceptions. Instead, force yourself out of your comfort zone and find ways to get to know them better. Ben Michaelis, a psychologist and the author of Your Next Big Thing, says that when it comes to changing perceptions, “Don’t use words; use actions. Once people have a point of view, the best way to shift it is through mounting behavioral evidence rather than just half-hearted niceties.”

Years ago, an employee of mine used this strategy to good effect. My initial impression of Matthew was that he was a bit lazy and distractible at work. Realizing that I was increasingly unimpressed with him, he made an ingenious move. He suggested that we get to know each other better by going to a rock climbing gym — an activity at which he was very experienced, and I was a novice. I was literally dependent on Matthew’s expertise as his climbing partner, and seeing his competence and mastery showed me a different side of what he was capable of.

Wait it out. Finally, sometimes the bad impression your colleagues may have formed has literally nothing to do with you. Nearly a decade ago, I met a woman at a conference. Today, we’re close friends and see each other regularly, and have collaborated on several projects together. But, she revealed to me several years after we first met, she hadn’t actually liked me at first. A slightly cynical New Yorker, she thought I seemed “too positive” — and therefore somewhat fake. It was only after knowing me for several years that she determined it wasn’t a façade; that’s actually how I was. “It was my own baggage,” she told me. There was nothing I specific I had done to make her think I was fake; she had projected her past experiences onto me. If you’re patient and continue to act in ways you’re proud of, most people will eventually come around.

It’s frustrating and unfair when we feel misunderstood. But while initial impressions tend to stick, they can — with time, effort, and strategy — be changed, so that your true talents can be appreciated.

A version of this was first posted on hbr.org

Will The Real You Please Stand Up? #TChat Recap

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” -Oscar Wilde

Looking for yet another staggering social era statistic? Try this from personal branding tools provider, Brand Yourself:

Google processes more than 80 million “people” searches each day. Yep. 80 million. Chances are someone will be searching for you soon. So ask yourself this — if someone “Googled” your name right now, would the results do you justice?

Brand Positioning: It’s All About The “C” Words

As a marketing and communications professional, I’ve spent years persuading business organizations to mind their messaging, so the world will understand their brand promise. I preach the “5 C’s” of brand positioning: Clarity, Completeness, Cohesion, Credibility and Consistency. And now, after a week of “brand you” discussions with the TalentCulture community, I see how those very same concepts can be an equally powerful force in our professional lives.

Turns out, I’m not the only one who likes “C” words! Earlier this year, after #TChat conversations about how professional recommendations influence personal brands, our very own Kevin W. Grossman offered some handy “C” advice of his own on the Reach-West blog:

“…Ensure your online profiles are as consistent and accurate as possible across all social points of presence. In other words, whomever you say you are, and whatever you say you’re doing (and have done) is close (if not the same) on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, G+ and the many other industry and association niche networks and communities where you’re visible.

Consistency and accuracy are critical keys, because those searching for you and reviewing your profiles will be looking for anomalies that don’t add up — and you want everything to add up. You want to stand out, but you want to add up — and for goodness sake you want to be accurate and truthful about everything. That includes your recommendations and endorsements. Never over-spin, or allow others to go there. Not only that, but at the very least once a quarter review and update your online profiles, and kill those you no longer want to maintain, even if you’re not looking for work.

Why? Because you never know when that great new opportunity will be looking for you to add up. It’s your personal employment brand. Take care of it.”

DIY Brand Makeover

Reinventing You

Learn more about “Reinventing You”5 C’s of Brand Positioning

Hmm. I guess I’d better spend the dog days of summer cleaning my personal brand “house.” How about you? From what I saw on the #TChat stream yesterday, few of us would disagree with the importance of proactively managing an online persona. But for some people, focusing on themselves is almost as enjoyable as flossing their teeth.

That’s why we asked a fearless brand management expert to lead the way this week — Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You. Dorie clearly understands the issues that hold people back from “owning” their brand identity, and she offers practical tools to make it work.

Below, we’ve captured the week’s highlights — including a tweet-by-tweet Storify slideshow from #TChat Twitter, and other resource links.

We hope this sparks a desire to start your own brand makeover. Let us know about your progress…here or on the stream. The TalentCulture community, is always open and ready to offer ideas and support. Rock that brand!

