Control the Evidence: Perception Starts With You

“We are what we repeatedly do.”

- Aristotle

Every time we walk into a room, we are giving people information about who we are. How we speak. How we listen. How we dress. How we respond when someone disagrees with us. Whether we smile and speak or keep our distance. Whether we show up prepared or scramble at the last minute. Whether our words today support the words we used yesterday. Long before someone knows us well enough to understand who we are, they begin forming an opinion based on the evidence we put in front of them day after day.

We spend a lot of time worrying about what other people think about us, but often fail to recognize how much information we provide to help them reach those conclusions. We cannot control another person's mind. Someone may misread confidence as arrogance, intensity as anger, kindness as weakness, or privacy as being antisocial. We don't get the final vote on what another person thinks about us, but we have tremendous influence over the evidence they use to make that decision.

That means perception isn't something that simply happens to us. Our repeated words, actions, attitudes, and behaviors add to it every day. If you want to be known as dependable, be dependable in all that you do. If you want people to see you as prepared, then arrive prepared every day. If you want to be approachable, behave in ways that invite people toward you. If you want people to leave you alone, you can communicate that too.

The question isn't whether people are forming a perception of you.

They are.

The better question is whether the evidence you are giving them accurately represents the person you want them to see.

You Are Always Giving People Evidence

Think about the people you work with every day. You have probably formed a strong opinion about many of them, even though you may never have sat down to decide on one. You know who will arrive early. You know who will be late. You know who will help when something goes wrong and who will disappear. You know who will turn a five-minute conversation into thirty minutes. You know who will keep something confidential and who will have repeated it before lunch.

How did you learn those things?

Evidence.

Reputation is rarely created by one enormous moment. It develops through small interactions repeated often enough that people begin expecting tomorrow to be the same as yesterday. If someone handles difficult situations without panicking, we eventually come to know them as a calm person. If someone regularly complains whenever additional work is given to them, eventually we see them as a negative force. If someone always follows through on promises, we see them as dependable. None of these perceptions required an announcement. Behavior gave you the information.

This is why telling people who you are has limited value. You can tell everyone you are a hard worker, but eventually they are going to watch you work. You can describe yourself as loyal, but loyalty only becomes visible when someone needs you. You can say you are a great leader, but the people you lead are collecting evidence every day. The perception eventually becomes less about what you say and more about whether your behavior continues supporting it.

Stop Letting the Audience Write Your Character

There is another side to managing perception that can become dangerous. We can become so concerned about what other people think that we begin to let their approval decide on how we behave.

We have all watched someone change when a different person walks into the room. A strong-talking person will become quiet because the boss arrived. Someone laughs at something they don't find funny because everyone else is laughing. A person who strongly disagreed with a decision five minutes earlier suddenly supports it when the person who has the final say on the topic joins the conversation. The game is no longer expressing who they really are. The game becomes giving the response they want from the audience.

Do that often enough, and other people begin to control the evidence you give about yourself.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be liked. There is nothing wrong with understanding the environment and adjusting how we communicate. We should have enough social awareness to recognize that how we behave at a backyard barbecue may not be right at a board meeting. The problem begins when adjusting our behavior becomes changing our beliefs, values, or character just to fit into whatever group that we happen to be in.

If you continually become whatever the room wants you to become, eventually nobody knows who you are. More importantly, you may stop knowing yourself.

You Don't Have to Be the Same Person Everywhere

Consistency is often misunderstood as sameness. I don't believe we have to behave exactly the same way in every part of our lives. In fact, I think that would make us less effective because different responsibilities require different parts of us.

When I train in a public weight room, there is a version of me that some people have jokingly described as C-Rex, a play on the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus Rex. I put on my sound-limiting headphones, turn on my music, and go to work. I'm not there to socialize. Between sets, I am thinking about the set I just completed. Was the technique right? Was the weight appropriate? What needs to change on the next set? My recovery period allows my body to prepare for the next effort, but it also allows my mind to prepare for what I am about to ask my body to do.

I'm not thinking about what movie someone saw last weekend. I'm not looking around the room to see what everyone is wearing. I'm training. Each repetition needs to contribute to the set, each set needs to contribute to the workout, and each workout needs to contribute to what I am trying to accomplish with my health and training.

Someone watching me from across the room may think, That guy is an ass. He never says hello. Can't he smile?

I'm okay with that.

I have provided evidence that says, "I'm here to work. Don't bother me." That is an accurate representation of what I want in that environment. But if someone braves the C-Rex exterior and asks me a legitimate training question, I am more than happy to share anything I have learned from fifty years of lifting, studying, and coaching. The focused guy with the headphones and the teacher willing to help are not contradictory people. They are different parts of the same person.

This happens in other parts of my life. As a motivational speaker, another part of me comes forward. I'm a teacher. My job is to take the experiences I've accumulated and give them away in a form someone else can use. Being closed off would defeat the purpose of my standing on the stage.

Friendship brings out something different again. I don't believe friendship is about judging someone every time they make a decision I wouldn't make. I want to be loyal. I want to push my friends when I believe they are capable of more. I want to be someone who is still standing beside them when things become difficult, because friendship has very little value if it only exists during the easy times.

Being a husband and father requires another version of me. My time isn't guarded the same way it is during a workout. There shouldn't be a clock running in my head measuring how much of myself I have given. Those relationships have earned my willingness to give my time and myself without continually calculating what I receive in return.

