I used to joke with my friends that it was much easier to control what other people were saying about me if I started the rumors myself! That way, I could get people to think what I wanted them to think about me.
Maybe I could even create a first impression before someone actually met me in person. If I could create for them an expectation of what I would be like in person, and if that expectation turned out to accurate when we actually met, they would feel more comfortable in that first meeting than if I were a complete unknown.
Or at least that's what I thought. Fortunately, I learned better.
The problem with this way of thinking is that it requires you to take a really hard, serious look at who and what you are, much like doing a personal S-W-O-T analysis, and make sure that's how you want to be perceived.
And you have to have a friend or two who will tell you the absolute truth about what you're actually projecting.
It's the same dilemma a writer or speaker faces when confronted with the difference between what he or she implies (or thinks he/she implies) and what the reader or listener infers.
For example, what would happen if I thought my behavior implied self-confidence but to everyone I met it came off as arrogance? Would I even be aware that the problem was with me and my projection, and not with their receiver?
In the entertainment business, side career in which I'm celebrating my 40th anniversary in a few days, we often call this "buying your own PR," or believing your hype instead of your truth. In the first few years of my entertainment career, I bought my own PR—and suffered for it. It took a really good friend who was also a performer to make me understand what was happening and why, and what I needed to do about it.
This friend taught me that it doesn't matter how well you sing or dance, or how great your reviews are, or how long you've been in the business. The audience makes you a star (or doesn't) each time you go on stage. You are not a star unless the audience says so, and then continues to say so.
A/E/C firms often suffer the same problem. We think we know how others see us, that our brand is what we are putting out to the world—or worse, what we think we are putting out to the world. We forget that "perception is reality." So we are, to any client, what that client thinks we are.
Our brand is what the marketplace says it is; if we don't like what the market thinks, changing their perception is not easy, quick or cheap. The example often used is about turning a huge passenger liner around in mid-ocean.
But first, our firm's need a good friend—someone who will tell us the truth about our image, our brand, our reputation. And this is generally someone outside—someone with no preconceived notion about our brand—someone who can hear what a client, a competitor or a regulatory agency says without comparing it to an image in which they are emotionally vested.
This emotional vesting is what makes us get defensive or argumentative when we hear something different from what we expect.
What these outside firms do for us is bring reality to our expectations of ourselves so we can strengthen or alter them. They do us a great service, because "what does the rest of the world think my brand is?" is one of the most important things a firm needs to know.