Managing Perception

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Leadership   ProjectsAtWork  

How you are perceived — by team members, stakeholders and executives — will greatly impact your ability to lead projects and programs. Right or wrong, perception is reality. It’s also pervasive and persistent, and it can be a long-term burden or asset. How do you manage your perception?

Most project management professionals have heard the adage “perception is reality” — that what you say or do, or what you intend by your words or actions, is largely irrelevant. Instead, what matters is how people interpret those words and actions. It’s a cautionary warning that you have to consider how your audience will hear what you say and see what you do, because that will become the message that is remembered.

Perception is tremendously powerful; at the extreme there are a number of studies that show how people, sometimes large groups of people, can vividly recall events that simply didn’t happen, but that they firmly believe to be real. As leaders, we need to not only understand that phenomenon, we have to manage it to ensure that we succeed.

Pervasive and Persistent

Before we can manage perception, we need to understand two characteristics of perception that aren’t as commonly discussed. The first is the idea that a perception can be pervasive — it can rapidly spread among your teams and larger organization. How people react or remember…

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