When Perceptions Become Reality
How well everyone thinks you are doing is as important as how well you are actually doing.
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The first company I started was called Flurry, and we were lucky that it caught the mobile app wave to become one of the largest analytics & ads platforms in the world. There was a point when the company was a few hundred people when I noticed that it mattered how I entered the office in the morning. If I was smiling and happy, everyone else was smiling and happy. If I had a bad commute and was grump, everyone else was grumpy.
My personal feelings were influencing the company.
At that scale, to most of the team I was not just “Sean, the person” I was “Sean, the founder” and that meant they watched everything I did. If I was happy they assumed things were going well. If I was down they assumed things were going poorly. The line between me and the company was blurry.
When I realized this was happening it was surprising, as I never thought of the company (or myself) from that perspective. I started to wonder why they did this and where it came from, so I asked a few employees. It turned out to be a learned skill from other companies that were less transparent with their employees. When the company was less transparent, they had to read the tea leaves of executives’ moods to guess how the company was doing. It was a sad commentary on how many companies are run, but a sobering lesson.
What I learned was that no matter what information we shared with the team, their perception of how the company was doing often dominated their thinking. If results were good but the leadership seemed down, they would assume bad news was coming. If the results were bad but we were happy and energetic they assumed we would turn it around.
Their perception of the company was the most important factor.
This is true of everyone, not just employees! It’s common for a company to be perceived as the industry leader (even if they are not) based on the frequency of media, press or interviews. That company then becomes the industry leader, mostly because everyone already assumed they were. The perception shaped the company.
Perceptions are hard to manage, because you don’t really control most of what goes into them. Like with my experience at Flurry, perceptions are shaped as much by past experiences as they are by current information. Since you can’t possibly know all of those past experiences you can’t fully understand the perception.
What you can control are expectations. The better you set expectations, the less perceptions are necessary to fill in the blanks.
For example, if you are transparent with your team about current performance they don’t need to guess about how you are doing. Even better, if you are consistent with your transparency and build trust, they will know that they can trust your guidance on what to expect next. If you say things will get worse but then get better, they will believe you if you’ve shared that in the past.
My experience at Flurry was a wake up call that we weren’t setting expectations well enough. We knew the company was doing well, but we didn’t realize that not everyone knew just how well. Or how small problems weren’t really indicative of bad performance! In that vacuum of expectations, perceptions rushed in to fill the gap.
Trust your team, be transparent and set expectations so they know what to expect. They will still shape their own perceptions, but without a void those perceptions won’t matter as much. What will matter are results, and that’s where we should all be focused anyway.
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Sean. This. A thousand times, this. Working to set expectations is within our control. To not do so is fundamental mismanagement.
Yup. But I'm not convinced that it's caused by "learned behavior" from other poorly run companies, though. I think it's a fundamental characteristic of human nature. Some people are more aware of it (consciously or otherwise) than others for certain. Yes, childhood (and adulthood) trauma can exacerbate sensitivity to others' moods, especially when those others are in authority. But all humans are absorbing emotions from others all the time. A grumpy boss just makes it much harder to self-regulate for all the obvious reasons than a grumpy cow-orker. As a people leader, it's one of my duties to leave my own drama in the parking garage (physically or metaphorically if I'm working from home that day). Even when all data centers are on fire and the shit is storming against all the rotating impellers, I have to be the eye of the hurricane so that everyone around me knows we're going to be OK.