Perceptions

Good morning! I hope you have a good week!

I was fortunate that, somehow, I landed in the Human Resources Division of First Union National Bank in the 1980s. There I was taught several lessons that were foundational for me.

The lessons from that time that still resonate with me today have to do with perceptions.

Let’s look at three of these:

Rule Number 1 – Your Perceptions are Your Reality: 

Yes, this is true. We constantly take in information through feeling, touching, tasting, smelling, and hearing. We then run all that data through the muscle we call the brain, and voila! Out comes a perception. These perceptions form the basis for our individual reality, i.e., what we experience in the world, and how we experience the world.

Where this all gets a little dicey for your favorite headhunter is this – we are filtering all those perceptions through our individual mental models, our own experiences, and the lessons taught to us since we were infants. When assessing a candidate, I always have to remember that my perceptions of what constitutes a certain trait may or may not conform to how my client defines a trait.

My favorite example of this (yuck) is when (God, I hate to hear this or even type it) a client is seeking “charisma.” I am instantly reminded of what United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about his threshold test for what constitutes hard-core pornography: “… I know it when I see it.”

What is charisma to one person may be superficiality to another. Your perception is your reality.

Rule Number 2 – You Have to Manage Your Perceptions:

Okay, if you want to “get along” in a civilized society, this one may be true, but it does have a bit of a time-date stamp. The point of this rule, back in my First Union days, was that you were responsible for sending the right signals to the rest of the world relative to how you wished to be perceived. If you want to be taken seriously as a leader in this company, then you need to do the thing that serious leaders in this company do! No wingtips shoes – you needed the Cap-toe! Geez, why the heck are you still wearing those fuzzy wool socks that barely come over your ankle bone? Nobody wants to see the hair on your legs! You need to get those over-the-calf socks that you can pull up to your knee! These will come in handy when kilts come back in style! That knot in your tie – what the heck are you doing tying your tie with a “Double Windsor”? That damn knot is as big as your fist! It looks ridiculous!

I felt that my pocket hankie, ironed so that its 4 points rose ¾ of an inch above the breast pocket of my suit coat, elevated my rank to a “Captain of Industry.”

But I never was on the fast track to the top ranks of the company.

Why?

I failed to manage the perceptions about me.

You see, I have always had a serious addiction ever since I was a little kid.

I am addicted to laughter.

More to the point, I have always gotten pleasure from finding a way to make other people laugh.

So, even though I entered First Union National Bank with designs on how I was going to be the CEO of the company by the time I was 40 years old, my addiction ended up taking me out of the running.

It was discovered that I had a real talent for imitating the senior leaders of the bank.

And I must admit, my imitations were damn good, but they did not help create the perception that I was a serious leader in the company.

I created the perception, and the reality, that I could do hilarious imitations.

While the unit I led performed well, nobody talked about that. All they could talk about was my ability to impersonate this one vice chairman of the organization (I did a 30-second routine of this executive getting on a crowded elevator. It was, and is, incredibly good.)

So, when the bigger jobs came up in the company, and my name was not mentioned… I would be rankled that somebody who I did not think could carry my (very nice) briefcase would get the nod.

The problem was that … I didn’t work to manage the perceptions of others about me.

Instead, I went for the laugh.

Rule Number 3 – You Have to Manage Your Perceptions:

Ok, you are all sharp people, and you perceive that Rule #3 is the same as Rule #2.

It is not.

I find that I must constantly manage my perceptions of clients, candidates, coworkers, the community, and what I am experiencing in social media. I have to stay open to having new data alter my perceptions. I need to allow people to prove me wrong, change, grow, and mature.

It works both ways. There will be plenty of times that I will perceive something about a candidate that the client will never spot.

Why is that important?

Because there is a HUGE practice effect to interviewing people, and I have interviewed thousands of people over four decades.

I have to manage my perceptions in the best interests of the client and the candidate – not necessarily in my own short-term interests.

I have to manage my perceptions for the long-run benefit of the candidate and the client.

If I gloss over something that I have picked up about the candidate that the client has not gleaned, perhaps the client will go ahead and make an offer to that candidate, and everybody will get on with their lives and live happily ever after! The client has filled the job! The candidate has gotten a bigger role and more money and perks! I can check that search off the list as being “completed”! Everybody wins!

Not so fast. What happens is this: The candidate’s flaws will be exposed within the first 90 days they are on board the company. That flaw or negative personality trait becomes the fissure in the dam, the Achilles heel, the thing on which the candidate will trip and fall flat on their face.

When the candidate fails, the client fails.

When a client fails, I have failed… all because I have not managed my perceptions properly.

Enough. You get the point?

Thanks for listening.

And in closing, I would like to thank the late Jack McCormack, Vice Chairman of First Union National Bank of Florida, for being such a wonderful human being and giving me the material I needed for my classic “Jack McCormack Gets On An Elevator” routine.

That my impersonations of you self-sabotaged my banking career is something for which the FDIC, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and the shareholders of First Union Corporation are eternally grateful!