Perception Matters
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
Does perception matter? We’ve all heard the saying “perception is reality,” but is it true? Does perception never, rarely, sometimes, or always equal reality? While I long ago reached the conclusion that perception does in fact matter, it may not be for the reasons that you might think. I have found that the majority of people tend to be myopic with regard to perception…they understand their own perceptions, but are quite often either ignorant or intolerant of other’s perceptions. You see, the most important item to understand is that success as a leader has very little to do with your perception, but rather it has everything to do with the perception of others.
I’m not suggesting that you ignore your perception, subordinate your perception, or change your perception, but I am strongly suggesting that you take the time to both be aware of, and understand the perceptions of others. What I’ve just espoused has nothing to with compromising your values or being disingenuous. Rather my reasoning simply hypothisizes that if you’re not in touch with the perceptions of meaningful constituencies, your success will be impeded by your tunnel vision. In the text that follows, I’m going to give you a different perspective on understanding perception.
Let’s start the analysis by examining the definitional differences between “perception” and “reality”:
Perception Defined: a perception is a belief, theory, hypothesis, feeling, appearance, opinion, observation, insight, awareness, or sensitivity. It may or may not constitute reality, and initial perceptions often change with the passing of time, the changing of circumstances, or the receipt of additional information.
Reality Defined: Reality is certain, authentic, actual, true, and factual. True reality is undeniable, indisputable, and not subject to debate.
Attitudes, perspectives, and positions can in many cases be born out by facts. However they can also be little more than emotional or philosophical beliefs that are far from factual statements. The best example I can give is to ask you to revisit the image to the left…Is the glass half empty, or is it half full? My answer is yes. You see both answers are correct, both answers are a matter of perception, and to my points made earlier, both answers are very telling. If you’ll allow me to take a deeper dive on this illustration you’ll start to see why understanding other’s perceptions are critically important. Let’s look at how different individuals might view the glass:
- The Optimist: The glass is half full.
- The Pessimist: The glass is half empty.
- The Salesperson: How much water would you like your glass to hold?
- The Accountant: Does the glass really need all that water?
- The Attorney: If there are enough people on one side of this issue I can file a class action suit.
- The Investment Banker: I’m only 50% leveraged.
- The Engineer: The glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
- The Quantum Physicist: The glass has a 50% probability of holding water.
- The Philosopher: If nobody looks at the glass, who’s to say whether it’s half full or half empty?
- The Politician: Let’s take a poll and then I’ll render my opinion as to how full or empty the glass is.
- The Servant Leader: Whatever the amount of water, I’ll use it first to quench the thirst of those I lead.
Those of you more creative than I could likely come up with a much longer list, but I think this exercise makes the point that understanding other’s perceptions is a critical part of being an effective leader. Great leaders take the time to understand the various constituencies and spheres of influence they come in contact with. “My way or the highway” thinking, and/or positional dictatorships rarely create the culture and performance demonstrated by winning organizations. Whether you agree or disagree is not the point…The point is that understanding the perceptions of others affords you a source of intelligence, a learning opportunity, and the ability to keep lines of communication open.
So back to my original question: Does perception never, rarely, sometimes, or always equal reality? How do you feel?
Great way to present a different perspective on the issue. For me, it's not only understanding others' perceptions but also realizing when I'm disagreeing with a perception. If it's a perception, they own it. I might inform their perception with mine, but I'm not going to change it. They will have to do that for themselves.
A valuable insight Mike…before forming a positional argument, asking yourself if you're engaging in a perception or a reality is a great gut check. That said, my take on changing perceptions is a bit different than yours…I agree that in some instances people need to own their own perceptions, but where we differ is that I believe some perceptions are worth changing, can be changed, and are worth the investment to do so. The trick is locking-on to the right issue for the right reason at the right time. Thanks for making me think Mike…
Submitted on behalf of Bruno Coelho – http://bcoelho2000.blogspot.com
"Does perception never, rarely, sometimes, or always equal reality?"
I believe that the answer is: reality doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how beautiful designed your product is. It doesn't matter if your product is actually the best in the World. Remember the Pepsi challenge? In spite of many participants chose Pepsi over Coke in the test because of the sweeter taste, in the real world scenario they still chose Coke because the way they perceive it as great.
However, it DOES matter how others perceive it. They perceive it as the best product in the world? Can they see it's beautiful design? Continued Below…
Continuation of Bruno's comment –
What we call reality is always distorted by our own beliefs, culture and personality. For me it's all about perception. The way that our brain processes and recall our memories is also very important to this discussion. Our long-term memory holds our past experiences. However, the way that we remember them isn't necessarily the exact way that they actually happen. The way that we remember how we felt in the context of an experience is also distorted from short-term to long-term memory.
Part 3 of Bruno's comment:
"Success as a leader has very little to do with your perception, but rather it has everything to do with the perception of others." This is absolutely true, and we can apply it to almost everything that our brain processes. Our brain uses it's past memory experiences to analyze the present events. Then it stores those events in temporary memory. When we sleep, our brain activity is busy sorting the events that doesn't matter and those that will be saved in our memory. The key point here is that every event saved in our memory is distorted by our perception.
Thank you calling our attention to this subtle but critical point.
Best regards,
Bruno Coelho
Hi Bruno – Thanks for sending in your comment and I apologize for the intensedebate glitch…I appreciated your observations and if I followed your line of thinking properly, the answer to the question is perception does matter, because it is the perception that shapes an individual's sense of reality. If I've lost something in my translation please feel free to correct me. Thanks for sharing Bruno…
Excellent post, Mike!
The topic of 'Perception' reminded me of a parable in Matthew 7:3 ("Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?). I've always thought that both the speck and the beam are actually the same size. It's a function of their relationship (closeness/distance) to our own eye. [the closer we bring something toward our eye the larger it gets until we lose complete sight of it]
Leaders must be adept at removing their own specks (changing perceptions) so that they are in a position to empathize (emotional reference) vs sympathize with the perceptions of others.
Another application of this thought is that a leader's 'Vision' is never singular. While it may mean one thing to the leader, he/she must accept that every person will interpret, filter and make it their own based on singular perceptions. A great vision will resonate with the individual perceptions of a lot of people.
Good work
M
Great post Mike! Thanks. But I would caution against defining reality in any kind of absolute sense:
"Reality is certain, authentic, actual, true, and factual. True reality is undeniable, indisputable, and not subject to debate."
You may want to append your definition to include: " . . . based on what we know and understand to be true today." For at the end of the day, reality is simply our collective perception.
Hi Tom:
Thanks for your comment. Your caution is noted and appreciated. That said, with any attempt at definition comes room for interpretation and debate, which by the way is a good thing. From my perspective, we're back to debating the difference between perception and reality – You see, theories incorrectly perceived as fact are often proven to be untrue, but I can't think of an example when fact becomes fiction. Certainly the circumstances surrounding a given fact can change the perceptions, but do they change the facts? It's an interesting debate to be sure, and not likely one we'll solve here, but it does make you do a gut check on your logic doesn't it? Thanks for sharing Tom…
Hi Mark:
Thanks for adding some clarity to the discussion. You have a keen ability to take raw thoughts and refine them with sound logic. I always appreciate your observations Mark…