Impression management is the effort to control or influence other people’s perception. Usually, people perceive situations, actions, events, and other people differently bringing the need for managing how people perceive these factors or ourselves. Some of the major factors that can influence impression are culture and religion. The two factors have different values and norms which can influence a person’s perception. Some of The major driving force behind impression management is the need for self-esteem and the necessity of being in charge of one’s personal behavior and identity. The interaction at the workplace involves very many people with different view and methods of performing various tasks. The most common impression management strategies that most of my workmates do employ are; one is the self-promotion. In this case, the worker tries to portray himself or herself in the best positive manner to the person they are meeting with by either presenting their excellent performance records to their superiors and can even remind the superiors their close association with the highly rated employees within the company.
The second impression management strategies that I always see at my workplace is conforming to situational norms. In this case, the employee at the workplace tries typically their best to strictly follow the regulations and standard procedures at the workplace. The workers can go to work even on Sundays given that Sundays is a day of attending church services and family day but since going to work on Sunday is one of the organizations norms they have no choice but to report to work. Another impression management technique that I see at the workplace is the behavioral matching. In this case, the targeted employee tries to match his/her behaviors to that of the perceiver with a view of winning them. In this case, a subordinate staff can try to match the boss's behaviors like if the boss never goes out for lunch, they too can forego lunch like the boss.
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Some of the most common and helpful impression management strategies to be used in a workplace include; ingratiation, consistency in performance, justification, behavioral matching, self-promotion, altar-casting, intimidation, and conforming to situational norms. Ingratiation involves using of flattering words to win over someone. The workers can blindly agree to someone’s opinions and compliment them before asking a favor from them. Altar-casting involves imposing an identity to someone in order to motivate them or win their attention. Like in a nursing class the lecturer can have a statement saying that “as a good nursing student you should….” The statement of being a good nursing student is just to motivate the students to perform well. Consistency performance involves the matching of both the verbal and non-verbal behaviors; alternatively, the target is to ensure their results at work are consistent with the requirement and standards within the organization.
Intimidation is another impression management technique that can be deployed by the bosses to ensure that employees conform to the standards within the organization. It involves threats to induce fear and compliance from others. Justification is another impression management technique that employees can deploy. The employees can offer an explanation as to why the situation is the way it is and why it is not their fault for things to turn out the way they are. Another impression management technique that employees can deploy at the workplace is an apology. In the event of a negative situation, a person can apologize to the person who feels offended in order for the person to regard them highly. Apologizing doesn't mean any sign of weakness, but it reflects high moral standards in the person involved.
