Thousands of years ago in our tribal days, we had to look at someone and make a quick decision – friend or foe? Making that decision properly could be a matter of life or death.
We still do it. We look at someone and based on what we see, we size them up quickly. We can tell a lot about how someone looks, dresses, grooms, holds their body and acts. What kind of person are they? Do they respect themselves? If they don’t, they don’t respect others either. What are their intentions? What behavior are they likely to be capable of?
Is it right? It is necessary and natural – we look and we make assessments. We take in most information through our cameras – our eyes. When we engage that person we start to treat the person from the position we fabricated from how they appear.
Knowing this, can we change our appearance to make prejudgement work in our favor? How about our customer facing employees?
I agree about that tendency to judge by appearances but sometimes I’m wrong and it’s a difficult thing to adjust because we have to trust our intuition even if we’ve picked up misleading cues.it applies not just to employees. I don’t have any but in theory have to do this when engaging with potential clients and networkers.
There’s this pizza place in a little town called Galena illinois by us. When I first was told “they are the best” we drove by and judged. Decked out in 1960s “hippy” things, including a VW van and 60s album cases for a menu, a dog that roams around inside and outside…….. I thought “ no way” . But, being adventurous….I went in and found it to be “ the best pizza” I ever had! All organic and my wife even loves it :)) Hm…..imagine if he was involved with SOE?
Check out “Persuasion” by Robert Chalidenie. Really good insight into this.
Agree , with all of the pluses and minuses that comes with snap judgments. It can save someone’s life on one hand (police always say to listen to your 6th sense) or be cruel and damaging on the other. With a client based business , I think being positive and confident helps take the focus away from pure physical appearance , but you can’t ignore the impact of clothes, grooming and body language .