Wrong Perceptions Can Be Lethal

WRONG PERCEPTIONS CAN BE LETHAL
By Bill Cottringer

“You are only as wise as others perceive you to be” ~M. Shawn Cole

It would be amusing if it weren’t for the destructiveness that wrong perceptions of people and situations can cause. What is amusing is that we are convinced of the truth of our perceptions and act on them accordingly, despite the inaccurate and incomplete way the brain works to give us these perceptions. The sad reality is that most of our perceptions of other people and situations are very distorted.

Take arriving at a perception of someone as being either likable or unlikable. We form that “impression” very early on in the game, but can rarely articulate our reasons well enough to make sense. We just see someone as being either likable or not. And then of course everything the person says or does verifies that initial perception. It actually takes great communication to change perceptions.

The work arena is a haven for wrong perceptions and all the adverse effects such wrong perceptions can lead to. Take the typical rift between management, supervisors and employees. The employees perceive management as being out of touch or not knowing how to get the organization headed in the right direction. The supervisors are caught in the middle not knowing who or what to believe. And of course management sees employees not performing to the best of their ability and fill in the blanks about why that is happening with all sorts of motivational guesses.

Both side’s perceptions are very incorrect and incomplete and they just perpetuate misunderstanding and animosity, which in turn reinforce more wrong perceptions and more confusions and hard feelings. What is the answer to this mess we have with accumulated wrong perceptions? We can’t possibly change our own perceptions of others or how others perceive us, until re realize how faulty our perceptual process is and open up to improving it.

Even if you lived your whole life with someone else and communicated well to preclude the potential mistakes that you make in perceiving the other person’s motivations for saying or doing certain things, you will still get surprises. People change quicker than we think and our perceptions are often just chasing shadows of the real thing, falling further away from reality. We act on these faulty perceptions and wonder why we don’t get the results we hope for.

Another bad habit we fall prey to is in believing we can determine someone else’s motivation behind their behavior. I have studied motivation for 4 decades and I can tell you that is hogwash. Heck, I know myself pretty well and am not always sure why I am doing something a certain way or not doing something someone else thinks I should be doing. I don’t have a clue sometimes and when you are honest with yourself, neither do you. It is mostly guess work and we can often be wrong.

Unfortunately our brains are more driven to find comfortable efficiency and familiarity than to look for the complex truth . We settle for overly simple explanations as to why a person does this or that—usually as simple as okay or not okay, right or wrong, or good or bad—without considering many of the possible relevant facts. And then this simple-minded perception gets set in concrete as unquestionable.

Knowing what we do about perceptions, why is it so hard for us to question the validity of them? The longer we hold onto wrong perceptions of others, the less success we achieve. The people who are most successful have the most accurate perceptions of people and reality. They just see things the way they are, not how they over-interpret them to be, by filling in all the blanks.

If you are feeling negative feelings because of a certain perception you have of another person or because you fear someone else has a wrong perception of you and it is causing problems in your relationship, stop and try to communicate about that situation with the other person in an assertive way. This just means starting the conversation with your perception of the situation and how you feel about it, without blaming the other person for doing something to cause your discomfort.

You may be surprised that your perception of the other person’s perception of you isn’t nearly as inaccurate or distorted as the one you have of yourself. Or if it is close, you may find out what you did wrong to help create it or make it worse. And you can certainly use the opportunity to explain parts of obvious misperceptions on both people’s part in the relationship.

Better perceptions start with acknowledging that the whole process of forming perceptions is very faulty at best and not being so convinced that your perceptions are always right. And maybe you have to experience enough tension-building discomfort from a conflict between perceptions, to be motivated enough to say something about what is going on. This is usually what has to happen to correct the wrong perceptions or at least understand how they were wrongly formed. That takes openness and willingness to learn and grow, and communicate assertively without defensiveness, which is never easy.

Do you have a conflict with how you perceive another person or how you think they may wrongly perceive you? The safest bet is you are probably both dying to talk about it and when you do, you are most likely to find yourselves both being a little right and a little wrong in your perceptions of each other. Setting the record straight can be very challenging but also rewarding.