How One Global Tech Leader Changed People’s Negative Impression of Him

“To change people’s impression of you, start from changing yourself first.”

Atip Muangsuwan
CEO Coach and Coach Supervisor

Every leader reaches a point where technical competence stops being enough. You can have the sharpest strategy, the most compelling vision, the deepest industry expertise—and still find yourself hitting a wall you cannot see. A people wall.

That was exactly where a global tech leader I will call Charles found himself not long ago.

From the outside, Charles had everything going for him. He led a global technology company. He was smart, driven, and deeply committed to delivering results. His projects were ambitious. His initiatives had teeth. And yet, something was not working. The Heads of Departments he needed to drive his projects forward were not giving him the full support he required. They were showing up—but not fully. They were nodding along—but not truly bought in.

“I sense this goes back to my previous role,” Charles told me in a recent coaching session. He had come to talk about one question and one question only: How do I change people’s negative impression of me?

This is not a small question. In fact, for leaders in high-stakes environments, it might be the most important question of all. Because no matter how brilliant your plan, you cannot execute it alone. You need the trust, the buy-in, and the active support of the people around you. And trust, as I have learned over years of coaching leaders across industries, is never conferred by title alone. It is earned. One conversation at a time.

The Hidden Cost of a Negative Perception

Charles’s frustration was real, and it was costly. Every project he initiated required cross-departmental collaboration. Every initiative he launched needed the buy-in of leaders who, for reasons he could not quite articulate, seemed hesitant. They were not obstructing him openly—they were simply not giving him their full support. And in a global organization, lukewarm support is the same as no support at all.

What Charles was experiencing is something I see often in my coaching practice. Somewhere along the way, a perception had formed about him—a perception carried over from a previous role, shaped by past interactions, reinforced by organizational memory. And once a perception calcifies, it becomes remarkably difficult to shift. People do not see you as you are now. They see you as they remember you. And they act accordingly.

But here is what Charles understood intuitively: he could not force people to change their minds about him. He could not mandate trust or decree collaboration. The only thing he could change was himself.

And that is where we began.

The Architecture of Trust: Seven Principles for Changing Perceptions

Over the course of our coaching sessions, Charles and I deconstructed the question of negative perception and rebuilt it from the ground up. What emerged was a framework—simple in theory, demanding in practice—that any leader can use to transform how others see them.

1. Trust Is the First Step—And the Only Step That Matters

Trust is not a nice-to-have. It is the foundational currency of leadership. As Stephen M. R. Covey, the New York Times bestselling author of The Speed of Trust, has argued, trust is the one thing that changes everything. In organizations, trust determines the quality of your interactions with colleagues and the caliber of the work you produce together. Without it, every conversation becomes a negotiation. Every request becomes a burden. Every initiative becomes a fight.

For Charles, the first realization was that he had been treating support as a transaction. He assumed that if his proposals were sound, the support would follow. But people do not support proposals. They support people. And people only support people they trust.

2. Vulnerability Is the Gateway to Trust

If trust is the destination, vulnerability is the vehicle. This was a hard lesson for Charles—as it is for many high-achieving leaders. We have been conditioned to believe that leadership requires strength, certainty, and control. But the research tells a different story. Leaders who show vulnerability build more trust, create safer environments, and inspire greater loyalty from their teams. “Vulnerability is not about showing weakness,” as one leadership expert notes, “but about fostering a transparent and adaptable corporate culture that can weather the storms of the business world.”

I challenged Charles to do something deeply uncomfortable: to let his colleagues see him as human. To admit that he made mistakes. To acknowledge that he did not have all the answers. To show that he was willing to learn, to correct, to improve.

“The people you are trying to win over do not need to see a perfect leader,” I added. “They need to see a real one.”

3. Ask for Constructive Feedback—And Mean It

One of the most powerful tools for changing perception is also one of the most underused: asking for direct, honest feedback. When you ask someone what you are doing that bothers them, you accomplish two things at once. First, you signal that you are willing to change. Second, you invite them into a collaborative relationship rather than an adversarial one.

Charles began approaching his department heads with a simple question: What am I doing—or not doing—that is making it harder for you to support me? The first few times he asked, the answers were vague. People were guarded. They did not trust the question. But Charles kept asking. And slowly, the answers became more honest.

