Happy Monday, everyone! This week I’d like to focus on something that has been on my mind for a while: perception. I find that a lot of questions I ask myself throughout the day tend to be perception-related (ie. how others perceive me). For instance, there are small questions such as “Does wearing lipstick at work make me seem too girly?” or big ones such as “Did I work adequately enough today?”. What often worries me is that truthful answers to these questions – should they exist – don’t really matter; and often the truthfullness of those answers is subjective amongst those answering them. What matters most to me is how the people I value answer these questions. I value my supervisors, friends, family, and so on – largely a group of people who care about me and likely perceive me in a good way. Yet this is still worrisome, as always, because their perception of me is not something I can fully control. For the record, I love wearing lipstick because it makes my own perception of myself better – and for that reason, it would take a lot for me to worry about anyone’s perception of my “girly-ness” because of it.
There’s always two ways in which anyone is perceived – the way by which they perceive themselves, and the way by which they are perceived by others. In most cases, one’s own perception of themselves and the way others perceive them do not agree, and neither reflect the entire “truth”. My own perception of myself and others is shaped by a lifetime of my own experiences, and unfortunately the odd prejudice (of which nobody is immune from having). Everybody else’s perceptions are shaped by their experiences and prejudices. The scariest part of all of this is that I have been wrong many times – so it must be the case that others have been wrong, too. Do others have perceptions of me that I believe are wrong? Without a doubt. Are my perceptions of myself wrong? Sometimes. What can be done about that? I’m not sure.
You may be thinking: does all of this even matter? We hear old lessons in nearly every Disney/Hallmark movie that go “It doesn’t matter what others think”, “The only person that matters is you”, “Be yourself”. This is nice and all – and in lots of cases it’s true. I shouldn’t care about how the mechanic at work perceives me, because ultimately it doesn’t matter; but still, I do find myself caring. Furthermore, there are many cases where this isn’t true – cases where it does matter what a certain other person thinks of you. In highschool, there weren’t many people who I ought to have been worried about their perception of me (whether or not I was worried is a different story), but now at the workplace there are many people whose perception matters. My supervisors, other people with seniority, mine managers, vice presidents, directors, and so on. This job is important to me and those are the people who ultimately decide whether or not I progress in it, or even keep it.
What brings me some solace is that I believe I’ve done every single thing to influence positive perceptions – but these actions are solely based on what I think would foster a good perception. I work hard, I share successess, I try to be honest, I put effort into my appearance. Though, recall that everyone else has biases, experiences, and prejudices. Some people (whether they even realize it or not) simply don’t believe that women can make for good leaders – that’s not something I can control (and it shouldn’t be my burden to change their mind). Some people may think that my nose piercings signify ineptitude or rebelliousness. Some people may think that my lack of confidence corresponds to lack of knowledge (as discussed in blog 9). These things are unfair, and obviously untrue in my opinion, but I suppose that’s only my opinion – not theirs.
I’ve learned pretty quickly during my short time in industry that even if I do my job perfectly and I excel in every possible metric – it may be the case that someone else’s perception of my personality matters more to them. For instance, someone I used to work with often called me “sweetheart” and displayed other traits of overtly treating me like a child – and even though this was blatant infantilization and perhaps even based in sexism, I did not feel as though it was in my best interest to call him out on it and ask him to stop. If I did, then maybe he’d perceive me to be rude or ungrateful to this “kindness”. He was a superior of mine, so perhaps his opinion of me would then influence how he spoke of me to other superiors – at worst it could have even stunted my progression in my role. What sucked a lot about this situation was that I was caught in a dilemma: do I (rightly) call him out and risk the progression of my career, or do I continue to let him infantilize me in a way that will probably prevent him from ever respecting me as a leader or someone with dignity. Many people would claim that this wasn’t even a big deal. Well – at the end of the day, I’ve overheard plenty of conversations where good, hard workers have been unfairly judged on the basis of small and big superficial things – biases, experiences, and prejudices. It can be overwhelming.
This is quite a complicated topic, and likely one I’ve concerned myself with entirely too much. This post was influenced by a conversation I overheard at work this week in which a coworker’s abilities were doubted on the basis of very superficial things – a conversation I wholeheartedly disagreed with. The people having the conversation did not fully respect the qualifications of another employee on the basis of small, superficial things. I thought to myself, “should I say something?”, but then I realized that saying something could in turn risk how these people perceived me. In my opinion, they were being unfair and unreasonable – so what’s stopping them from developing unfair and unreasonable opinions of me if I speak up? Unreasonable people do unreasonable things. Though fortunately, these people weren’t my supervisors or in any way related to my work. I suppose that’s what makes my supervisors “good” supervisors – I believe their perceptions of others are fair. Or at the very least their biases, experiences, and prejudices align with mine. Perhaps it is the case that good supervisors are better at not letting biases, experiences, or prejudices influence their perceptions – or they are good at identifying them and fixing them. Either way, I can say with great confidence that I’m lucky to work for supervisors who I believe are fair – so in reality, there is not much to be worrying about. I suppose a good takeaway from this reflection is to revisit my own perceptions of others and try to identify if they’re based upon reasonable grounds. Kind of like how Descartes attempted to identify all of his own false beliefs in the pursuit of defining “knowledge” as it pertains to epistemology – but I guess that didn’t end too well for him. Perhaps, like Descartes, I’m overthinking this!
(September 28th, 2020)
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