Yesterday at work I saw a girl who I hired and employed way back in 2017. Her interview at that point in time couldn’t have gone better. I still remember going to my managers after meeting her and excitedly telling everyone how she was going to come in and be the next key player on our team. 

But as soon as this new hire completed training, problems quickly arose. The first few times that I or my other managers coached her, she reacted poorly, to say the least. My outlook on her immediately shifted. “She’s clearly taking even matter of fact coaching super personally. The humility and team-player mindset that she said she had in our interview does not appear to be reality“. I was then increasingly hyperaware of how she interacted with managers, coworkers, and even customers. When situations arose that required verbal coaching, I was as quick as ever to coach her, knowing that the reaction would be negative. Things didn’t get any better, and in a very short amount of time she resigned (before she was fired). 

There are a few different things to be learned from this story. But one specifically stands out!

The Lesson

“The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“What we see in people is determined, in large part, by what we expect to find.” -Paul Smith 

How you and I view SOMEONE is how we will TREAT them!

With the employee in 2017, my assessment of her coming out of the interview was all sunshine and rainbows. Based on this, the way that I spoke and thought about her, as well as how I interacted with her, was all super positive. But then, my viewpoint changed drastically. I came to view her as some version of insecure, selfish, and argumentative. Once this change occurred, I felt no trust towards her and immediately began acting in a no-nonsense way during interactions with her. 

We often treat people one way or another without stopping to really assess how we are viewing them. Is our viewpoint correct? PROBABLY. But it is helpful, and even necessary, to intentionally clarify exactly how we are choosing to view each person. “This person lacks social awareness, so I am going to be more patient with them”. This kind of thing is healthy and helpful!

But when a leader avoids internally clarifying their viewpoint on each individual, they can find themselves acting in ways that are harmful and unintentional. Sometimes a direct report annoys me, so I treat them as annoying without really stopping to think about it. But when I step back, I realize that the person is annoying me because they are underperforming in their customer-facing role when they are actually best cut out to work behind-the-scenes.

So as the old saying goes, does perception really equal reality when it comes to how we view people? Yes and no. On the one hand, how we view them WILL be the reality of how we treat them. And perhaps our viewpoint is indeed accurate. But on the other hand, there have been so many times that I believed I had an accurate read on a person’s personality and motivations but then found out that I was wrong. My initial perception of them ended up NOT being the reality of who they were as a person.

In the end, a leader must be VERY aware of how they are viewing people. If someone is viewed as stupid, they will be treated as stupid. If someone is viewed as competent, they will be treated as competent.

In Closing

Are you stepping back to examine your viewpoint towards the people that you are leading? As far as you can tell, are your viewpoints accurate? Are you treating people in a way that is fair, helpful, and in alignment with what they need in order to get the most out of them while giving them the best work experience possible? Are you viewing YOURSELF in a helpful way that then leads to healthy self-talk?