Many people have told me that my tendency is to see situations "through rose coloured glasses", and personally I take that as a compliment because it means I see the best in people, or have an optimistic enough attitude to soldier on in tough times. But, we don't always see the world through our own lenses. When we rely on other people for their outlooks and perspectives, we see the world through their lenses. This hit home for me recently when I had to deal directly with a couple of individuals that I had known of for many years, but had only dealt with indirectly up to that point. In both cases, I was surprised to discover that they were individuals of integrity, having up to that point believed quite the opposite. The difference was that I was now seeing them through my own lenses and not through someone else's.

The same is true for how others view our companies. If they are customers, they will see our companies through the lenses of our sales people and service people. If they are suppliers, they will see us through our purchasing agents. If they are people within the business community, they will see us through our business leaders, and if they are just people within the general community, they will see us through all of our employees, who are their neighbours.

Ideally, we want everyone to view our companies in the best possible way, regardless of which lens they see us through. For this reason, it is imperative that everyone in the organization understands the company's values, and lives out those values when they are communicating and interacting with others. To have your sales people portray your company as placing great value on the customer's satisfaction while your purchasing department treats suppliers with disdain, or while management treats employees with indifference - that doesn't add up. Great companies don't have to be 'big' companies; great companies are companies that are really good companies no matter which lens you look through them with.

It is the same when we look outside of our company. Often the lenses we use are the exact same people: our sales people for prospective and existing customers, our purchasing agents for suppliers and prospective suppliers, and often our business leaders for our competitors and others in our industries. We need to be just as careful looking in this direction. Good potential suppliers can be overlooked, customers might not be taken seriously when bringing up concerns, and competitors might be diminished or dismissed to the detriment of the company.

In business, it's important to pay attention to the lenses - whether it's the way you look out at your world, or the way your world looks at you. The best way to check and adjust your lenses is to pay attention when people you trust are telling you things about yourself or your company that make you feel uncomfortable. They are in fact holding up a mirror for you to see your reflection. Our tendency as human beings is to try to adjust their opinion through explanation and rationalization, but here's the problem: the rest of the world likely sees you the way your trusted colleague did, and that won't change. Only your colleague's lens may have been adjusted, but everyone else still sees you, or your company, the same way. Listen, learn, adjust your lenses.

It's important for us to see our world clearly, and it's important for the world to see us that way too.