As one leadership expert puts it, leaders who model vulnerability by openly asking for feedback on their own performance create a “safe, high-courage environment” that builds trust and encourages others to take interpersonal risks.

4. Persistence Is Not Optional

Here is the truth that most leadership advice glosses over: people will not open up to you the first time you ask. Or the second. Or sometimes even the third. Trust is not built in a single conversation. It is built through repeated, consistent, reliable interactions over time.

I shared with Charles about this upfront. “For the first few times you reach out, people may keep their distance,” I said. “Do not interpret that as rejection. Interpret it as the natural caution of people who have been burned before. Your job is simply to keep showing up.”

And he did. He persisted in his requests for feedback. He persisted in his invitations for one-on-one conversations. He persisted in his efforts to build bridges. Slowly, the walls began to come down.

5. Spend More Time with Them

You cannot build trust from a distance. It requires proximity—not physical proximity necessarily, but relational proximity. Charles realized that he had been managing his department heads from behind a screen, communicating through emails and brief check-ins. That was not enough.

“We need to spend more time together,” he told me. And he meant it. He began scheduling regular one-on-one conversations with each key stakeholder. Not to ask for something, but simply to understand them—their pressures, their priorities, their frustrations.

This is not about efficiency. It is about investment. Trust is built in the moments when you choose to invest your most scarce resource—your time—in another person.

6. Move Conversations into Casual Settings

The most important conversations rarely happen in conference rooms. They happen in coffee shops, over lunch, by the watercooler. There is something about a casual setting that lowers defenses and opens doors. When you are sitting across from someone with a cup of coffee, you are not a department head and his boss. You are two humans having a conversation.

Charles began taking his key stakeholders to coffee. He invited them to lunch. He created opportunities for dialogue that did not feel like work. And in those settings, using the LAR-SE Model—Listen, Ask, Reflect, Share, Empower—he created the conditions for genuine mutual understanding.

7. Treat People as Your VIPs

The deepest trust is built not when you focus on what you need from others, but when you focus on what they need from you. Dale Carnegie said it best: people crave significance. They want to feel valued, seen, and understood.

I asked Charles a powerful question: What if he treated every department head as his VIP, listened intently to their concerns, acknowledged their contributions, offered to support without strings attached, made them feel that their success mattered to him—not because of what they could do for him, but because they mattered as people.

This is the heart of the EE-FI Model—Engage, Empathize, Fulfill, Influence. When you genuinely engage with people, empathize with their challenges, and fulfill their needs, influence follows naturally. Not manipulation. Not pressure. Just the natural consequence of being someone people want to support.

The One-Sentence Transformation

Halfway through our coaching engagement, Charles distilled everything he was learning into a single sentence: “I am always open for constructive feedback.” That sentence became his anchor. It reminded him—and everyone around him—that he was no longer the leader who needed to be right. He was the leader who needed to grow.

And that is the deeper truth beneath every leadership transformation. You cannot change how people see you by insisting they see you differently. You can only change how you show up. You can only choose to be more open, more vulnerable, more persistent, more present. And when you do, people notice. Not immediately. Not dramatically. But inevitably.

To change people’s impression of you, start from changing yourself first.

Your Turn: A Challenge for Every Leader

If you find yourself in a situation like Charles’s—where the support you need is not materializing, where you sense a negative perception holding you back—I invite you to take three actions this week:

1. Schedule a one-on-one conversation with someone whose support you need. Not to ask for anything. Just to listen and understand.
2. Ask for honest feedback about one thing you could do differently. Then listen without defending.
3. Keep showing up, even when it is uncomfortable. Especially when it is uncomfortable.

Because here is what Charles discovered: the people who were withholding their support were not his enemies. They were simply waiting—perhaps without even realizing it—for him to become someone worth trusting.

And now, he has.

Are you looking to change people’s negative perception of you? If you are, then let’s have a conversation!

About Atip Muangsuwan: Atip is an executive leadership coach who specializes in helping high-achieving leaders overcome internal barriers to unlock their full potential and drive organizational success. Through a blend of strategic frameworks and profound personal insights, he empowers leaders in transforming their mindsets, emotional states, and behaviors for lasting impact.