What They See Is Who You Are

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: First Impressions: What You Don’t Know About How Others See You

Competencies: self-development, impression management, managing relationships, emotional intelligence

Who benefits: almost anyone and everyone

Consultant Usage: career counseling, executive coaching, sales and marketing of consultant services

What’s it about? Success and digging holes.

Make a positive first impression and you are on the road to success.  Make a poor first impression and you will spend a lot of time filling the potholes on that very same road.  Or just digging yourself out of a hole.

First Impressions is an easy read.  It is written by two executive coaches who turned their business experience into a social enterprise coaching, whoa, daters.  A dating coach … now why didn’t I think of that?

The book focuses on first impressions in business, dating and social situations (everyday encounters).  I would call it a crash course in practical emotional intelligence.

In their words, they “deconstruct a first impression into its seven fundamentals:”

• Accessibility
• Showing interest
• Conversational topics
• Self-disclosure
• Dynamics
• Perspective
• Sex appeal (again, whoa – fortunately this one is limited primarily to the dating situation)

One thing I liked about the book is the author’s insistence that they make no attempt to “should” on a client or the reader.  They are not prescriptive.  They offer suggestions that the client or reader can use “if you want” or “when you want”.

Another thing to like about the books is that it doesn’t pretend to represent all cultures.  The authors acknowledge they are writing about the norms of American Culture.  They also take care in acknowledging differences between men and women. 

Finally, there are some interesting self-assessments/checklists at the end of some of the chapters.  I took one and found myself saying “Whoa”. 

Their goal for the client or reader is to be able to present a first impression that “reflects the real you … the self you want to share”.  To those of you already up-to-speed on emotional intelligence, there is a lot here that you already know.  Still, there are several “whoa” moments to be discovered.  If you are looking for a book of this nature for one of your clients, consider this one.

Catch you later.
[tags]first impressions, first conversations, impression management, emotional intelligence, managing relationships, accessibility, self-disclosure, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.