The Power and Peril of Perception

Maya Angelou famously stated that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.“

I hate that quote. Don’t get me wrong- it’s true and insightful and important. But I hate it because it indicates something outside of the realm of facts and control – our perception. What you said and did are facts, and you can control them. The impression people came away with is perception. It’s their interpretation of what you meant by what you said and did. You can influence people’s perception but you can’t control it, and often how people interpret things is influenced as much by their own insecurities, assumptions and biases as it is by what you said or did.

When I was a kid I was teased relentlessly about being super skinny. Once at a church potluck someone looked at my plate and told me my eyes were bigger than my stomach. What they meant of course was I had gotten more than I could probably eat. But I didn’t know that saying, and based on my previous experiences and insecurities and the fact that I had big eyes, I assumed they were making fun of me for being skinny and it hurt my feelings. No harm was intended but harm was taken purely based on my perception of their comments based on preexisting insecurities.

The impression people come away with is more important to them than the facts. It’s true – but I don’t like it because I can’t control it and that’s frustrating.

A while back my fellow ER staff and I had to go through special training on “patient perception”. We had this interesting mismatch between facts and perception. The facts were that our department does some of the best work out there. We give the best care for heart attacks, stroke, and any number of other acute illnesses. We pass the metrics with flying colors. If you have a medical emergency, you want to come to us because we’re the shit, basically. However – people’s perception of their care was that it just wasn’t that great. So while we were actually giving great care people didn’t feel like we were. Hence this special training on how to help people understand what we were actually doing. Communication skills and such. Because people don’t know that we got the appropriate labs tests and antibiotics started in record time for their sepsis – they know their experience of being stuck with a bunch of needles and the doctor talking over their head and who are all these people anyways?

Like it or not, the human world is as much about abstract interpretation as it is about concrete facts. Humans are interpreters and storytellers and that is how we navigate existence. As much as one might wish things were less subjective- that, my friend, is our existence. So in light of this, here are some helpful take aways.

1. Learn to doubt your own interpretation. We all have this unsubstantiated confidence in our perception of people, their actions, and their motives. We need to learn to second guess it. “It seemed like she was stuck up, but it’s possible she felt uncomfortable.” We assume more than we know, and we need to realize that.
2. Clear communication is the best way to accurately influence people’s perceptions. If we spend more energy on the front end of communication we’re less likely to suffer the negative effects of inaccurate ones. Leave as little as you can to people’s assumptions.
3. We ultimately can’t control people’s interpretations of us. They have backstories and biases and insecurities we may know nothing about. We must recognize that being misunderstood is part of being human. Have grace for yourself and for those who might have tagged you all wrong.