#TChat Week in Review: Reinventing Your Personal Brand

SAT 7/13

DorieClark

Watch the G+ Hangout with Dorie Clark

#TChat Preview: Our Community Manager, Tim McDonald, outlined the week’s topic in a post that features a great “sneak peek” G+ Hangout with Dorie. See “You 2.0: Reinventing a Personal Brand.”

SUN 7/14

Forbes.com Post: TalentCulture CEO, Meghan M. Biro, offered 5 ways to tap into your true professional identity. Read “Rethink Brand You: Find Your Authentic Self.”

TUE 7/16

Related Post: For people who need clarification to redefine themselves, Dorie explained how to gather actionable input from a full-circle brand review. Read “Considering a Career Change? Take a 360 Snapshot.”

WED 7/17

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Listen to the #TChat Radio show

#TChat Radio: To kick-off this week’s #TChat double-header, Dorie spoke with Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman about the power of proactively managing your brand. Even if you’re not in the market for a new position, you’ll hear ideas you can use. Listen now to the recording.

#TChat Twitter: As the radio show concluded, we fired-up the Twitter chat engines for a dynamic, community conversation about the role of personal branding in our professional lives. As always, the crowdsourcing energy was breathtaking. Thanks to everyone who contributed! To review highlights, see the slideshow below:

#TChat Twitter Highlights: “Reinventing a Personal Brand”

[javascript src=”//storify.com/TalentCulture/tchat-insights-reinventing-a-personal-brand.js?template=slideshow”]

Closing Notes & What’s Ahead

GRATITUDE: Thanks again to Dorie Clark for helping our community think more intelligently about the “why” and “how” of personal brand management. You inspire us to reach higher!

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Did this week’s events prompt you to write about work/life integration issues? We’d love to share your thoughts. Post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we’ll pass it along.

WHAT’S AHEAD: Next week at #TChat events, we’ll continue our summer “professional restart” series with a special crowdsourcing forum. Check for details in a preview post this weekend.

In the meantime, the World of Work conversation continues each day. So join us on the #TChat Twitter stream, or on our new LinkedIn discussion group. And feel free to explore other areas of our redesigned website. The gears are always turning at TalentCulture, and your ideas and opinions are always welcome.

See you on the stream!

Image Credit: Stock.xchng

 

 

 

Considering a Career Change? Take a 360 Snapshot

Written by Dorie Clark, Next Avenue

Thinking about reinventing yourself professionally so you can switch fields or move up the ladder in your current career? A good way to start is by giving yourself a “Personal 360” interview.

At some corporations, employees receive performance reviews based on what are called “360 reviews” (360, as in all directions). In a 360 review, the key people you work with — your boss, peers, subordinates and clients — provide anonymous, aggregated feedback about you and your performance. Firms conduct these reviews partly to uncover the suck-ups who get along perfectly with their bosses but are tyrants to everyone below them.

What a Personal 360 Interview Can Do For You

By pulling together your own Personal 360 interview, where you talk with assorted people about your strengths and weaknesses, you’ll be able to begin leveraging your best talents for the next stage of your career. These people are not only your best hope of receiving honest feedback, they’re also the ones you’ll turn to for mentoring and (eventually) new business and referrals. It may seem like an imposition to reach out, but the truth is, it takes a village to reinvent yourself.

(Related reading: Why We’re Hardwired for Midlife Reinvention)

Personal 360 Process

Here’s how to conduct a Personal 360:

First, create a list of questions you think would be helpful in enhancing your self-knowledge. Executive coach Michael Melcher suggests paired questions. For example: “What’s my strength?” and “What’s not my strength?” Or “What career can you see me in?” and “What career can you definitely not see me in?” That format, Melcher says, “gives people permission to give the full picture; they don’t want to be too negative.”

A few good questions that aren’t paired:

  • What 3 words would you use to describe me?
  • If you didn’t already know what I do for a living, what would you guess, and why?
  • I’m trying to go from field X to field Y. What steps would you suggest?
  • What are my blind spots?

Picking Interview Targets

Next, identify the people you’ll be tapping for your 360 review. You need to be careful, especially if you don’t want to tip your hand to co-workers that you’re considering a career change. Focus on friends, trustworthy colleagues and family members you can depend on to provide honest feedback (no frenemies need apply).

