How Perception Impacts Your Business

By Darity Wesley

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.- Tony Robbins

I recently saw a picture in which there were two women’s photographs side by side. One had a woman with an oxygen bottle with the hose running to her nose, she was standing in her walker, wearing a house dress her gray hair all frazzled and looking like a 100+ year old woman just waiting for death. Next to this photo was a picture of a gray haired older woman with a bathing suit on, smiling vibrantly, looking like she had just gotten out of a pool, chest uplifted very much alive. The caption below these two photos said, “These women are about the same age.” The following article was titled: “Attitude is Everything.” I was impressed because you can actually see the attitudes of one woman engaged in living and the other woman waiting for death juxtaposed in the photos. So, while the word they used was “attitude,” I think “perception” has the larger part to play in this as we perceive the inherent joy in life versus the fear or pain. With open perception, you can see the reality that is before you while others are still wondering what is going on. You can also see it is causing much chaos in the world. Sometimes it can cause chaos in your worlds when your perception doesn’t match that of another, whether in your personal or business worlds.

Often times we get excited about business prospects with great potential. We have a vision for where we want to take our business or how a proposed alliance may be mutually beneficial. Or we have a client who seems to have all of the qualifications of being the perfect fit for one of our products. We can tend to get swept away in the adrenaline of the possibilities. Sometimes what happens is that our perception becomes so focused on the potential that we can tend to miss the signals that reality is showing us.

One of our clients wanted you to know that this happened to her. She had a vision to open up her own business. It was her first venture. She and her family were very excited to find a retail space in an ideal location and signed a lease, knowing they would have to make improvements to make the building work for her. They hired an architect and contractors so the construction could begin. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a good contract with either of them so the work did not end up getting done in a timely manner and went way over budget. Issue after issue arose. This was a case of a good hearted person believing that people are going to do what you think they said they would do. This is where perception comes into play. You believe a person is going to do what you believe they said they were going to do. Maybe your idea of what they said they were going to do is different than theirs. In business, that’s what contracts are for. They take everyone’s different perceptions and synthesize them into a clear document that all agree on.

Simply put, a contract is:

Who is doing what

For who

When and

For how much

There are other things you can add to a contract, but those are the basics.

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If you are considering entering an agreement with any person or business, please do be sure to have a contract. If you are signing one of theirs, please have it reviewed for your benefit (I do contract reviews for an exceedingly low fixed price of $20 for the first page and $10 for each additional one) or have one written. And, if you are finding that someone you want to do business with is not willing or able for some reason to sign a contract prior to starting work, be very wary. In many circumstances over my years of practice, I have found that if they can’t sign the contract, there is often a bad ending to the story of the relationship.

When you shift your perception to creating a mutually beneficial result that all parties agree on via a solid plan like a contract, you end up with the power of all parties aiming toward the same result- success. Everyone knows what is expected of them and it makes it much easier to spend your time and energy making that vision happen than wondering what happened.

As always, stay aware and alert to your perceptions. Attitude is everything- and your perceptions create your attitude.

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