Perception: a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something; a mental impression.
What someone perceives is the reality, and nothing else matters. I know some eyebrows may have raised when reading that statement. Unfortunately, in life both professionally and personally perception is the reality. I believe that all perceptions of people, places and things are rooted in our own assumptions prior to meeting the person, traveling to the place or doing or touching the thing. What I aim to do in this piece is a touch on how perceptions are formed and how communicating intent can help create aligned perceptions around actions.
I am a Nigerian-American male that works in tech and is from the Midwest. I know while you were reading that description assumptions popped into your head that would possibly lead to how you may perceive me even if you have never met me before. I call this out because I want us all to think about how quickly we form our perception of things without taking the time to interact with them fully. I have personally had people perceive me a certain way once I tell them that I am Nigerian. Sometimes the perception that they have is something that is positive and that I agree with, sometimes their perceptions of me because I am Nigerian are more negative in which I don't agree with. With tech being at the center of heated debates between everyday people and the politicians in Washington the perception of me because I work in the industry varies depending on the person. Lastly, me being from the Midwest as well ties into how someone may perceive me. What I do want to touch on is how if you only knew one piece of the information I said and did not know about the other ones how would that impact your perception of me and the actions I take? A lot of us myself included are painting our perceptions of people without having more than just one or two data points to go off of. What I would urge us all to do is to not be so quick to paint your perceptions of people without getting to know more about them and their background…more often than not all of those pieces connect.
What I have been thinking about recently is how often in professional and personal life peoples perception of the same action or event does not line up. What I came to find is that there is a piece of information that is missing that would be helpful in helping align two peoples perceptions, intent. Explicitly communicating intent is important because it gives you the power to guide the perception of an action you are taking vs letting the other person hope that they can feel out the intent of the action. I do believe that intent should be explicitly stated, what I do not know yet is how to go about doing this in your day to day life without coming off as assumptive of what someone might be thinking. I do feel like it is better to have a potentially awkward exchange than having misaligned perceptions of an action that is being or has been taken.
What I challenge you all to do is to think about not only how you perceive people and their actions but how you and your actions are perceived as well and how you can layer in communicating intent in order to keep everyone on the same page.
The intent behind your action needs to match the way that someone is perceiving the action as to have aligned perception of the action. This piece is part of the Words Mean Things writing series by Joshua Ogundu