Phyllis Stein, a career consultant in Cambridge, Mass., and the former director of Radcliffe College Career Services at Harvard University, suggests identifying up to 20 people who exemplify the interests, skills and values you admire. Ideally, you’ll want to corral a diverse assortment of men and women in different fields so you can get a broad perspective.

Once you’ve selected potential members of your 360 posse, it’s time to approach them. Melcher suggests making it clear that you want them to set aside time, but not for friendly chitchat. “If you tell your friends you’ll be interviewing them, they’ll take it much more seriously,” he says. Explain that you’ll be spending about 20 minutes asking them about your personal brand so you can see how you’re perceived.

(Related reading: Why Delay Your Dream Job?)

The Face-to-Face Advantage

Face-to-face interviews often yield better responses than phone calls, emails or Skype chats because they let you probe answers further. But they’re not always possible. You might be in Miami and the interviewee in Mumbai, for instance. Or the person you want may be so busy that the best you’ll get is an email pecked out on a smartphone between layovers.

However, be prepared. You’ll need a thick skin to conduct face-to-face interviews. Sometimes the truth can be painful. So if your poker face isn’t up to snuff, you might just want to stick to doing your Personal 360 electronically.

No matter how you conduct the interviews, be sure the people you’re talking with agree to be brutally honest. New York–based career coach Alisa Cohn says you almost have to be forceful about this with friends because their desire to protect you is often so strong.

“Say, ‘I’m trying to develop myself and I know you love me, but I’d appreciate your candid feedback about my limitations,’” Cohn recommends. If your friend says, ‘You don’t have any,’ insist he or she takes your request more seriously.

How to Prompt Honest Answers

One trick, she says, is to bring up negatives about yourself so your 360 team doesn’t have to do so. “You can say: ‘I’ve gotten feedback in the past that I’m a tactical thinker — not strategic. I wonder if you’ve seen that and what you think?’” Cohn says. “When you rat yourself out first, they can add on.”

Conducting a Group 360 Interview

In addition to (or instead of) one-on-one conversations, another possibility is hosting a group gathering in your living room with 8-10 trusted friends and colleagues, assuming your network lives nearby. The benefit of this is that you can leverage the wisdom of crowds when one person’s idea sparks another. Think of it as a focus group where the focus is you.

Make sure you have enough comfortable chairs and, just as in real focus groups, bribe people with dinner and/or copious, high-quality snacks. If you’re able, it’s a classy gesture to provide each attendee with a small token of your appreciation, like a gift card for a coffee shop or bookstore. Keep the whole shebang to 90 minutes max, with 30 of those minutes upfront for mingling and to accommodate late arrivals.

Essential Jobs for a Group Interview

Two roles are critical: the facilitator and the scribe. If you’re a terrific moderator — you can keep meetings going efficiently, politely hush ramblers, probe interesting statements — take on the facilitator role yourself. But for most people, this can be a tricky assignment when the subject is you. So you may want to ask a friend or co-worker to fill the role. Just be sure to coordinate in advance with the moderator so you’ll be able to slip him or her notes for follow-up questions.

You might, however, be comfortable as the scribe. If so, sit silently in the back, don’t interrupt and just take notes. It’s a good idea, with your group’s permission, to record the session so you can play it back and review it in the future.

You may want to set aside five minutes at the end of the session to ask attendees to write down a short summary of their perceptions — three words that describe you, the most important skill you should develop and so on. Since some participants may be too shy to offer their thoughts out loud, this is a good way to ensure you’ve captured their insights.

It could also be useful to supplement your 360 interviews by reading over previous performance reviews and recommendation letters you’ve received at work, as well as by seeing what people have said about you online — positively and negatively. (A Google search can help you accomplish the latter).

(Related reading: A CEO’s Advice for the Third Chapter of Your Career)

How to Interpret What People Say

Once you’ve gathered all the input, it’s time to synthesize that information. Be sure you’re assigning the appropriate weight to what you’ve heard. Rather than obsessing about something one person mentioned in a 360 review, look for consistent patterns across comments you’ve received.

