We are often told not to worry about what others think of us. Just be ourselves and don’t be burdened by the opinions of others. This is an important realization, especially in moments when we have a good idea but are too afraid to share it out of fear of rejection, or we are scared to go against the majority. It is important to not be fearful of other people’s opinions.
But there is still value to the opinions of others and also value in understanding how people view you. According to Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter’s book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”, we are not fully self-aware in understanding how our behaviors are impacting our relationships. This is important to not only our personal relationships, but crucial for our professional ones. The authors suggest it matters less how you view yourself and more how others view you.
According to Goldsmith, utilizing other people’s evaluations of us is both crucial and necessary to impact behavioral changes, which is what ultimately allow us to gain professionally. For leaders and managers especially, as we attempt to appeal to our staff and coworkers, having an understanding of how we come off to others is key. Goldsmith writes, “If we can stop, listen, and think about what others are seeing in us, we have a great opportunity. We can compare the self that we want to be with the self that we are presenting to the rest of the world. We can then begin to make the real changes that are needed to close the gap between our stated values and our actual behavior.”
TRACOM’s SOCIAL STYLE and Versatility training teaches us about the behavioral preferences we innately act on and how these behavioral preferences might be perceived by others. It also teaches us about what other people’s behaviors means and how to use these observations to determine someone’s SOCIAL STYLE. This is where the Versatility aspect of the training comes in, which allows us to adjust our Style to the SOCIAL STYLE of others we are interacting with.
TRACOM’s research shows that in more than 50% of SOCIAL STYLE profiles, people identify their Style differently than others identify them. To learn more about the importance and benefits read our blog “Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Feedback from a Multi-Rater”.
