First impressions are very important especially as a leader where you need to interact with a large number of people such as your team, peers, your leadership, and customers. Because of this large and diverse level of interaction it is inevitable that you will have to judge people based on your first interaction with them, while it may be wrong it’s just faster and easier to go that route. Furthermore you will forever remember that individual in the way you “labeled” him or her during that short interaction, negatively or positively.
For these reasons it is extremely important to leave a great first impression when interacting with people on a day to day setting such as in your workplace. One thing that my boss always points to is how you are perceived and how you are “filed” or labeled by the leadership, and I think this totally works with first impressions too. If you are supposed to be presenting to a group of Senior leaders and you are late to the meeting, and your presentation has an error in grammar, you will be seen as a person who is lazy, careless, incompetent, you name it, even though you may be the furthest thing from that, because of that first negative interaction you are seen as that. Again, this seems harsh and unfair, but unfortunately it is more often the case than not in the workplace.
2. How did you picture John after reading the first scenario, and the second?
Starting with the first scenario where John is an extrovert, the description just brings a visual of a very successful person with no worries in the world running out of the office on a beautiful day, like something out of a movie. John is described like someone who is very popular and well known by a large number of people, he starts a short discussion with an acquaintance while waiting in line and then bumps into a friend on his way out of the store, then shortly afterwards runs into a woman he was introduced to recently on his way to the office, who he talks with the entire way back. This description just screams of a cool guy that is probably very fun to be around, likeable, and has a lot of energy and positive personality. This person would be easy to motivate because of these attributes and would make a great addition to any team that is in need of a boost of energy. Now on the other hand, introverted John, the opening two sentences describe a lonely person, who may be down on his luck, and has to make his daily dreadful march back home from a horrible workplace that he hates. The next sentence really reminds me of a lonely little person with a dark rainy cloud over him alone as the rest of the world enjoys another beautiful summer day. He also seems like a person that is extremely timid and would rather not interact with others and stay to himself, even when he sees a the pretty woman that he had met the night before, it almost reads as if he went completely out of his way to avoid talking with this woman. Furthermore, when he is in the bar he sees people he