In the Movie and music business, the general belief is that you are only as good as your last movie or Album. You know what/ the same applies when we are talking about Image Impression Management. In the Image business, it is said that you are either done or gone in 60 seconds. By implication, you can establish a positive first impression in 60 seconds. In the same vein, such a good impression can be destroyed within the same amount of time. Like I said in a previous post, that as important as creating a good first impression is, the process does not end there, actually it starts there. Managing subsequent impressions is where the bulk of the work lies. Your inability to keep up with what you started might put you in a bad light in the eye of your target, and that might just destroy the already established first impression. Let’s take a closer look at the art of impression management.
According to Ann Reinten, in her eBook (101 Image Essentials for Business professionals), where she said that the subliminal impression you make on others can actually be broken down into 4 basic components. It is important to note that as a result of this subliminal impressions, judgments and conclusions can be made about people, it such an unconscious act that most people would have done it without even thinking or knowing it has been done. The concept is so strong that an individual can judge whether another is reliable or not, and it doesn’t stop there, the extent of the person’s reliability can also be judged.
Here are the 4 basic components according to Ann;
• Your Credibility: This reflects the strength of a person’s integrity, moral standing and depth of sincerity. Furthermore, it touches on a person’s apparent qualifications and level of intelligence.
• Your Likability: How likeable; i.e. endearing, affable, how emotional expressive and how sociable you appear to be and how much similarities you share with them through your dress-sense, behavior, voice, age, sex, etc.
• Your personal attractiveness: This has nothing to do with whether you are handsome/beautiful, neither does it have anything to do with how fashionable you are nor how young you are, but the management and presentation of yourself as a person. The way a person packages and presents himself/herself in terms of comportment, dress-sense and grooming says a whole lot about the level of a person’s self esteem, self-respect and self image.
• Finally, your confidence. This reflects your apparent level of power, self assuredness and ability. It also can show the level to which a person is comfortable in there own skin; whether he or she is a secure or insecure person.
More to come on Impression management!