The Attitude We Take Determines the Impressions We Make
Years ago, Rolling Stone magazine launched an ad campaign aimed at changing the view of potential advertisers who saw the magazine as a cult music paper read by anti-materialist hippie dropouts.
The campaign used a series of print ads split down the middle, the left side labeled “Perception” and the right side “Reality.” In one case, the perception side showed a funky old hand-painted love bus, while the reality side featured a zippy, brand new sports car fit for an ambitious twenty-something urban consumer.
The campaign succeeded swimmingly at changing marketers’ erroneous attitudes about Rolling Stone’s readership and increasing the magazine’s advertising revenue. Clearly, perceptions are the reality of the mind.
An unshaven stranger lumbering towards us with his hand in his pocket may seem menacing at first. But when he pulls out a slip of paper and asks in a gentle voice if we can help him find the nearby hospital, our perceptions might quickly change.
We base our sense of reality on cues we associate with the things we want, and the things we want to avoid. Over time these cues become signs and stereotypes that guide our responses.
In any context – prospecting calls, sales meetings, and life in general – the way we present ourselves to others gets reflected back in their response to us.
When we’re on the phone prospecting, our tone, tempo, inflection and choice of words are all coloring people’s perceptions. And our mental and emotional attitude colors every aspect of the way we express ourselves to others.
If we’re worried, or feeling tired or annoyed, our attitude reflects those feelings. If we’re confident and cheerful, that’s what others are going to pick up on.
The power of attitude
When we get a call from someone who is pushy, who doesn’t listen to us or seem to care how we feel, we’re likely to react negatively and become defensive, annoyed, or even angry.
On the other hand, when we get a call from someone who is tentative and unsure of themselves, we might feel impatient or perhaps sympathetic, but we probably won’t have much confidence in what they tell us, because their attitude conveys uncertainty.
Using self-awareness as a mirror
When we see that we are not in a confident state of mind, it’s a good time to take a break and regroup. We all have our mood swings and bad days, and it’s better not to be prospecting or selling when our temperament isn’t supporting the work.
No matter how levelheaded or grounded we usually are, everyone gets thrown off kilter sometimes. That’s when we need to take stock of our attitude and change it for the better.
There are many ways to change our mindset and align our attitude with our goals, but the essential first step is to be aware of how we feel and how those feelings impact the way we’re relating to others.
Negative thoughts like I’m a failure, what a stupid move I just made, or I don’t have what it takes colors our mood and self-perception.
Every time we put ourselves down, we reinforce a negative attitude and ingrain a habit that gets deeper and deeper as it’s repeated. Repeatedly driving a car over the same dirt road again and again creates ruts, and patterns of negative thinking do the same thing to the brain.
If we don’t want to be stuck in the rut of negativity we need to pay close attention to our attitude, and the thoughts and feelings that shape it.
The seed of all effective communication is attitude. It’s continually coloring the way we relate and the way people perceive us. When our attitude is positive, we have the power to influence others in the most positive ways.
What’s your experience with attitude and perceptions? Please don’t keep it to yourself. Tell us in the comments below and let other readers see what you think.
As consumers the choices we make are affected by other people’s attitudes on a daily basis. Be it the supermarket where we go shopping, because we like the atmosphere and the staff or the mechanic that fixes our car. The service we are provided affects our choice not to go to another supermarket or another mechanic. That is why those providing us services want to make us feel positive and they often do this by ensuring the price is right, the atmosphere feels good, while smiling and trying to help us. The positive attitude may only be one aspect of a good functioning business, but it is a powerful one that shouldn’t be underestimated, since consumers often have a choice to find a positive attitude somewhere else.
There’s a concept in psychology called the feel-good, do-good phenomenon in which we are more likely to do something good for others if we are in a good mood, pretty straight forward. Attitude affects how we do a lot of things in relation to person to person interaction and can be the reason that interactions turn sour. Maybe your dog died or you dropped twenty dollars on the group today, that’s going to change your mood and therefore change how you treat people or respond to things. Life is circumstantial in many aspects and the ways in which you use those circumstances indicate the routes in which your life takes.
Great Monica. Sounds like you’re seeing the big picture.
The poet William Blake once wrote; “He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise”. Back in the day when I did political canvassing, walking door to door to promote a candidate, I would remember to stop and smell the roses along the way. That meditative moment was often all I needed to shed the tension of meeting a stranger, and to approach them with a smile. Thank you for the prompt. I must remind myself again!
Yeah Ellen, appreciating all the delightful sights, sounds, smells as they come and go keeps us awake to the freshness of the moment. Blake’s point in that poem (expressed in the other two lines you didn’t quote) is that we get into trouble trying to own joy and pin it down. It’s fleeting, like everything else – the bloom of flowers, the blush of embarrassment, the sting of an abrupt ‘no’, and the satisfaction of closing a deal or getting a generous contribution. Ultimately the best attitude is no attitude. You’re ready for anything and profoundly confident that everything is quite workable. Thanks for your thoughts Ellen and keep enjoying the smell of all those different kinds of ‘roses’.