Question

From your own professional experience, identify a time that your initial social perception proved to be incorrect. How did you react when you realized this? What future lessons can you draw from this experience?

Answer 1

In my opinion, initial social perception sometimes proved wrong. In my case, when i meet somebody for the first time i am always in a dilemma whether to trust him/her or not. It is due to the situation, place, age, behaviour and attitude of the person. If i trust her then we can be in a good relationship otherwise not.

It happened to me in an organization where i was working as a sales coordinator. Our manager asked me and all other sales staff to cooperate with each other to achieve the monthly target. At that time all were newly appointed and did not know each other. As it is our job responsibility, we got ready to do it. Among all, one employee was not showing that much of interest to do the job. So i thought that he may be disliking his job or simply may not like us. So i discussed about this with other co-workers and they also agreed with me. We together asked that guy about the reason. But actually what happened, we came to know that he wants some time to adjust with this new job environment. In that case what we perceive about that guy was wrong.

When i came to know this i felt very bad. I should not have such a wrong perception about that guy. I must talked to him about his non-cooperation.

I learnt a lesson from this, initial social perception about someone may be wrong. I must not rely upon it. Instead of thinking about a person's behaviour i should talk to that person so that we can carry on our job with full of energy and excitation. Sometimes people show a different attitude which doesn't represent their like/dislike. So it is necessary to clarify the situation by a simple conversation.