Appearances: deceiving or perceiving?

Happy Friday! Today, we’re diving into a bit of a personal story.

I first started traveling on business in the fall of 2016. I was a Sr. UX Architect at Cardinal Solutions, and I was about to start a project based in Tampa, FL. I was to go down there for a week to meet the team and get cracking on laying out the product we’d be building.

I was SO excited. This was my first real grown-up business trip! I channeled visions of my dad walking out the door in a dark blue suit and small black carry-on as I selected pieces from my modest collection of (Macy’s and H&M) business casual outfits and packed them into my own rolling carry-on (red, but still – very official!)

Feeling like a million bucks, I got into an Uber and was ferried to the airport by a kind, chatty gentleman, who bid me farewell with a, “be safe!”

I was a little surprised. I thought I was channeling high-powered, dad business trip energy. He seemed to feel I was giving naive and vulnerable.

I walked through the airport, passed through the boarding counter, and got another, “be safe!” Walked off the plane, thanked the flight attendant, and got a, “be safe!” Then another one from the Uber on the other side. Then another one at the hotel check-in.

‘What’s going on?!’ I wondered. I’d embarked on this journey feeling confident and excited about all the value I was going to bring to this project — and so thrilled that the company and client felt it was valuable enough to fly me down there. But these strangers didn’t see that — they saw a young, foreign girl who was vulnerable to the unkind world. And while it was so kind of them to be looking out for my safety…it was also a little jarring to be continuously reminded that the way I saw myself was so different from the way others perceived me.

Turns out I wasn’t alone. I told a story about this at a Charlotte Storytellers event, and talked to tons of women after who shared similar experiences. At the heart of each experience was some unconscious bias that took root and created an unsettled feeling — a feeling that we were able to collectively process through sharing these tales with each other.

I learnt two valuable lessons from this:

#1: You don’t really have much of a say over how others perceive you. (Even when armed with closetfuls of business casual.) What you can do, however, is become more aware of the ways in which you may be perceived, and develop your own strategy to reclaim your presence in response.

→ I started responding to “be safe!” with “no promises!” It made me feel cheeky and savvy instead of young and naïve, and it almost always got a laugh from the other person.

#2: Storytelling is an invaluable tool to work through these aspects of perception, especially for those who are underrepresented, and can really help you process what’s going on when something feels off.

→ While the narrative above is packaged into a tight 7 paragraphs, in reality it took me a while to figure out what exactly felt weird or confidence-shaking about my early business travel. Telling a story about it not only helped me process my feelings, but also feel seen by so many others who’d had similar experiences.

~~~~~putting it into practice~~~~~

Your storytelling takeaway, should you accept it, is to think about a story from your life on the theme ‘appearances’. Maybe you were trying to project something that didn’t come across. Maybe you weren’t trying to project something, but it did come across! Maybe someone said something to you and unknowingly held up a mirror to a version of yourself you didn’t realize was there.

Think about a time and tell a friend about it (or tell me!) You could even write it down first if you’d like, but do try sharing the story with someone you trust — the experience of sharing an event that happened to you can be incredibly affirming and clarifying. And when you try it — I’d love to hear how it goes!

Until next week,

Ramya