Have you ever noticed that you can be a completely different person in different rooms? Not because you behave differently. Not because your capabilities change. But because people carry different versions of you in their minds.
I started noticing this in my own family. From my mother’s side, I am the eldest among the cousins. From my father’s side, I am the second youngest. That small difference in family structure created something interesting. On one side, my opinions were often taken seriously. People would ask what I thought about a decision, seek my perspective or involve me in conversations that required some judgment. On the other side, I was often still seen as one of the younger ones. My opinion could easily be treated as something that was interesting to hear, but not necessarily something that needed to influence the decision. The strange part was that I was the same person.
That observation made me think about how much of our identity is actually shaped by the context in which people know us. And eventually, I realized that the exact same thing happens at work.
Phase 1: Family — The Version of You People Remember
Families are probably the best place to understand how perception works. People don’t just know you based on who you are today. They know you through years of accumulated memories. Someone may remember you when you were five years old, when you were struggling in school, when you were dependent on your parents, or when you were the youngest person sitting at the family table. That version of you can remain surprisingly persistent.
In my case, being the eldest on my mother’s side meant that I naturally grew into a different role. Being one of the younger ones on my father’s side created a different expectation. And family dynamics create many examples of this. There is always that one cousin who is still treated like the “kid” even though they have been working for ten years. There is someone whose career decisions are still questioned by relatives who haven’t spoken to them properly in years. There is someone everyone calls when they need help with technology, finances or some family decision, but the moment that person expresses an opinion about something important, suddenly they are “too young to understand.”
Sometimes the opposite happens too. Someone who has always been considered the responsible one can make one mistake, and suddenly the entire family starts treating them as though they cannot be trusted. A person can grow, change, become more experienced and develop completely different perspectives, while the people around them continue interacting with an older version of them. That is the interesting thing about relationships. People don’t always update their perception of you at the same speed that you update yourself. And there is nothing necessarily malicious about it.
Most of the time, people are simply working with the mental model they have built over many years. But that mental model can become outdated. And when it does, it can influence how seriously they listen to you, how much responsibility they give you and how much they trust your judgment.This becomes even more interesting when you enter the workplace.
Phase 2: Workplace — When Your Reputation Arrives Before You Do
Organizations have the same problem, except they call it something different.We call it reputation, role, seniority or organizational perception. Imagine someone who joins a company as a junior engineer.
For the first few years, their role is mostly execution. They take tickets, fix bugs, deliver features and wait for decisions from more senior people. Eventually, they grow. They start designing systems. They start influencing technical direction. They mentor others. They begin solving problems that aren’t even formally part of their role. Their responsibilities have changed. Their capabilities have changed. Their thinking has changed.But the organization’s perception of them may not have changed at the same speed.
People who worked with them five years ago may still unconsciously think: “They are one of the engineers who executes.”
That becomes a problem when the person starts trying to influence strategy. The same thing happens with managers. A person becomes a manager after years of being an individual contributor. Their responsibilities fundamentally change, but their former peers may continue interacting with them as though they are still “one of us.”
Or consider someone who has moved from one team to another. In their previous team, they may have been considered a strong decision-maker. In the new team, nobody knows their history. They may suddenly find themselves having to prove things that they had already earned elsewhere. And sometimes the opposite happens. Someone joins an organization with a strong reputation. People assume they are exceptionally capable before they have actually demonstrated it in the new environment. So they receive more trust, more visibility and more opportunities.
This creates an uncomfortable reality :Performance and perception are related, but they are not the same thing. Your actual capability is one thing. How people perceive your capability is another. And organizational opportunities often depend on the second one. This is why two people with similar capabilities can have very different experiences. One person’s suggestion becomes “strategic thinking.”
The other’s becomes “another opinion.”One person’s disagreement is seen as “constructive challenge.” The other’s is seen as “being difficult.” One person’s mistake is called “learning.” The other’s is called “lack of judgment.” The behavior may not be dramatically different. The difference may be the existing story people have about that person. And once that story becomes established, every new interaction tends to reinforce it.
If people believe you are inexperienced, they notice the moments that confirm it. If they believe you are strategic, they notice the moments that demonstrate strategic thinking. This is not always conscious. It is simply how human perception works.
So what do we do about it?
Phase 3: Solution — Don’t Fight the Perception. Expand It.
The first mistake we can make is trying to completely control what other people think about us. We can’t. Everyone carries their own experiences, assumptions and mental models. The goal isn’t to make everyone see you exactly the way you see yourself. The goal is to make sure their picture of you has enough evidence to evolve. There are three things that can help.
1. Recognize the version of you that exists in the room
Before reacting to someone’s perception of you, understand where it comes from. If someone treats you as inexperienced, ask yourself: “What history do they have with me?”
Maybe they have only seen you execute. Maybe they haven’t seen you make decisions. Maybe they know you from an earlier stage of your career. Maybe they simply haven’t had enough interactions with you in your current role. Understanding this changes the response.
Instead of thinking, “Why don’t they respect me?”, you start thinking:” What evidence have they actually seen from me?” That is a much more useful question.
2. Create new experiences
Perception rarely changes because we tell people that they are wrong. It changes because they experience something different. If you want to be seen as strategic, don’t repeatedly announce that you’re strategic. Start bringing strategic thinking into conversations. If you want to be trusted with larger decisions, start demonstrating sound judgment in smaller ones. If you want people to see you as a leader, don’t focus only on having authority. Start creating clarity for others, taking ownership and helping people make better decisions. Give people enough new evidence that their old mental model becomes incomplete.
Eventually, they have to update it.
3. Don’t let someone else’s perception become your identity
This may be the most important part. Sometimes we spend so much time trying to prove ourselves to a particular group that we start defining ourselves through their opinion. Someone sees you as junior. You spend years trying to prove that you’re senior. Someone thinks you’re not strategic. You become obsessed with demonstrating that you are.
Someone doesn’t take your ideas seriously. You start questioning whether your ideas are actually good. That’s dangerous. Because their perception is information, not your identity. You should listen to it. Learn from it. Understand where it comes from. But don’t automatically accept it as the truth.
The Bigger Lesson
My family experience made me realize something quite simple. The same person can be the eldest in one room and the youngest in another. The same person can be a decision-maker in one group and “the kid” in another.And neither perception necessarily represents the complete person. The workplace is no different. You can be highly capable and still be seen as inexperienced. You can have grown into a leadership role while people continue treating you like your old role. You can have excellent ideas that receive little attention simply because of the position people have mentally assigned to you.
This is why growth is not only about becoming better. It is also about helping the environment around you recognize the person you have become. And perhaps, as leaders, there is another responsibility.
We should regularly ask ourselves:” Am I seeing this person as they are today, or am I still seeing the version of them I met years ago?”
Because sometimes the person who appears immature isn’t immature.
Sometimes we are simply looking at them through an outdated lens. Different rooms create different perceptions. But underneath all those perceptions, there is still the same person trying to grow.
And maybe the real challenge is learning to see beyond the version of someone that we already know.
