Practical Coach: Management Skills for Everyday Life, The

Impression Management

No discussion of managing up, down, and sideways would be complete without a discussion of impression management. After all, says professor Susan Ashford of the Michigan Business School, organizations “are made up of people who observe and make judgments about each other.”^[121] The judgments people make about us influence our task effectiveness, career success, and self-esteem. Consequently, it is not surprising that we sometimes use impression management strategies to influence other people's judgments of us in order to achieve a desired goal.^[122]

If you ever do a survey, you'll find that people prefer illusion to reality, ten to one.

—Judity Guest, Ordinary People

Our goal may be to get something for ourselves—organizational ...