Question

Q no.3                                                                                                                                     (5)

Impression Management Case Study

Recently you have been recruited at a well-known company. Your first job is to impress the boss with best impression management technique. You find out quickly your boss is “bossy”, who likes his authority and dislike when he is being challenged by employees. He expects his employees to given in best quality work on time and stay honest to their work roles and duties. One day during your first office meeting when your boss shared a new policy, you right away objected it and present a better an alternative policy. After when the meeting ended, your boss stick to his mentioned policy and rejected yours. You felt you made a mistake and made a bad impression on your boss and attendees. You though to yourself your boss never going to like you, and your will never get promotion so your life would be unsuccessful.

• Pick an impression management technique from impression management taxonomy and give rational why is that technique would work in given case scenario?
• Explain how would you implement that technique?
• Identify and name cognitive error and how would you change it using cognitive restructuring technique.

Answer 1

Impression management techniques are those that help build an impression or restore a previous impression by an active measure that one seeks to implement. In the case above he must use the technique of Association. He could go to his boss and say something to effect of "After consideration I did realize that your plan is veritably the better suited one than what I had suggested and I respect that you took the decisions with full rigor." This would preserve the bosses ego and also initiate conformity, that he wishes.

The employee fell into the trap of one cognitive error which is labeled as magnification. Within this a person takes one instance, that is relatively small, and makes a very big deal about it than it deserves credit for. Which is the case above where he goes onto losing his job opportunities at the place and never bouncing back again and being unsuccessful for the rest of his life.

One way to restructure this thought process would be by questioning assumptions. This would help in thinking step by step and rationally to reach a better stated assumption.