The Beacon Effect: Rethinking what it means to make an impression

When people think about making a good impression at work, the focus usually turns inward. How do I present myself? How do I demonstrate my value? How do I make sure others see me as capable, confident, and influential?

David Long, J. Edward Zollinger Professor of Business at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business, is asking a different question: What if making a positive impression has less to do with drawing attention to yourself and more to do with what you help other people experience?

In his new paper, "The Beacon Effect: A Model of Humanistic Impression Management," published in Organizational Psychology Review, Long introduces a framework he calls humanistic impression management. The model offers an audience-centered way to understand how people can create favorable impressions by supporting the psychological needs of those around them.

"The Beacon Effect is really about changing where we put our attention," Long says. "Instead of asking how we can make ourselves look good, we can ask how we can interact with people in ways that help them feel valued, connected, and capable."

Looking beyond the traditional view of impression management

Impression management is not new to organizational research. People routinely make choices about how they present themselves to colleagues, supervisors, clients, and other audiences.

Traditional approaches often include behaviors such as self-promotion, ingratiation, and exemplification.

Long's model does not suggest abandoning those approaches, but instead, adds another way to understand why certain interpersonal behaviors can lead to favorable impressions.

The difference is where the attention falls.

Rather than focusing primarily on what the individual is trying to communicate about themselves, humanistic impression management focuses on the audience's experience. Long proposes that favorable impressions can emerge when interactions help satisfy three basic psychological needs: autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

That shift is at the heart of the Beacon Effect.

"A beacon is useful because it illuminates something beyond itself," Long explains. "That is what I was trying to capture with this metaphor. Effective influence does not always come from being the most visible person in the room. Sometimes it comes from helping other people see their own way forward."

Three behaviors that change the experience

Long identifies three behaviors that can help create this kind of interaction: mindfulness, curiosity, and encouragement.

Mindfulness, in this context, means being attentive to another person and making them feel seen and valued. It can communicate respect for the individual's perspective and support a sense of autonomy. It means being truly present when engaging with another.

Curiosity involves taking a genuine interest in another person's experiences, ideas, and point of view. Rather than assuming what someone thinks or needs, curiosity creates space to understand them. Long connects this behavior with relatedness, the need to feel connected to others.

Encouragement supports a person's belief in their own abilities. Importantly, it does not mean taking ownership away from them or telling them what to do. Instead, encouragement can help people recognize their capacity to act, linking behavior to the need for competence.

"Mindfulness, curiosity, and encouragement are relatively simple behaviors, but they communicate very different things," Long explains. "Mindfulness says, 'I see you.' Curiosity says, 'I want to understand you.' Encouragement says, 'I believe you are capable.'"

The distinction matters because the model is not simply a list of techniques for appearing supportive.

Long emphasizes the relational and ethical dimension of the framework. If a leader uses supportive behaviors solely to manipulate how another person responds, the behavior misses the point of humanistic impression management. The signals need to be genuine and reliably supportive of the other person's psychological needs. Authenticity matters.

"The Beacon Effect is not a formula for pretending to care about people," Long stresses. "If you use these behaviors simply as techniques to manipulate someone, you have missed the entire point. The signals have to support the other person's needs rather than exploit them."

From research to the workplace

The model offers a different lens for thinking about everyday interactions in organizations.

A manager giving feedback, a colleague leading a meeting, a supervisor coaching an employee, or a leader navigating organizational change all create experiences for the people around them. Those experiences can influence how others perceive the person, but Long's framework suggests that the interaction itself may be just as important as the impression it creates.

That has potential implications for leadership development, employee development, coaching, team dynamics, and organizational culture.

It also offers organizations another way to think about influence. Instead of asking only whether a leader appears confident, competent, or likable, organizations could ask what leaders are helping the people around them experience.

"Organizations are built through interactions," Long says. "Every meeting, conversation, and decision creates an experience for the people involved. If we understand those experiences better, we may be able to rethink how we develop leaders and how we build healthier, more effective organizations."

The framework also opens questions for future research. Because the paper is a conceptual model, rather than an empirical test of the proposed relationships, additional research will be needed to examine how these behaviors operate in different organizational settings and how audiences respond to them over time.

Business education as continuous improvement

Research like Long's also reflects the ongoing process of examining how business is practiced and taught.

Established concepts can provide a foundation, but they are not the endpoint. As researchers ask new questions, they can identify assumptions worth revisiting and develop new ways of understanding familiar organizational problems.

For a business school that creates a direct connection between research and the classroom. Students preparing to become managers, entrepreneurs, and organizational leaders are not simply learning established practices. They are also learning how to question, test, and improve them.

"Business education should be a process of continuous improvement," Long states. "We should be willing to revisit the assumptions behind established practices, ask better questions, and bring new data into the classroom. That is one of the reasons I find this kind of research so meaningful."

The Beacon Effect raises another question in that process: What happens when leaders stop thinking primarily about the impression they make and start paying closer attention to the experience they create?

The answer may change how organizations approach influence, leadership development, and the everyday interactions that shape working relationships.

And perhaps that is the central idea behind Long's metaphor.

"The goal is not to shine brighter than everyone else," Long says. "It is to help the people around you see what they are capable of."