You have a one-line description of nearly everyone you work with.
You didn’t sit down and write these. They are mostly subconscious and were shaped by your interactions with people. They run in the background, and your brain pings with them each time you decide who to bring into a project, who to route a problem to, and whose opinion you value most.
For instance:
➡️The one who is detail-oriented but gets stuck in the weeds.
➡️The one who is great with clients, not so strong on strategy.
➡️The difficult one.
➡️ The only reliable one.
➡️ The one who is fine, but not someone you’d put in front of the ELT.
But… when was the last time you updated any of your definitions?
I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that you haven’t, because → human nature. The challenge is, most of us keep growing and evolving. Which means our estimation of others becomes outdated and doesn’t account for life experiences they’ve had, skills they’ve acquired, etc.
I got the clearest look at this recently, poking around someone’s LinkedIn profile. I “assumed” I knew what I was going to see. I was wrong. Instead, there were activities and interests that had nothing to do with how I had subconsciously defined them.
My perception of them wasn’t wrong, exactly. It was just narrow because nothing had ever forced me to check my assumptions.
Which made me wonder where else and with who else I was doing this.
And every old idea about someone keeps me from tapping into their knowledge and wisdom.
If your mental file cabinet has someone under “tactical”, you keep handing them tactical work. Perfect example of confirmation bias. And if you’re using outdated data or knowledge, there’s a good chance you’re underutilizing your team.
Here’s this week’s call to action.
Pick one person you work with regularly and go find out something you don’t know about them. Have a meaningful conversation, ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. Most of us are being underestimated by someone. Odds are decent that you’re doing it to somebody too.
And if you think people have an outdated perception of you, check out this article in HBR by Darcy Eikenberg and yours truly.
