Your 'Everyday Impression'

Ten-time NCAA Championship coach John Wooden famously remarked,
 
“The true test of a [person’s] character is what [s]he does when no one is watching.”
 
When it comes to your professional conduct, someone is always watching.
 
Don’t believe me?  Indulge me and think of a colleague who ‘has it all together,’ who exudes a realistic positivity and jumps in when an unexpected challenge arises.  Someone who is present, focused, and continuously aware of others’ well-being.  Imagine the office superstar.
 
Now imagine the converse.  The individual who only shows up out of obligation, who goes through the motions, does the bare minimum, and saps your energy with their negativity and continuous expressions of burden.  Those people exist too.
 
How did you form your impression of these two extremes?  It likely wasn’t because of a formal review that you conducted.  Instead, you likely assembled your impressions by subconsciously aggregating the ‘million little things’ these individuals communicated through their words and actions.  This is unconscious bias in action.
 
Now for the scary part.  Where on this ‘impression spectrum’ do you belong?  What do you regularly communicate to your colleagues, team members, and management through your actions and ethos? 
 
Here are five suggestions to help harness the ‘everyday impression’ you communicate—strategies that will help advance your professional reputation (and career).
 

1. Be present

It’s easy to silo ourselves and only pay attention to information and updates that directly affect us.  The meeting begins and you lose eye contact with the presenter, stop interacting, and start multi-tasking.  These behaviors are especially easy in remote meetings, but on-line or in-person, these behaviors clearly communicate to people watching (and remember, people are always watching) that we are disinterested and distracted.  Communicate the right message by being present, staying engaged, and offering ideas and insights even when our project isn’t in the spotlight.
 

2. Be mindful

There is a delicate balance between keeping a meeting organized, on-task, and job-focused and recognizing that your colleagues have complex lives outside of the meeting agenda.  We communicate a lot when we purposefully build in a meeting segment to acknowledge and appreciate the bigger picture and well-being of our colleagues.  For example, you can have a “colleague spotlight” that gives a peer 60-seconds to talk about something important to them, plan a “guest spot” where a team member’s child is given 20-seconds to welcome everyone to the meeting (think “ringing the bell” to open the stock market), or even the simple act of acknowledging what folks in the broader world are likely dealing with in the moment.  Appreciating that the world is more complex than the meeting agenda is a powerful signal of perspective and appreciation.
 

3. Be positive

Some tasks are lousy, some events are demoralizing, and some jobs are tedious.  People shouldn’t be.  Even in the face of sub-optimal circumstances, we do a lot for ourselves and our teams if we find the positive.  You don’t need to be a Pollyanna, but even humorously relishing in an ‘well, at least we’re all in this together’ mindset can be cathartic.  Find the positive.
 

4. Be organized

When you’re leading or contributing to a meeting, organization is a tell-tale sign of preparedness, and when you’re prepared it communicates that you value your topic and your audience.  Winging it, on the other hand, communicates that you don’t care.  And nothing is more demoralizing to a group than having individuals telegraph that ‘it just doesn’t matter.’
 

5. Be honest

We all have bad days.  We all have instances when life intrudes on our best-laid plans.  There will be days when, because of circumstances outside of our control, we can’t communicate the ideal energy, optimism, and ‘can-do’ spirit that makes you the office superstar.  That’s okay.  And when these circumstances arise, be honest.  Being human is more important to the impression we communicate than being perfect.
 
Someone is always watching our professional behavior and assembling an impression from the myriad bits and pieces of our behavior that we communicate every day.  This is true when we huddle with our teams, talk to a colleague over the phone, present to the executive team, or participate in a video conference with our peers.  The impression we broadcast is critical to company culture, our career trajectory, and most importantly, our own well-being.