For the next few weeks I'll be doing a consulting assignment in Pennsylvania. As with most places I go to, one of the first questions I'm asked is where I'm from. Instead of getting specific with it, I just say I'm from the Syracuse, NY area.

Now, depending on where I am, the response to that is always interesting. When I'm in most parts of the country, people usually know something about how good the local college basketball team is; winning a NCAA championships helps put you on the map. When I'm in downstate New York, the conversation is usually about our snowy weather.

This week, whenever I mentioned it, I got one of two responses. One of those responses is "That's where our Gerry McNamara played", said with pride as he helped Syracuse win that national championship, plus they loved how he gutted it out and carried Syracuse on his back to their last Big East Championship. The other answer threw me for a bit: "You guys have a good hockey team." There is a local minor league hockey team in town, and this year they actually went on a long winning streak to make the playoffs, only to get bounced in some round, but that was this year, and they haven't really been what anyone would consider as "good" for all that long. Also, this particular area has a competing hockey team, the only major sport in the area I suppose (not sure how far Penn State is from where I am, though there's a satellite campus in the area), so the name would be familiar to them.

Perspective is always interesting because one person can have the same point of reference at all times but other people who are receiving the same information will process it differently. It's like a woman looking at the color of a shirt and calling it "pumpkin", while most men would call it "orange". It's one reason why, if you ask most policemen, they worry about witness accounts because 100 people can see the same incident and each one of them might tell a different story. The truth is in there somewhere, and it's up to the detectives to piece it all together at some point.

It's these thoughts about perception that impacts how we all work and live with each other, and whether those perceptions are positive and negative. I've talked a lot lately about the perceptions of race. I also talked about the differences in how people manifest their reactions to the same emotion, like fear or worry. It's not always easy to control how people will respond to input, no matter how much we may practice or try to anticipate the outcome.

So, sometimes the best you can do is to try to control the message and the intention. The message needs to be truthful, and the intention needs to be honest. Even with that, the perception of those you impart that message upon might not be what you're expecting. But at that point, at least there's a better chance that the person you're addressing will give you the opportunity to make a clarification.