Should you care what your co-workers think about you?

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No matter if you work in a small company or a large company, chances are you have co-workers who you get along with from day one and those who take a bit more work to build a rapport with. But can your co-workers opinion of you make a difference in your performance; your career? Or better yet, do we realistically understand our own value proposition to our employers and colleagues based on our own personality? This was the question that came to my mind at a recent Women of ALPFA event here in Orlando by keynote speaker Sally Hogshead and something I thought I would share for those professionals out there interested in maximizing their interpersonal effectiveness.

We have been working with various personality tests for quite some time now. Whether it is the Myers Briggs, DISC or other professional personality/aptitude indicators, these are all meant to measure what personality traits and skills that we inwardly feel we best bring to the table for our companies. But what if we are just subconsciously emulating our own ideal of what we believe would make an exemplary employee, perhaps we have been molding ourselves to fit into the corporate structure of our own imagination.  According to Sally, “the greatest value you can add is to become more of yourself.” Her book How the World Sees You aims to help us understand what aspects of our personality make us most valuable to others, and it’s based on surveys of hundreds of thousands of professionals.

On top of being an energetic and compelling speaker, Sally delivered some thought provoking dialogue that challenges conventional thinking on personal value in the workplace. If you are a hiring manager, Human Capital professional or simply interested in understanding how you are perceived and how your own natural personality traits can be harnessed to maximize your daily personal interactions, the Fascinate system that Sally has created may just be a good start. As Sally says, “You already know how you see the world. But do you know how the world sees you?”  Better yet, do you know how you can use this to your advantage?

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