Impression Management – When Image Replaces Competence
- Brainz Magazine
- 5 days ago
- 7 min read
Barbara Suigo is a charisma expert, HR consultant, and author. Specializing in the development of soft skills, she has published the "Charisma Trilogy" and offers personalized training and coaching programs for leaders and professionals.
Picture a meeting where a promotion is on the table. Two people present the same project. The first speaks with confidence, rhythm, a polished smile, and seems to have an answer for everything. The second is more cautious, goes into the details, asks questions, and admits what is not fully clear yet. Who looks like the better choice?
In many workplaces, this scene plays out every day. And behind it sits a powerful psychological mechanism: impression management, the attempt to shape the image others form of us. Research describes it as the process through which people try to influence how they are perceived, and it highlights two key drivers, how much we care about the impression we make and which strategies we choose to build it.
The point is not to demonize it. A certain amount of “image care” is normal: adapting to context, communicating well, and highlighting real achievements. It becomes a problem when it creates a stable gap between how I appear and how I actually perform, and even more so when it blends with relational patterns aimed at control and exploitation.
Why we all do it (often without noticing)
Work is a high-evaluation environment. We are constantly read, interpreted, compared. Wanting to signal reliability and competence is natural, especially when we feel watched or judged. That is why impression management tends to intensify when the stakes rise: interviews, performance reviews, presentations, negotiations, conflict, moments of crisis.
Some people are also simply better at reading social cues and adapting quickly. There is nothing mystical about it. It is sensitivity to context, practice, experience, and sometimes a genuine talent for professional “performance.” Up to this point, it is entirely normal.
The blind spot: Mistaking confidence for competence
Here we hit the most common trap, confusing confidence (overconfidence) with competence.
Confidence is a powerful signal because, in many situations, our brain reads it as a marker of ability. Speaking with conviction can boost credibility and make someone look more solid than they really are, especially when listeners do not have the time or the tools to verify things deeply.
But real competence has a different nature. It is a long-term signal. It is not only today’s performance, but consistency over time: repeatable results, sound decisions, the ability to learn, to adjust, to handle complexity and pressure without pushing hidden costs onto everyone else. That long-term dimension is exactly what many decision-makers fail to evaluate.
We also know there is a classic bias, people who are less skilled in a domain can overestimate themselves because they lack the very tools needed to evaluate their own performance accurately. This does not mean that anyone who speaks well is incompetent. It simply means that, as observers, we can be seduced by behavior that resembles competence without actually being competence.
And that is where impression management becomes an accelerator: if you know how to build a strong image, you can earn trust before you have truly earned it.
The most common strategies
Research groups impression-management behaviors into a few recurring “families.” In everyday workplace language, they often look like this:
Being likable: friendliness, easy agreement, compliments, closeness to influential people
Looking competent: speaking first, using technical language, spotlighting achievements
Looking beyond reproach: visible devotion, morality on display, “sacrifice” that quietly pressures everyone else
Intimidating: constant urgency, sharp tone, hints of consequences, subtle threats
Seeking protection: using vulnerability as leverage, pushing for exceptions, “without me this falls apart” narratives.
The difference is not the strategy itself. The difference is intention and impact, am I communicating better, or am I creating dependence? Am I making work clearer, or am I shifting attention from reality to perception?
When it turns “dark”: No longer communication, but control
The darker side begins when impression management is used to gain power without accountability. In these cases, the goal is not to collaborate or clarify, but to:
control the narrative
neutralize criticism and feedback
build social immunity (“he/she is too brilliant to question”)
split people into allies and enemies
make fear look like respect.
This is where the framework known as the Dark Triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) can be useful. It is often used in research to describe socially aversive personality traits that can appear outside clinical settings.
Without diagnosing anyone, which is not the purpose here, we can say this: when a person is strongly oriented toward status, personal gain, and strategic manipulation, impression management tends to become more calculated and, in some cases, more deceptive.
The perfect stage for the mask: Hiring and interviews
If there is one arena where impression management becomes central, it is hiring. Interviews and selection processes are often fast, high-pressure, and built on weak signals.
Research commonly distinguishes between honest impression management (presenting yourself at your best while staying within the facts) and deceptive impression management (often called faking), where reality is intentionally distorted to seem more suitable. Studies discuss both as frequent phenomena in interviews, and they explore why some people do it more and with what consequences.
One point matters especially for HR: process structure makes a difference. Findings suggest that traditional, “gut-feel” interviews are more exposed to the effects of impression management than more structured formats. In plain terms, the more selection is driven by instinct and vague impressions, the more the best “performers” tend to benefit.
