You Don’t Get to Decide How You’re Perceived

There is a peculiar frustration in being misunderstood. You know what you meant. You were trying to be confident, not arrogant. Interested, not desperate. Quiet, not disengaged. Direct, not unkind. Then someone experiences you differently and your first thought is, But that's not what I meant. Maybe it wasn't.

The problem is that you're the only person in the conversation who has access to your intentions. Everyone else gets your words, your tone, your timing, your expression, the questions you ask, whether you listen, and all the other little things you're probably not thinking about while you're doing them. Then they make sense of those things through their own experiences. That's perception.

Think about a job interview. Someone is nervous, so she talks more than usual. She gives long, detailed answers because she desperately wants the interviewer to understand that she knows what she's doing. In her head, she's communicating competence. The interviewer might be wondering why she keeps interrupting. Someone else gets nervous and goes quiet. He keeps his answers short because he's afraid of saying something stupid. He thinks he's being careful. The interviewer thinks he isn't interested in the job. Same nerves. Completely different signals.

This happens everywhere, not just in interviews. First dates, presentations, disagreements, meeting someone's family, walking into a room where you don't know anybody. We judge ourselves with information other people don't have. We know we crossed our arms because the room was freezing. They just saw crossed arms.

So what are you supposed to do with that?

The answer is not to carefully manufacture a version of yourself that other people will like. Apart from being exhausting, it wouldn't work. People are too different. The confidence one person admires will annoy somebody else. You don't get to control that part.

What you can do is pay attention to your side of the interaction. Before something important, instead of spending all your energy wondering Will they like me? or What if I say the wrong thing?, try asking:

How do I want this person to experience me?

Maybe the answer is capable. Warm. Calm. Credible. Interested. Now you have something useful to work with. If you want to come across as interested, are you actually listening or are you rehearsing your next response while they talk? If you want to seem confident, are you speaking clearly or rushing because you're nervous? If you want to be warm, are you giving the other person any room to participate?

Being intentional about presence isn't pretending. It's noticing whether the version of you happening on the outside has anything to do with the version of you happening in your head. Sometimes it won't. That's human. But the more aware you become of that gap, the more choice you have in what you bring into the room. You still don't get to decide what someone thinks of you. You just make it a little easier for them to see what you meant.

A Question to Consider

How do I want this person to experience me?