You definitely need to care about what others think of you at workplace

To become successful in your career

Let me clarify this in the beginning itself, you do need to care about what others think of you, but you don't need to stop being YOU.

If you are one of that kind of person, who believes “I am what I am and I am a Gods gift to mankind,” if you are one of those who think their philosophies are enough to survive in the corporate world, if you are one of those people who have a very rigid personality, or an idea of a personality and you want to protect that personality at every cost. The chances are that you might get offended when I tell you that you need to care about what others think of you in your office.

Fact of the matter is that the perception we create about others and what they create about us makes or breaks our career.

It so happened in my team; my colleague had a conflict with my boss. He said things to my boss, which no one else ever dared. He was honest, reasonable, logically correct, but at the sametime, he was rude, harsh, and also challenging in a wrong way. He became the hero of the day. Everybody appreciated him for his straightforwardness and applauded his bravery. I also appreciate his courage in speaking his heart out.

But every action and inaction have consequences. His act of confronting my boss had consequences. He created a perception in my boss's mind that he is not a good team player. The perception which got created in my boss’s mind still resonates, and this perception cost him his career growth opportunities and a lot of new ventures which he could have otherwise got.

We all have a personality which we carry to the workplace. Most of the times, there is a mismatch in what we think of ourselves and what others think about us. There is always a perception due to which people engage or disengage with us.

9 personality blindspots

Executive coach Sara Canaday believes that understanding what other people think of you — and making sure their view matches your self-perception — is essential to your career. A reputation that aligns with your skills and personality helps you grow, contribute and lead. Canaday takes you through nine reputations “blind spots” and explains how to address each one to cultivate your executive presence. If you feel ineffective or unappreciated at work, Canaday’s examples may not be an exact match, but her counsel can start you down a fruitful path of self-examination.

• The “Don’t Fence Me In” maverick doesn’t last in any job.
• The “Intellectual Snob” is competent and smart but annoys and alienates people.
• “Frozen Compass” leaders stick with what’s always worked — even when it doesn’t.
• The productive “Dust in My Wind” leader leaves behind a trail of burnouts.
• The “No Crying in Baseball” leader’s blank demeanor and disdain for emotions leave coworkers feeling misunderstood and unappreciated.
• The “Safety Patrol” manager’s constant vigilance for problems and risks seems like negative fault-finding.
• People with “Faulty Volume Control” present themselves inappropriately; they’re too self-promoting or too self-effacing.
• The “Passion Pistol” overwhelms people with intense enthusiasm and zealous advocacy.
• The “Perpetual Doer” storms through a to-do list, but getting things done doesn’t necessarily translate into leadership.

Aren’t you able to associate yourself with at least one of these blindspots? I am sure you would have. I am also sure that you would have come across many of your colleagues who have atleaset one of these blindspots.

But how does becoming aware of these blindspots would help us succeed in our career? For this we need to understand what does failure mean.

What is a failure in our career?

Failure has different meanings for different people. If your success criteria in a job is to earn a salary, travel abroad, and get promotion — very soon you will find yourself in a place where you are not at all satisfied.

When I say we fail, or when I talk about failure in our careers, I essentially mean that we are not doing what we want to do.

Irrespective of how much we earn, there comes a stage in our life where our work is not an expression of ours but just an outcome of an autonomy or a bureaucracy. We get driven by someone else’s agenda only to realize we are just a cog in the wheel.

Going with that logic, even the prime minister of a country might find himself a failure only because he has not been able to do what he wants to do.

So the only measure of success in our job is our ability to do what we want to do.

Why do we fail?

We fail in our careers because we are bad at people management. We are bad at perception management. We get stuck with an image of ourselves, which is just a byproduct of our memories, opinions, and past achievements.

It doesn’t matter at what stage or where in the corporate hierarchy we reach; we always fail because of people, and we always succeed because of people. It’s a different thing that we may think we don’t need people or just run away from the annoying ones. But that’s not possible, becuase inevitably you will have to work with people who don’t like you and you don’t like them.

What can we do?

While there is no escape from people, we still can do three things to find the balance and align what we think of ourselves and what others think.

First, we should stop taking our self too seriously. What we like, what we don’t like, our standard of work, what is quality according to us, our morality or work ethics and how we determine our worth in our workplace; all these things have a critical impact on our understanding of who we are. And most of the time, we stick to these questions, and our thought process works accordingly. This is not just the mental model, but it also forms a very concrete and rigid idea about our personality. Once we have these ideas, our intellect work only to protect them. In extreme cases, we also become self-destructive. When we stick to the aspects of our standards, our worth, our ethics, our past achievements, our profile etc, we take ourselves too seriously. Trust me; we are just a small little creature in a big company working to move only that much part of the organization. The organization can continue to exist and will continue to exist even if we’re not there. Therefore we should not take ourselves seriously.

Second, your good enough can never be good enough for somebody else. And your good enough is of no use if it is not getting fit in the organization's “good-enough” vocabulary, especially to your boss. Remember, your boss has a major stake in your work as compared to your own stake. So forget about doing your best work possible according to you. You need to do your best work possible depending on what’s required and has been asked from you to deliver.

Third, is to realize how infectious your presence is in your company and your team. You become infectious due to your personal attributes, your skills, and the valuable you add in your team. All these evolve with time. You need to prove yourself every single day. There is no endpoint; there is only a beginning when it comes to proving yourself.

I have applied these rules in my office and the result is that I am able to distance myself with my work and have got a clarity of who I am. Once I have these, I have become more receptive, less conflicting (inside and outside) and focussed on achieving what’s desired and expected out of me. This has paved the way for me to convince others my point of views.

Conclusion

We obviously need to be affirmative. We need to be eloquent and placid enough to put forward our point of view. But we do not need to raise guns to defend every single point.

My colleague who fought with my boss, might be aware of the perception he would end up creating. And if he is aware of the consequences and if those consequences are aligned with the trajectory of the career he wants, then it’s fine.Ultimately it all boils down to what kind of perception you want to create in your team, how you want your team members, your organizations to perceive you.

There is nothing to prove to anyone, not even to yourself. It’s just a matter of the definition of success. And as I had stated earlier, the definition of success in our life is out ability to do what we really want to do.

To grow and to do our best work possible, we obviously need to work with people. Working with people presents different challenges and different rewards. For a successful career trajectory, align how you see ourselves with how others see you.