The ethics of Impression management

Wanting to create a favourable impression is a basic part of human nature. Once someone forms an opinion of you, it can be very difficult to change and, whilst we can’t control people’s opinions, there are ways in which we can present ourselves which are more likely to get a positive opinion.

Impression management involves consciously or unconsciously controlling the way others see or perceive us so we can manage what we say about ourselves and make the best possible impression. It’s something we all do to a greater or lesser degree but whether it’s ethical or not depends on the context, intent and means we use to manage our impression to help us achieve professional and personal goals.

If impression management is to be both effective and ethical, it's important to strike a balance between projecting a positive image and remaining true to our core values and principles. Authenticity is key and while it's essential to create a positive professional image, it should be based on our true skills, abilities, and values. Being seen as overly inauthentic can lead to issues around trust and our credibility.

One of the most obvious ways impression management is used is during a job interview. Candidates and interviewers both feel the need to appear ‘authentically perfect’, pleasant, competent but not so perfect as to be disingenuous. Whilst some self-promotion can help candidates and potential employers leave a positive impression, interviews are not the time to make false claims – a lack of skills, competencies or difficult working conditions will be found out pretty quickly so, as well as being unethical, it can be a lot more damaging to your reputation in the longer-term.

Another way of using impression management in the work environment is in how we build relationships with our colleagues. People often have a work ‘persona’, which might involve behaviour, appearance and interests that they think their managers and colleagues want them to have. This isn’t unusual and isn’t really a problem as long as people don’t try to own ideas or achievements that aren’t theirs or manipulate situations to their own benefit. If they do they generally get caught out - think of the numerous influencers who've tried - and again it’s not only unethical and reputation damaging but a very quick way to divide teams.

Impression management is only effective and ethical if it’s based on transparency and honesty. It becomes unethical the minute it involves deception or manipulation. Whether its appropriate depends on the context in which its used. Used correctly, it can help in the success of your career and in building strong relationships with colleagues and managers. Ultimately, authenticity is the key, and impression management a tool to help us achieve our goals rather than something that compromises our identity.

Lyrical Leadership and the five-step path of transformation.

Keywords - Resilience – Leadership – Poetry – Control - AI

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled, Aneace Haddad, an executive coach and author based in Singapore who talks about his background as a former tech entrepreneur turned leadership coach and writer. He talks about his recently published book, "The Eagle That Drank Hummingbird Nectar," which explores the concept of lyrical leadership through the five-step path of transformation - entering the path, resilience, limiting beliefs, innovation, and mindfulness – to enable leaders to let go of limiting beliefs and labels to become more resilient. The book is structured as a fictionalised account of his experiences and draws on Eastern philosophy principles without explicitly mentioning mindfulness.

Main topics

• The importance of relinquishing control to create a new culture that can solve complex problems.

• The concept of lyrical leadership

• The value of letting go of rigid labels and authority while maintaining some control

• The illusion of self and mindfulness

• Overcoming contradictions and balancing innovation and results

Timestamps

1: Introductions 00:00-00:36
2: Aneace’s background and career 00:41-02:19
3: Aneace's novel and writing process 02:19-04:11
4: Lyrical Leadership and Aneace's approach to coaching 04:46-06:39
5: Aneace's Book "The Dream", Five Steps to Resilience, and Letting Go 06:56-09:49
6: Detaching the illusion of self and mindfulness 11:29-14:33
7: Overcoming contradictions and balancing innovation with results 15:04-16:43
8: Chat GPT and the future of writing 17:43-21:15
9: Contact information 21:52-22:39
10: Conclusion and Farewell 23:00-23:17

Action items

• Find out more about Aneace at aneace.com

• Read Aneace’s book The Eagle That Drank Hummingbird Nectar

  You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.  

Approaching change

Joe Caruso is a leadership coach who advises CEOs and leadership teams to optimise what they do and how they do it to get what they what in the fastest most efficient way possible. Most of the time if we are left on our own, we do more and more things that are less and less important to the customer. We become lost on our own thoughts and it becomes hard to think objectively about ourselves.

Any time we define a problem, we’ve immediately defined all the solutions our mind can’t consider just by the definition we choose. This type of thinking usually requires a candid experience assessment and a candid exchange of ideas.

Joe feels we need to move away from problem orientated thinking to solution orientated thinking and be able to think back to what could this could be or what else could this mean. These are the kind of questions that once a CEO speaks and gives their definition, people it as gospel. People will tell you that they like change but don't change anything. We tend to become too static in a dynamic world especially in market places that are changing every day.

We’re changing all the time cognitively, mentally and emotionally so the problem is perhaps management practices. The process of being changed or managed through change. Change is a problem in itself but change by its very nature is something we are very good at. The problem is how we approach change. The way we define it is the problem. The last thing people or businesses want to do is change identity.

