Question

describe the worst impression management mistake you have seen or committed. Discuss whether perception matched reality. How does perception influence behavior and how can it be managed?

Answer 1

Impression management is the process of influencing the perceptions of individuals about an object, person or event by regulating, controlling or hiding information that might provide the real facts. It is an attempt to provide information that only favors the entity.

Example of a situation where I had seen impression management mistake -

I work for a conulting firm where the client feedback is critical for our business as a positive feedback brings in more projects and business while a negative feedback leads to loss in business. There was a situation where the client users were not happy with the project deliverables and expressed dissatisfaction to our project manager who has hidden the negative feedback in an attempt to impress the management and displayed a positive picture while he worked on improving in the areas where the project was lagging. As he delayed in passing on the feedback to the management which latter resulted in the project ending in disaster, the management became very serious on the manager and demoted him.

The perception did not match reality in this case as the management were under the impression that the project was going smooth and getting good feedback.

Perception creates an impression in one's mind based on which his/her actions would depend. Hence, it is important to perceive things correctly by understanding the situation in-depth and talking to various people. This way, perception will match reality to a great extent leading to the right action under the situation.