How to influence the way others see you

^{Hi! Welcome. You being here means more than you know. Knowing it lands with someone like you keeps me going. I'm Lavena Xu-Johnson. I write about psychology for founders. Why? Because scaling a business means scaling ourselves first.}

Happy Wednesday, founders,

“All the world's a stage.”

Shakespeare wrote in his pastoral comedy As You Like It.

Is there truth to this line? Are we just performing on the world stage?

When I hear ‘performance’, I instantly think ‘pretending’. But what if a performance is only a form of translation: a bridge between your internal world (your values, intent, and competence) and your external presentation (how others understand you).

This nuanced perspective came from a theory I fell into while researching personal branding: Impression Management. It’s arguably the most influential framework for understanding the connections between our identity, social life, and the ‘selves’ we present in different contexts.

If building a personal brand is on your roadmap this year, this article is food for thought.

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Erving Goffman (1922–1982) was a Canadian sociologist who studied the micro-details of everyday interaction, how people behave when they’re being observed.

His most famous book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (first published in the U.S. in 1959), introduces what he calls dramaturgy - a way of seeing social interaction through the metaphor of theatre. In this ideology, we take on roles and ‘act them out’ to present a favourable impression for an ‘audience’, not necessarily to deceive them, but to create a coherent impression of who we are in that setting. In other words, when we are in front of others, we present a selective self, shaped by context, the crowd, and our goals.

At the heart of impression management is the idea of role identities. In every social situation, we engage in some form of performance, and our identity is partly assembled through the performance of those roles over time. In that sense, “identity” isn’t only something internal; it’s also something performed.

In this theory, identity is partly imagined: an idealised image of who we want to be, which we then try to live up to through behaviour. Because each role comes with expectations, each identity requires its own performance - and like any performance, it requires an audience.

Even when there’s no crowd, we still act as our own audience, often as the harshest critic. In every interaction, we’re making a decision about which identity to bring forward, consciously or not.

Underneath all of this is the hunger for role support: we want legitimacy and validation for the identity we’re trying to enact. And we don’t just want it from anyone; we want it from the right audience (i.e., your mum praising your art is loving, but it doesn’t provide the same validation for ‘role support’ as a renowned artist’s praise).

The problem is that role support is never fully secure. It can feel volatile and conditional. We continue to work to “dramatise” and stabilise the identity through reinforcement, consistency, context, and repetition.

And when a performance collapses, when what we do clashes with the identity we’re trying to project, we ‘lose face’: a painful conflict between the idealised self and the witnessed self, often felt as humiliation. In some cases, if the role support fails, we may abandon the identity altogether.

In Frame Analysis (1974), Goffman writes, “What is important is the sense he (a person or actor) provides them (the others or audience) through his dealing with them of what sort of person he is behind the role he is in.”

That’s the uncomfortable takeaway for personal branding: your “brand” isn’t only what you intend. It’s the meaning people derive from your behaviour over time, through repeated interactions.

In Goffman’s world, interactions don’t have fixed meaning because meaning depends on shared agreement - what the actor is trying to convey and what the audience believes they are seeing. So identity (or ‘personal brand’ in this case) is not something we ‘have’, but something we ‘do’ or ‘express’, shaped in real time through role and interpretation.

This sounds somewhat ruthless, and it is often misread in two common ways.

Misread 1: So authenticity doesn’t exist?

Self-presentation isn’t the opposite of authenticity. It’s how the authentic values and authentic traits are expressed in social settings. You can have real values and real traits and still manage how they’re communicated.

The performance isn’t the opposite of the truth. It’s the translation of truth into a social setting.

Misread 2: Impression management is manipulation.

A major review by Leary & Kowalski broke down impression management into two components:

Rather than being unauthentic, it teaches us to be more strategic about visibility.

If you’re starting from zero, impression management gives you a practical roadmap.

Instead of questioning yourself with: Who am I online? Try to execute: Which role am I committing to for the next 90 days?

It could be:

A role is easier to perform consistently than a vague identity like “authentic.” It also reduces anxiety because you wouldn’t feel the pressure to be universally legible.

Online, this is about being generous with attention: leaving thoughtful comments, crediting people’s ideas, and showing you’re part of the community rather than above it. For example, instead of “Great post,” add one specific insight or a respectful counterpoint that shows you actually enjoyed reading it.

Make your boundaries visible: what you won’t do, what you refuse to compromise on. A founder example is posting your “no” list (i.e. no misaligned clients, no vanity growth), and explaining the reasoning calmly.

This is when you present yourself as principled and disciplined. For personal branding, it works when you show decisions that cost you something, like turning down revenue that violates your values, or choosing quality over speed.

Show vulnerability to invite support. For example, “I’m stuck on this problem; if you’ve solved it, I’d genuinely value your perspective,” and then showing what you’ve tried so far.

This is self-advocacy: state what you do, who it’s for, and why it matters, without over-explaining. A practical example is a weekly post that shares what you shipped, what you learned, and what you’re focused on next, so people learn what you’re about through repetition.

It’s the ability to read context and adjust accordingly. Online, that might mean changing tone across platforms, or pausing before posting when you’re emotionally distressed, so your brand isn’t affected by your bad days.

Bio, visuals, content themes, and what you consistently emphasize. If you’re starting from zero, keep it simple: a clear role in your bio, one pinned piece, and two repeatable content formats so people know what to expect when they follow you.

As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.

Until next week,
Lavena

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