You may not be surprised to know that I have had the phrase “Perception is reality” thrown at me many times in my adult life.

Used in a veil attempt to make me reconsider how I act and who I associate with. Should you really be smoking with that person? Going to lunch with x? Hanging out with y?

Me being in the corporate world, on reflection, feels akin to dropping a bull in an antique shop. It’s probably not too smart and bad things may happen.

I’ve never had a keen desire to climb the corporate ladder, suck the corporate… well, you get the point. I love the work that I do, and I love being able to make change happen, mentor people, learn new things. All of the good things.

The inherent irony in my career has been that my personality; loud, outspoken, funny, has gotten me noticed and promoted, but also kept me from really progressing to the levels of corporate success that others have.

It’s all well and good that I use my personality to reach out to people and build a network, however, I’ve always felt that to truly succeed, to truly go above and beyond and move up the ‘’ladder”, that I’d need to be willing to forget, leave behind, or manipulate, the people who helped me succeed in the first place.

Now I’m not saying that’s true, I’m sure it’s probably not. I’m sure that it’s more of a reflection on how I operate than it is a reflection on how the corporate environment is.

My question here is, how much should you have to change yourself and your values to succeed? Can you only can get ahead if you follow the pack?

I know there are aspects of my personality that I can’t really bring to work, well, that I must dial down at any rate, but, why? Why is it not acceptable to laugh with people? Chat with people? Be me instead of some Corporate Zombie Tanya hybrid.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not that corporate zombie girl, I’d like to think that I can have a joke and still get shit done to a decent degree. And I see many senior managers who nail this.

But perception is reality.

My actual skills and ability seem to come second to what people think about me, what they think they know about me. Whether it’s the way I dress, talk, who I associate with. It’s that unconscious, or conscious for some, thought that goes ‘well, Tanya won’t be able to do that’.

Whether it was when I first wanted to be a leader, and I had to fight, for years, for people to give me a shot, because how can funny, jokey Tanya actually manage people?

Or when I told my boss (at the time) that I was going for an interview, and she presented me with a pained expression and said that I was very ‘informal’ and ‘casual’ and that was great, but how did I think I was going to present in the interview? (For the record, I got the fucking job, and it wasn’t because I was super corporate, it was because I’m damn fucking good at what I do)

I’ve got a great job. I love my work and I love the people that I’ve met through work. I’ll always want more though, ya know? I’ll always want to try something bigger and better, which, I guess is the same as climbing the corporate ladder, details.

My reaction to climbing the corporate ladder is a direct result of what I think I’d have to give up in order to get there though.

I have values, strong bloody values that drive a lot of what I choose to do. I will never jeopardise my values to succeed in a company. Any company that would expect that, consciously or un, is not a place I’d want to be.

The thing is, given that perception is reality am I or we somehow complicit in creating this ‘corporate world’ that exists in the mind of what we truly don’t want to be?