Simon Sinek once penned, “Life is beautiful, not because of the things we see or do…[but] because of the people we meet.”
Twelve years ago, I crossed paths with one such person who has made my life immeasurably more beautiful: Marshall Goldsmith, renowned executive coach and mega-bestselling author.
I vividly remember our first meeting. I was in the process of publishing Bankable Leadership—and a mutual friend arranged for a quick call with Marshall to glean some insights on book launches.
Always on the move, Marshall managed to squeeze me in on a Saturday morning at 6am. As a hardcore night owl, I’m perpetually allergic to early meetings; but that morning, I bounded out of bed with a nervous grin and rang up my hero.
At the time, I was in a weird place: wracked with dread over what might go wrong with my first book, and full of preemptive excuses in case it did.
And just minutes into our call, I learned two things about Marshall. One, that he’s a master of book launches, and two, that he is as allergic to excuses as I am to early meetings.
After we hung up, my husband bounded up to my office asking how everything went. “Well,” I replied. “I’m not sure. He kind of, like… yelled at me for a minute there.”
I spent weeks agonizing about the miserable first impression I’d clearly made on my hero. Was I too negative? Too unsure? Too inflexible?
Science shows that first impressions do indeed matter, and can be surprisingly tough to shake. But because social dynamics often leave us guessing about how others feel about us, we tend to fill in the blanks with our own insecurities.
At some point, we’ve all visited feared first-impression land. But just how often do our worries actually hold true?
I often mention that humans are notoriously poor judges of how we come across. We tend to overestimate our standing on traits including intelligence, attractiveness, academic aptitude, job performance, and yes, driving ability.
But when we meet new people, something very different happens. Even before our first interaction, we tend to wrongly assume that others won’t like us, and then become more convinced of that after the fact.
But why do we consistently underestimate first impressions? Our hard-wired fear of social rejection is likely to blame. Because banding together kept our ancestors alive, acceptance offered safety, and rejection guaranteed danger. For early humans, then, erring on the side of caution with new relationships helped them stay in each other’s good graces… and (conveniently) stay alive.
In modern times, though, this evolutionary hangover isn’t doing us many favors. Underestimating our first impressions can damage potential relationships and sap our confidence in the process.
So… how can we replace doubts with data? Here’s a simple but effective exercise: ask a handful of people, “When we first met, what was your first impression of me?”
Their insights will be enlightening—either showing that you’re coming off far better than you think, or providing valuable feedback to make better first impressions in the future.
Take my first meeting with Marshall: despite my own fears about the encounter, he liked me… he really liked me! Years later, he told me that I came off as “smart,” “funny,” and “kind,” even if I was “a little uptight”—only to be reassured, “you’re much better now.” ?
Twelve years later, I never could have imagined that Marshall would become such a dear friend, mentor, and self-appointed “honorary dad.” Or that I’d be part of his famed 100 Coaches program. Or that I’d get to fly to New York to celebrate his 75th birthday with a few dozen of our closest friends. Who would’ve thought?
Maybe it’s time to collectively evict ourselves from the land of feared first impressions. After all, there’s so much beauty to be found in meeting new people, if only we can give ourselves the chance to shine.
Dr. Tasha Eurich
is an organizational psychologist, speaker and The New York Times bestselling author of Bankable Leadership. Her latest book, Insight, delves deeper into the meta-skill of the modern world: self-awareness. Tasha’s life’s work is to help organizations succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders and teams. With a ten-year track record in the Fortune 500 world, her expertise has been featured in outlets like The New York Times, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur and Forbes.