Those aren't characters I put on depending on the audience. They are legitimate dimensions of who I am. They are the evidence I leave as I live my life in a consistent, ordered pattern, ensuring that I am being the person that needs to be present in each environment.

Authenticity doesn't require us to behave the same everywhere. It requires us to never pretend to be someone we're not anywhere.

Every Perception Has a Price

There is something else we should understand when deciding how we want to present ourselves. Every perception we create comes with consequences.

If you consistently show yourself as approachable, people will approach you. If you become known as the person who will always help, people are going to ask for help. On the other hand, if you want to be seen as demanding, some people will decide they don't like you. If you cultivate independence, people may eventually stop offering assistance because you have consistently shown them you don't need it.

We can't continually provide one type of evidence and then become angry when people use it.

This happens frequently in leadership. A leader creates an open-door reputation and then becomes frustrated because employees continually walk through the door. Another leader keeps everyone at a distance and then wonders why nobody warned them that a problem was developing. Someone wants to be known as the person who can handle everything, refuses assistance for years, and eventually becomes frustrated because nobody offers to help.

The perception isn't necessarily the problem. The problem is failing to understand that the evidence we consistently provide teaches people how to interact with us.

Sometimes that trade is worth making. C-Rex doesn't generate many casual conversations during a workout. That's fine. I wasn't looking for them. I would rather protect the purpose of my work than protect someone's opinion of me during it.

Know what perception you are creating and understand what comes with it.

Social Media Gives Us a Powerful Mirror

Never before have we had this much control over the information other people receive about our lives. Social media allows us to select the photograph, choose the angle, write the caption, announce the accomplishment, and decide which moments never appear at all. We can construct an entire public identity one post at a time.

There is nothing wrong with that. We have always chosen what parts of our lives we share with other people. Social media simply gives us a much larger audience and far more control over the presentation.

The danger comes when presentation becomes a fantasy world that you build about yourself.

If your social media continually shows discipline, kindness, success, generosity, or strong relationships, eventually the people who actually know you will compare that image against the person they know. If the two are very different, the carefully built perception begins to collapse. You may control the photograph, but you don't control the experiences people have when they are with you.

This is why being consistently true to yourself remains more powerful than image management. Maintaining an artificial version of yourself is hard work because every time you leave more evidence, it threatens to expose the difference. Being real is much easier. What people see may change according to the environment, but what they see remains connected to who you actually are.

Decide What You Want Your Evidence to Say

Knowing your strengths becomes important here. Before worrying about how other people perceive you, spend some time deciding what your truth is.

Maybe you want to be known as someone who prepares relentlessly. Maybe you value loyalty. Maybe you want people to know they can depend on you when something goes wrong. Maybe kindness matters deeply to you. Maybe you want to be recognized for expertise in your profession. Maybe you want the people closest to you to know that no accomplishment will ever make them compete for your time.

Whatever those things are, don't simply announce them.

Live them.

Then examine whether your daily behavior supports the perception you say you want. If you want to be known as dependable but continually cancel commitments, the evidence wins. If you want to be considered prepared but always seem to walk into meetings without knowing what is being discussed, the evidence wins. If you describe yourself as loyal but disappear whenever a relationship becomes inconvenient, the evidence wins.

Over time, people believe patterns more than promises.

That gives each of us far more influence over our reputation than we sometimes realize. We don't need to manipulate people's opinions. We need to become intentional about what we repeatedly give them an opportunity to experience.

CoachC Insight

We waste an incredible amount of energy worrying about what other people think about us. We replay conversations, wonder whether someone likes us, adjust ourselves to fit into groups and sometimes become a version of ourselves designed specifically to gain another person's approval.

There is a better use of that energy.

Decide who you want to be. Understand that different responsibilities will reveal different parts of you. The intensity someone feels when working beside you doesn't have to be the same as the warmth your family feels when you walk through the door. The teacher, friend, parent, spouse, leader, and competitor can behave differently without any of them being fake.

What matters is that every version is real.

You cannot control every conclusion someone reaches about you. You can control the evidence you continually put in front of them. Make your words consistent with your actions. Make your actions consistent with your values. Stop performing for the room and start behaving like the person you have decided to become.

Perception isn't built by what you tell people you are. It is built by what you repeatedly show them you are.

Teachable Reminders

• You cannot control every opinion people form about you, but you control much of the evidence they use.

• Reputation develops through patterns of behavior, not descriptions of ourselves.

• Being authentic does not require behaving identically in every environment.

• Different responsibilities can reveal different dimensions of the same person.

• Adapting to a situation is healthy. Changing your character to gain approval is not.

• Every perception you intentionally create comes with consequences.

• Social media can present part of your life, but it cannot permanently hide inconsistencies between image and reality.

• Know what you want to represent, then consistently behave in ways that provide evidence of it.

Application Questions

·       What three words would you like people who work with you to use when describing you?

·       Does your daily behavior provide evidence supporting those words?

·       Are there situations where you change your beliefs or behavior primarily because you want someone's approval?

·       What different parts of your personality appropriately appear at work, socially, with friends, and with your family?

·       Is there a difference between the person you portray on social media and the person people experience face-to-face?

·       What perception have you created that brings consequences you sometimes complain about?

·       If someone knew nothing about your intentions and could judge you only by your actions over the last thirty days, who would they believe you are?

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