Improve your perception

In the second in our series of articles based on my interview with Joel A. Garfinkle, author of ‘Getting Ahead – Three Steps to take your career to the next level’, we look at the importance of improving your perception…

If you fail to make yourself recognized at work, you run the risk that your peers and management may not actually know who you are, the great work you’re doing and the impact you are having on the company or the overall value you bring to the organization.

The Perception-Visibility-Influence or ‘PVI’ model will help you as employees to reveal yourselves as effective players. Once you improve perception and gain visibility, you can then start to influence outcomes and compel others to see you as a vital component of future management.

Increasing perception is vital to success. First of all, let’s start with a definition. Perception is what someone notices, sees, or is aware of. When you perceive, you often unconsciously observe what is happening without being consciously aware of the content that’s forming in your mind.

You often form opinions when you have preconceived ideas about a topic or person you’re observing, even if what you observe isn’t real or true. Perception takes the prior knowledge you already have and filters your observations through this lens.

Improve your perception – ask for feedback

The question that I myself and many of you may have often put to yourself is how do we know or how can we find out how others perceive us? To do this, you need to start by asking for feedback and proactively look for other opportunities to gauge how others perceive you.

For example, you might ask a colleague after a contentious meeting, ‘‘How did I handle the problem with Paul? Was I too defensive or was I overly aggressive?’’ Once you’ve established the appropriate level of perception, you’ll have gained a solid reputation and foundation of respect.

If you fully leverage the PVI model, you will become more valuable to a company, as its level of production and overall contribution will enhance bottom line performance.

You next task is to increase your visibility so that the people who matter know who you are and are aware of the contribution you are making. This is the second step that we’ll take in our next article.