In the summer of 2001 I was summoned to a suburb of St. Louis. There, a dysfunctional financial planning firm teetered on insanity and dissolution. I was hired to fix the culture.
I will tell you straight up that I was not allowed to finish my work, as before I had hardly begun, the Russian roulette of the company's dysfunction spat me out the door. Nope, no hero story here.
However, I had begun my work by interviewing every single person in the place over a three week period...all 130 or so, from the CEO right down to the janitor. I wanted every single person's perspective...and got it.
One consistent theme was that the Human Resource Manager was not to be trusted. I got this from probably 75% of those I interviewed. So maybe 90 or 100 people in that company told me that they were leery of HR.
What was fascinating was that nobody seemed sure why. Multiple conversations went something like this:
"I can tell you that I don't trust the HR Manager."
"Really? Why?" I would ask.
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"No, not really," they would search their brain.
"Well, did she do anything to you?" I would pry. "Did she betray your confidence? Did she let you down in some way?"
"No, not really," they would repeat.
This conversation, or some close variation of it, would go on with person after person after person after person.
Needless to say, I was perplexed. I kept digging and kept coming up empty.
Finally, the fourth to last employee was seated before me. Ten minutes into our conversation she blurted the common refrain, that she did not trust the HR Manager.
Of course, I have to handle these comments like it's the first time I heard them.
"How come?" said I.
And then it came. My panning finally came up gold. Here was the answer to all my inquiries:
"Because," she said, "the HR Manager goes to lunch every day with the same group of managers including mine."
"And?" I led her along.
"Well, if they are such good friends like they seem to be, do you think she'll be fair if I go to her about an issue concerning my manager? Do you think I'm confident that what I say will be kept confidential? How objective can she be? Don't you think she'll play favorites?"
"But she has never wronged you," I pressed
"No," said she. "But I'm not going to give her that chance. My first try might be my last."
Ahhhh...the power of perceptions.
As far as anyone could tell, the HR Manager had actually done no one wrong. No one could name a specific time that she had been unprofessional.
And yet she was distrusted.
The perception of her affected those around her as if she really had done something untrustworthy. Reality or perception didn't matter; the impact was exactly the same.
Interestingly, when I brought this to the attention of the HR Manager, she was flummoxed.
"Wow," she said. "It never crossed my mind. I just went with them because we all just seemed to go at the same time every day so we kind of fell in together. I mean they're fun and I like them, but I'm not friends with or feel a particular closeness to any of them."
The HR Manager's sin was that she wasn't sensitive to how others viewed her actions.
Perceptions really are reality-what you are perceived to be doing impacts those around you as much as what you are actually doing.
Leaders-always know your audience.
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