Overconfidence vs. Competence: Why the one who “owns the room” often wins
In many organizations, brilliant communication gets mistaken for real capability. Here, overconfidence works twice:
It convinces others.
It protects the person expressing it, because it becomes harder to challenge the narrative.
Overconfidence can also become dangerous when combined with decision-making power. Researchers have discussed how excessive confidence can lead to poorer choices, underestimating risk, and rejecting meaningful pushback. It is not only a personal trait. It becomes an organizational risk.
And this is where a key sentence shifts the focus from individual performance to the quality of the system, "Real competence is a long-term signal, and it includes the way a person treats people."
This is not romanticism. It is operational reality. Anyone who is responsible for a team over time must know how to handle trust, motivation, conflict, psychological safety, and clarity. In roles with real responsibility, competence is not only “doing.” It is enabling others to do - without quietly exhausting them.
The decisive shift: When toxic and abusive figures enter the organization
When selection and evaluation rely too heavily on what makes an immediate impact, eloquence, confidence, stage presence, the ability to “own the room” a gap opens. People can enter (or be rewarded) who are extremely strong at building reputation, but much weaker at sustaining day-to-day reality: clarity, consistency, conflict management, respect for boundaries, and relational quality.
And the risk is not theoretical. Workplace psychology has a term for a very concrete situation, when a person in authority, day after day, uses a style made of belittling, coldness, humiliation, or aggression (sometimes just through tone or looks), without physical violence. Researchers often refer to this pattern as abusive supervision to describe hostile behaviors repeated over time.
When this becomes “normal,” it leaves clear marks: people work under tension, censor themselves, make more mistakes, withdraw, lose energy, and motivation. Over time, stress and emotional fatigue rise, involvement drops, and the desire to leave grows. Not because people are “weak,” but because living in that climate is draining.
Put simply, when an organization rewards immediate impact, aggression disguised as decisiveness, performance talk, and surface loyalty, while neglecting relational quality, it ends up creating the perfect ground for manipulative or abusive profiles. You do not even need a label. The effects are visible: teams that go quiet, fear of speaking up, turnover, bright people becoming hesitant or cynical.
And here your key point returns, in the most human way: competence is a long-term signal. You cannot truly measure it in a single meeting or a brilliant interview. You see it in consistency. And it grows, above all, from the ability to treat people with care and respect because that is where real solidity shows, in results that hold over time, and in people who do not get consumed in the process.
What HR can do
There is no need to turn a company into a laboratory. A few common-sense choices help:
Reduce decisions based on vague “overall impression,” and increase decisions based on evidence: concrete examples, verifiable results, real cases, cross-checked feedback
Use more structured processes when selecting roles with responsibility, because they are less vulnerable to pure performance
Watch for consistency over time: not only how a person presents themselves, but how they handle people, conflict, and accountability.
Closing: The mask loses power when we return to reality
As we have seen, impression management is part of social life and workplace life. The problem begins when image matters more than reality, and when confidence gets mistaken for ability. At that point, the organization stops rewarding competence and starts rewarding performance.
If there is one simple message to leave behind, it is this:
Look at what a person produces over time, and what they leave behind in the people around them.
This is the most important point, and it cannot be measured immediately. It takes time.
Competence is not only “doing well today.” It is growing results and growing people. And when HR and organizations learn to evaluate this with real attention, dark charisma has far less space to thrive.
A call to share your story
This subject will be explored in greater depth in my book-in-progress, Charismatic Psychopaths: The Dark Side of Charisma, which examines how, in some workplace settings, charm can be turned into a tool for manipulation and control.
If you have experienced or witnessed abusive behavior from a manipulative manager, I would welcome your story. Sharing these experiences helps bring clarity to what often stays hidden, and opening up this conversation is an important step toward recognition, healing, and change. Please avoid including names or identifying details.
Read more from Barbara Suigo
Barbara Suigo, Senior HR Consultant, Author, Charisma Expert
Born in Italy and naturalized as a French citizen, Barbara Suigo is an HR consultant, author, coach, and trainer specializing in the art of charisma. With solid experience in corporate communication and extensive training in NLP, persuasion, and storytelling techniques, she supports professionals and companies by offering personalized coaching, training programs, and in-depth content.
Barbara is the author of the Charisma Trilogy, a work that deeply explores how to develop and harness personal influence and leadership presence. She has also published other books focused on personal and professional growth, solidifying her role as a leader in the field of soft skills development.
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