Any time we define anything in our external world we use ourselves as the foundational context. Who you are affects how you define something. We start with the mind and a simple question is who am I or what have I become. Everything starts with how we think. Narrative is the foundational understanding of who I am. The more we learn about our own narrative the more we can recognise the narrative of others.

It’s about creating a corporate culture based on a compelling narrative that allows us to make sense of the world.  The first thing you need to do to create compelling is Identity. Something that everybody can agree with. Who are we as a collective mind? What problem are we trying to solve? What is our process? A leadership team is the best of what their profession is. But that's not a team that's just the top of the different divisions in the organisation. There has to be a trust and candor where everyone is able to talk on all areas. The CEO job is not to create excellence, it’s to create an environment where excellence can thrive.

 Find out more about Joe at www.carusoleadership.com,

  You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.

Overt or covert? Spot the narcissist in your workplace.

Most people find that their relationships with work colleagues have a huge affect on their wellbeing. Toxic relationships can lead to anxiety and depression and this can be particularly noticeable if you are working with a narcissist. But narcissist is a wide-ranging term that describes many different people who possess similar traits but who demonstrate different behaviours at different times. Generally though narcissists are thought of as incredibly self- centred with no consideration for the feelings and needs of others. While many narcissists do behave this way, there are many other who exhibit completely different behaviours that make them far more difficult to spot.

Two of the better-known types of narcissism are overt and covert. Whilst both share the same behaviours - a lack of empathy, a need for admiration, feelings of inadequacy, a desire to control others and low self-esteem – they are expressed completely differently in their outward actions. Overt narcissists are very easy to spot because they display all the traits we typically associate with narcissism. They’re very vocal, constantly telling everyone how great they are, how everyone else has failed and being completely insensitive to the needs of others. A covert narcissist however is less obvious, they’re more reserved and introverted so are difficult to spot because they hide behind a mask of sensitivity and vulnerability.

Narcissism is all about control and manipulation For example, narcissists always shift blame onto their teammates and an overt narcissist will do this by criticising and taking every opportunity to tell you where you went wrong and how everything is your fault. Covert narcissists however use a more passive form of manipulation, creating confusion by implying you forgot something or remembered it incorrectly and using their workmates to supply constant re-assurance about their skills and talents.

Outwardly, overt and covert narcissists appear to be very different but as well as sharing the same insecurities, they exercise the same narcissistic behaviours and blame-shifting, projection and gaslighting are just some of the forms of control and manipulation they use. Whether you’re dealing with an overt or covert narcissist, being aware of their traits means you’ll be better placed to protect yourself and set some boundaries in place to deal with their dysfunction.

Cycle of Lives – Emotional connections with cancer

David Richman is an author, public speaker, philanthropist, and endurance athlete whose mission is to form more meaningful human connections through storytelling. He competes in Ironman triathlons and a wide range of endurance athletic events and has recently completed a solo 4,700-mile bike ride in 41 days. This was to connect with the people who contributed to his book Cycle of Lives, which shares the interconnected stories of people overcoming trauma and delves deeply into their emotional journeys with cancer.

David’s career working for a Wall Street firm was incredibly stressful. During the financial crisis he was managing up and down and things got very tough. He suffered from both external and self-inflicted stress – was overweight and a smoker, did no exercise and had four-year old twins, as well being in a relationship with an abusive alcoholic. He needed to make a change but it wasn’t until his only sister was diagnosed with terminal cancer that he started to change his life around.

He says it was like a light switch going on. His whole life he had been trying to be an overachiever for other people – a good kid, a good student, keeping his boss happy, impressing his employees. Whatever it was doing he was looking for external gratification. Eventually he understood the concept of having to do things for yourself and when he realised this, he took control of his life.

David combined the thought that his best days were ahead with forgiving himself for his past mistakes. He stopped smoking, lost weight and become physically active. He stopped worrying about what other people thought about him and his work and instead concentrated on what he thought about himself and his work. He feels it's very freeing to accept the idea that nobody is watching you and nobody cares about what you do. Everybody has their own problems and own life to deal with. We believe other people are judging us but really they’re not.   When David started doing endurance athletic events he soon realised that no one was taking any notice of what he was doing, what training he was undertaking and where and when he completed an event - he was just doing it solely for himself.

David grew up not wanting to upset his mother and he realises now that is where not doing things for himself or learning self-sufficiency or forgiveness started. Everyone has difficulties so it’s important not to compare yourself to other people. Your life is your life and some people are going though unbelievably traumatic experiences. He talked with his sister through her end of life journey and then went on to do an endurance event to raise money for the cancer centre that had cared for her. Through the contacts he made he realised that many people have great difficulty communicating the emotional side of trauma and cancer.

