My last post was about a kind of asymmetry…when we use language that we assume others understand and they sometimes don’t and we don’t know it.

This post is about a different kind of asymmetry…one of perception….when people see something fundamentally different and how it impacts communications and reputation.

I don’t want to be “perception vs reality guy”, because it is so obvious….everything is perception, and everyone trusts their own perception. And yet, when there is a car accident 10 witnesses all see something different.

For our purposes, the more important question is whose perception is relevant…or actionable. There’s someone who is trying to educate, inform, or persuade….but there is always someone they are trying to educate, inform, or persuade. The latter person has the relevant perception.

There’s some recent research on this topic.

Poppulo has interesting data that they released recently. To summarize in a sentence, communicators think they are doing a better job than their employees—i.e. stakeholders—think they are.

Here’s one more.

4 in 5 Internal Communicators surveyed think their organization knows its employees well, whereas 7 in 10 employees surveyed say they think their employer knows them well.

The key point is that communications aren’t working until they impact the people are communicating with.

Harvard has a similar example in their recent article titled “Men are worse allies than they think.” (As women readers nod knowingly). Their research shows that men think that they are way better at “allyship” than women do. Here’s the key snapshot.

There’s more to this study if you get a chance to look. They spell out pretty specific behaviors that are behind this disconnect, but that’s beyond what I’m doing here.

They key point: until we all see allyship in the same way, we are just perpetuating the problem we started with.

Here are some thoughts I would offer:

Distrust Comfort

I blogged one other time on this in relation to Maria Konnikova’s book on becoming a high-level poker player. Here’s the key part:

Less Certainty, More Inquiry

This is the mantra of Konnikova’s poker guru. For communicators, it means we have to be constantly asking questions of what we do, which is even harder when not in the “two pair beats one pair” world but in the subjective world of people’s knowledge and opinions. What do people really think? What is really important to them? What really helps them learn? Are we really earning their trust or just their affection? Through research, through feedback, and through active listening and observation, we should be always in an inquiry mode.

In today’s world, if you are comfortable, you need to worry. What’s worse than a smoke alarm that looks like it’s working but isn’t? We’re never in worse jeopardy than when we are sure something is happening and it isn’t.

Perceptions of Time Is a Key Issue

When people say something is going well or poorly, I think often it results from time being perceived differently. For example…to some executives, the equality movement started when George Floyd died and to many impacted people it started in 1617. People who have suffered injustice in relative obscurity are way more likely to say “enough already.”

Measure, measure, measure

And yet, change takes time. Measurement is key to eliminating perceptual disparities. We need to measure and listen to ensure that we, on the communicating half of the equation, are understanding our audience appropriately.

Also, as we measure outcomes—as opposed to perceptions—we need to regularly communicate those findings so that we can demonstrate progress. This is where I have suggested a D&I dashboard in the past. Even if you are not moving fast enough, you might be able to get a consensus on the idea that you are at least moving.

Don’t neglect the intensity of feeling

I worked an election one time and our opponent surveyed people on their agreement with a number of policies. It came out that there was the most agreement on keeping tobacco away from children and he ran on that idea. The problem was that people agree with it…it just wasn’t important to them. (We won).

For many issues, people have different levels of skin in the game. To the communicator, it' is a to-do item. To the plant neighbor it is their family’s health; to a woman in the workplace it is her dignity and her future; to a disabled person it is the path to a fulfilling life. Intensity is part of the perceptual disparity and awareness is your friend.

Conclusion

The alert has been sounded. Communicators and their bosses need to avoid false security. Perception disparity exists and is a meaningful issue.