My dear friend and colleague, Christiana Stevens, MA/CPHR, and I have been having a conversation about perception. The question is "Does perception trump reality at work?"

Sure a leader is responsible for the way they present themselves, but at what point do employees also have to be responsible for what their perception is based on?
 
There is no end to the number of biases and beliefs that can distort how we see or listen to someone. The act of perceiving is messy because the outcome cannot be predicted.
 
We’re not talking about the very clear lines of abusive and power behaviour at work. We’re talking about when people come together and perceive one another and a situation very differently. Leading to deterioration in the working relationship.
 
We don’t have the answers, however, we have been collecting stories from leaders that expose the impact of misalignments of perceptions that resulted in an undesirable outcome or situation.
 
Perceptionality: a theory that all knowledge is relative to sense perception and mind cognition. In other words, perception is the result of what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch combined with what references our mind attaches to the situation based on beliefs, values, and historic narratives. Perceptionality then would be someone’s persona, both false and true.
 
We’d love to hear your story and thoughts.