He decided to write a book that could help people deal with the emotional side of cancer such as how trauma affects the cancer or how we can better relate to someone going through cancer. He found a number of people with a wide range of emotional responses to cancer - doctors, nurses, patients and relatives - and talked to them about their stories. When the book was finished, he wanted to connect with the people he had worked with so organised his bike trip to meet them all. All the profits from book go to charity. Each of the participants came up with a charity they had an affinity to and the proceeds of sales will go to those charities.

As well as raise money, David’s aim is to start the conversation. He feels we all need to try to live our best life but do it because its what we want to do. What matters is the state of happiness that we choose to surround ourselves with and the emotional connections we make with people in life!

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about David here. Our previous podcasts, upcoming guest list and previous blogs also available.

You can find out more about David here.

Conflict of identity? Remember the mission.

The latest episode in our Resilience Unravelled series has now been released, Resilience Unravelled – Conflict of identity? Remember the mission.

 In this episode, Dr. Russell Thackeray talks to James Boardman a former Royal Marine Commando Sniper and Physical Trainer who served for eight years including some time in Afghanistan as part of a 6-man sniper team. He left the Royal Marines in 2011 to pursue a family life but struggled to come to terms with being back in a normal life, away from the military. Conflicting identities caused James to turn to drink and within three years he was divorced, on the verge of loosing his house, and struggling to find a path. Minutes away from attempting suicide James managed to pull himself away from this environment long enough to see a new path. In 2013 he started his first business, a fitness Bootcamp which he grew to a £100k a year business in its first year. In 2017, he started The Man Coach with the sole purpose of helping men become Elite Operators in life.

In this podcast, James talks about how he helps men to rebuild their lives and have a better state of mind through the way they live their lives emotionally, physically and mentally. He calls this an Elite Operating Mindset, an alter ego by which we set our standards to build the character, values and principles needed to perform in life for the four pillars of health, relationships, personal development and business. James originally started working with his clients on their fitness and nutrition but many seemed to fall off the programme. He started to consider why this was happening and realised that the chaos of life – responsibility, conflicting identity, direction – was what was stopping them.  He decided to change his tactics and concentrated on the key root of the problem, the level of control, consistency and clarity of where men were going.

James was in the Royal Marines for eight years and everything he talks about comes from his experiences. The mindset and processes he has are from what he has gone through and what he has used to get where he is today. He really loved being in the Marines but he left because he wanted to be a full-time Dad and role-model. He thought going back to normal life would be easy but he struggled with a conflict of identity. When he left the Marines he was a Sargent who was respected, was part of something, had purpose and mission and knew where he was heading.  When he left, everything from the last eight years was lost. He became a teacher at a college and there was a huge difference between teaching motivated recruits and 16-19 year old students. He didn't really settle in and considered rejoining the Marines but that fell through and within three years of leaving he was divorced, seeing his kids for half a week and suffering financial difficulties.  Things came to a head and one night he thought about ending his life. Instead he went out for a run for three hours and spent the time reflecting on his life. When he came back he had decided he wanted to turn things around.

Male identity can be a real problem. Many men get their sense of identity through their work. James feels you should replace identity with purpose, to ‘remember the mission' and have an emotional connection to an outcome. He feels motivation is an emotion like happiness or sadness that comes and goes and is not substantial enough to drive change. We need to decide what is our mission in life and create a ten-year vision within the four pillars of health, relationships, personal development and business. James also thinks we should work towards a 1% a day improvement so instead of acting emotionally and making changes for a few weeks and then stopping, we should try to reach long term control, clarity and consistency –1% a day over a year gives you a 365% improvement! Along the way there would be big wins and changes but resilience is also built so we have control of a situation and can deal with having one bad day.  The next day we just realign with the mission, we Learn- Grow – Repeat.

James had to rethink his purpose. He became involved in a dispute with the College he was working for and started doing some part-time work as a Personal Trainer. The dispute went through a grievance procedure but the relationship was unworkable so he left with a settlement. He saw it as an opportunity to change so although he knew nothing about working for himself he set up his own Bootcamp business. Six months into his journey he remembered what had happened before and saw how far he had come and how much further he could go in six years. He realised that he had allowed himself to let go of his life as a Royal Marine and that he had taken what he needed from that and become stronger, was happy with who he was and that he had moved on with his life.

James feels that people try to become best version of other people rather than themselves. It is easy to be influenced by social media and celebrity and take traits from each. When you have clarity you understand what success is to you and what is enough. The more you fail, the more you understand yourself and become more secure in who you are. What comes out of failure can be better.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about James here. Our previous podcast episodes and upcoming guest list are also available. Our full blog archive is also available.

You can get in touch with James at The Man Coach  where you can access a free five day challenge and James’s Daily Rise to Thrive Facebook Show, his It's a State of Mind Podcast and The Man Coach YT Channel

Jame’s book It's a State of Mind Book is available at Amazon.