What bad impressions say about employees (Part I)

✍ Scribed by Robert A. Snyder

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 599 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1044-8004
• DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.3920090107

✦ Synopsis

Organizations need to be concerned more than ever with managing the impressions their employees make on internal and external customers. Yet little research has focused on the individual or organizational causes of bad impressions. This two-part article examines this topic and suggests methods organizations can use to eliminate specific bad impressions and lower their overall base rate.

Go Ahead, Impress Me

It has been reported that Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple Computer, spent several years of his life trylng to convince people that he was weird. Jobs's repertoire included wearing his hair long, appearing disheveled, refusing to wear shoes, yelling and screaming, and placing his dirty bare feet onto tables in restaurants. For a while, his diet consisted entirely of fruit and yogurt, which, he told colleagues, eliminated the need to bathe. Few agreed. No matter, the purpose of all this was to give people the impression that he was eccentric Rosenfeld, Giacalone, and Riordan, 1995). In this and much else, he was highly successful.

Jobs was apparently convinced that he needed to be seen as eccentric if he was also going to be regarded as brilliant enough to accomplish his plansplans, of course, that required quite a bit of funding from people who wore suits and washed their feet Rosenfeld, Giacalone, and Riordan, 1995). It is hard to imagine that the people in suits enjoyed seeing Job& dirty