It’s easy for something negative to stick in your craw. But the power of one harsh appraisal can cloud your understanding of how you’re perceived in general. Remember, you’re trying to find patterns. To uncover them, ask yourself the following questions:

  • What adjectives did people use to describe me?
  • What skills did they say I possess or lack?
  • What aspects of me or my brand were most frequently mentioned?
  • Were any of those aspects cited as unique or unusual?

Now you have to determine what it all means. Be careful not to confuse kind words with traits that will serve you well in your career reinvention. “People may say, ‘I see you as thoughtful, methodical, and nice,’” Cohn says. “Those are lovely professional qualities, but they aren’t describing a leadership brand like the word ‘decisive.’ They’re not going to get you to the C-suite.”

Dorie Clark headshot(Author Profile: Dorie Clark is the author of “Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future.” She is an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and is a consultant and speaker for clients such as Google, Fidelity, and the World Bank. She also contributes frequently to Harvard Business Review and Forbes. Learn more about Dorie at dorieclark.com and follow her on Twitter @dorieclark.)

Editorial Note: Reprinted with permission by Harvard Business Review Press and Adapted from “Reinventing You,” copyright 2013 Dorie Clark. All rights reserved.

Read the original post at Next Avenue.

Next.Ave.logo.name.squareRelated articles:
Career Shift: ‘You’re Never Too Old’ Success Stories
4 Ways to Make Your Career Last Longer
The Key to a Successful Career Shift: Asking for Help

Image credit: Pixabayi

You 2.0: Reinventing a Personal Brand #TChat Preview

(Editor’s Note: Looking for a complete review of the week’s events and resources? Read the #TChat Recap: “Will the Real You Please Stand Up?”)

Here’s Looking at You, Kid

Most of us are familiar with the concept of personal branding. We understand how important it is to put our “best face forward,” especially during a job search. (Our mothers told us about that long ago.) And you don’t have to be Kim Kardashian to see that social media shines a constant spotlight on our lives, for better or worse. So…why don’t more of us cultivate our personal brands as carefully as a marketing manager would?

Creating a Fresh Perspective

Reinventing You

Learn more about “Reinventing You”

Is your online presence incomplete or out-of-date? Do you suspect it sends the wrong message? Are you considering a career change, but struggling with how to reposition yourself for a new role? What’s the best way to recombine all the elements for a message that is accurate, authentic and attracts the right kind of attention?

That’s our focus this week in the TalentCulture community, as we continue our “summer restart” series with the author of of Reinventing You, Dorie Clark. Dorie is a communications and brand management expert who has written extensively about this topic. And we’re fortunate that she’s sharing her insights with us throughout the week.

To set the stage, Dorie joined me for a brief G+ Hangout to discuss why personal brand management matters, not just during a job search, but on a continuous basis:

The article Dorie mentions is great preparation for this week’s #TChat discussions. Check it out at Harvard Business Review: It’s Not a Job Search, It’s a Campaign. Also, if you’d like to read related articles from the TalentCulture archives, see “Mindfully Managing Your Personal Brand” and “Personal Re-Branding For Chareer Changers.”

#TChat Events: Reinventing Your Brand

Don’t forget to save the date — Wednesday July 17 — for a #TChat double-header that is designed to change your professional life for the better. Bring your questions, concerns, ideas and suggestions, and let’s talk!

#TChat Radio — Wed, July 17 at 6:30pmET / 3:30pmPT

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Listen to the #TChat Radio show

Dorie joins our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman for a closer look at why and how professionals can benefit from personal branding. Listen live and dial-in with your questions and feedback!

#TChat Twitter — Wed, July 17 at 7pmET / 4pmPT

Immediately following the radio show, our conversation with Dorie opens wide, as she moderates our community discussion on the #TChat stream. We welcome anyone with a Twitter account to join us, as we discuss these questions:

Q1:  You are the captains of your own career destiny. Why or why not?
Q2:  What should your first priorities be when reinventing your personal brand?
Q3:  Does it make a difference if you’re a full-time, part-time or contract worker? Why/why not?
Q4:  How can business leaders facilitate ongoing career development, inside and out?
Q5:  What technologies today help us reinvent ourselves? How/why?

Throughout the week, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed and on our new LinkedIn Discussion Group. So please join us share your questions, ideas and opinions.

We’ll see you on the stream!