Often time's people say 'Perception is reality' and people expect others to change their mannerisms, behavior or personality because of how others could perceive them. That is duplicity, hypocrisy. You do not want to be someone else and behaving differently to please others than you would normally have to please yourself. This is quite common in a corporate environment. People expect you to have a certain way to fit into their culture. The question arises if diversity is valued in those organizations or do they just want people to fit in. If people try to fit in, then that creates limits to creativity and imagination. People think, and act in the manner to fit in to the culture, leading to mass thinking and being one in the crowd.
Take for example some people think 'perception is real'. Just because something is perceived does not have to be real. Perception is a passive experience whereas thinking is an active one. If you perceive horns on a rabbit or a tail for a man could that be real? Perception is not the complete proof for something to be real.
Perception can not be reality. It is only perception. It is what is seen from one's own world. If there are thousands people, each one's perception is going to be different from one another. This is reputation. Therefore be who you are, do what you can with the given situation with what you have. As long as the intention is good, the direction is clear, good and not harmful to anyone in anyway, you should be fine. This is the character of an individual. Do not confuse character with reputation.
Character is who you are while reputation is what others think you are.
Do not compromise who you are for your paycheck. Only then you can be happy at your work, be highly productive and live to the full potential. Otherwise half the time and energy is spent in pretending to be who you are, to satisfy the people around you. This causes more stress on people than the work does.
Team is a group of people with diversity, complimenting each other's strengths and weaknesses. Many big corporations have all the virtues & values written and posted on their walls but they really do not understand what these words really mean! That's why you can hear people say 'I do not want to be in a corporate environment anymore. I'd rather be in a smaller or medium sized business where they focus on the goals and results'. Teams fail because some believe, in 'perception is reality' and perceive what is not real resulting in conflicts and degradation of the team itself.
"If the doors of perception is cleaned everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite". – William Blake -British poet, painter.
Take it upon your self and do not 'fall for' perception is reality '.