Who sees most clearly how you come across at work?

Think about your last meeting. You gave a quick answer to keep the pace up. You let someone else take the floor to give them room. You were quiet for a while because you were thinking.

Now imagine your colleagues describing the same meeting. Would they see efficient, generous and thoughtful behavior? Or would they see someone who interrupted, who seemed uninterested and who did not contribute?

Most of us assume that we know best how we ourselves function. After all, we have access to our own thoughts, intentions and explanations. That turns out to be both an advantage and a problem.

You and your colleagues see different things

Psychologist Simine Vazire has studied who knows a person best: the person themselves or the people around them. The answer is that it depends on what you ask about.

When it comes to what happens on the inside, such as worry and nervousness, you are the best judge. Others cannot see what you feel.

But when it comes to traits that are visible from the outside and that we would like to appear positive in, it is different. There, others are often at least as accurate as we are, and sometimes more so. The reason is simple: when we judge ourselves, our wish to look good gets in the way.

Vazire calls this the self-other knowledge asymmetry. You and your colleagues do not hold the same picture in different degrees of sharpness. You hold different pictures, because you have access to different information.

Intentions are invisible, behavior is not

This is where it gets interesting at work. You experience your intentions. Your colleagues experience your behavior.

What you know about why you did something helps you understand yourself, but it also makes it harder to see how it landed with others. Someone who wanted to save time can come across as impatient. Someone who wanted to give others room can come across as absent. Nobody is wrong, but the pictures differ.

Research on job performance points in the same direction. Other people's ratings of how a person functions at work have proven to be clearly valuable in predicting actual performance, often beyond what the person's own rating adds.

The answer is neither you nor them

So who sees most clearly how you come across at work?

The honest answer is: neither of you sees the whole picture on your own. Your self-image contains what others do not see, your intentions, your reasons and your inner experience. Other people's picture contains what you do not see, how your behavior actually lands.

The insight lies in the gap between the pictures. That is where you find both blind spots and untapped strengths, and that is where development becomes concrete.

How IDI works with the gap

IDI (Interpersonal Dynamics Inventory) is built on exactly that idea. You rate yourself and your colleagues rate you, in the same work context and based on the same questions about behavior. No labels and no personality types, just a comparison of how you see yourself and how others experience you in interaction.

The result is a non-judgmental mirror. It does not tell you who you are. It shows how you come across, so that you can consciously choose how you want to have an impact.

So the next time you wonder how you come across at work, asking yourself is not enough. Ask the people who see your behavior, and compare with your own picture.

What do you think your colleagues see in you that you do not see yourself?