First Impression

By Erwin Parengkuan

“How quickly will a first impression be created when we see someone?”I always ask this question in class when starting material about myself, whether it's Boosting Confidence, Personal Branding, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills.I got various answers;5 minutes, 2 minutes, 3 seconds, answers thrown out, representing various ages of participants.The more senior they are, they usually say it takes longer, above 1 minute, but for generation Z or even millennials they will say a matter of seconds.

In my regular viewing on Masterclass, a paid platform that presents international champions in their respective industries, an artist said this: "How long does it take us to decide whether we want to listen to a song, or decide to watch a film, for example on Netflix?"Everything happened in under 8 seconds, so fast, as is the case with first impressions.Many senior participants will be surprised by this analysis, but it makes sense that when we meet someone, within seconds we will judge how that person presents themselves.At the same time, they will judge us too.<>/p

A person's awareness of how to focus on building their impression is very important, which is something that many people sometimes forget when they only focus on the purpose and weight of the material they are going to convey.An impression has a huge impact on the memories that will stick with a person.We certainly easily remember what feelings arose when we first received our salary?the first time holding hands with someone we like, and the other intimacies created by that relationship?Or the first time we failed a presentation!

The impressions that arise are always close to human feelings, happy, sad, disappointed, angry, happy, etc. are moments that we always go through in this life.For someone to be able to communicate successfully, especially with the aim of conquering an audience, of course we have to think about what kind of first impression we will convey.The first impression will also make someone known or ignored by their audience when they fail to build this report.Although there are times when a presentation that fails at the beginning can attract attention to the body content, this is very rare.Like deciding what music we want to listen to, if we are no longer interested in the initial rhythm, we have no intention of continuing to listen to it.

The main strategy in building a first impression is a clear plan of what impression we want to build and display.This clear impression will become a reference in building relationships and providing influence.There are times when as a human being, emotional ups and downs are a challenge in themselves.For this reason, subdue yourself, form a high level of awareness when you want to appear, throw away all the negative thoughts that haunt us.So planning is how important it is in building a first impression that I want to underline.Don't let us neglect to only focus on weight but forget about gestures, voice intonation, or the way we look which are the main part of creating an impression.Oh yes, one more important thing, all the impressions we convey are absolutely 100% authentic, not made up.