What's Your Reputation?

Building a Reputation Consistent With Your Career Goals

Your reputation is what you're known for. It's what others believe to be true about your character, personality, skills, competencies, and values.

But, when it comes to reputation, actions speak louder than words. What you do means more than what you say about yourself or your work, and people develop an opinion of these things based on what they experience.

Reputation is also fickle. It can take years to build a good reputation, but just moments to destroy it. This makes personal reputation management a hot topic.

Organizations have long recognized the importance of how the marketplace views them, and have practiced reputation management for years. But your personal reputation impacts your career prospects and your ability to secure interesting and challenging work.

When you leave a positive impression, you open many doors of opportunity. This article describes how you can build a reputation that you can be proud of.

What Creates Your Reputation?

Reputation is critical to your success, so it helps to be aware of the four main elements that form your professional reputation: your personal characteristics, your personal branding, your non-work activities, and your organization and the people in your life.

Let's look at these elements in more detail, below.

1. Personal Characteristics

These are things like your temperament, attitude, dependability, and trustworthiness. These tend to be the things that people associate first with reputation. You are entirely in control of these aspects of your reputation.

A common characteristic of people with good reputations is trustworthiness. This means saying what you mean and doing what you say. Being true to your word, not overcommitting yourself, and staying on top of your work are traits that are highly regarded in all professions.

However, if you cheat, lie or gossip, for example, you can't expect to have a good reputation. Likewise, arriving late for work, taking credit for other people's ideas, and handing in sloppy assignments are surefire ways to solidify a poor reputation. And when your reputation is poor or damaged, it can take a long time to rebuild it.

The remaining three elements that contribute to the building of your reputation are less obvious, but no less important.

2. Personal Branding

Your personal brand is a deliberate statement about the value that you bring to your employer or to your clients.

It's how you differentiate yourself and stand out from your peers. You create your brand by defining your values, developing a strong skill set, and determining where you want your professional activities to take you.

Keeping your reputation consistent with your brand is very important. Understanding how your actions and decisions affect your reputation is part of the process of creating your personal brand. And developing a great reputation is an essential part of building a strong and positive brand image.

A related issue is professional development. The term "professional development" refers to the extent to which you devote time to expanding your knowledge, enhancing your work skills, and staying up to date with new developments.

Credibility also has a great deal to do with reputation. You establish credibility by making a name for yourself, by being well informed and smart, and by being the person who others turn to for answers.

3. Non-Work Activities

The hobbies, interests and activities that you pursue in your spare time can shape your reputation. Many people will take their cues about who you really are from these aspects of your life.

In many instances, this information about your life outside of work will simply enrich their sense of your personality, but much depends on how you present it.

For example, if you're involved in high-risk sports, both your professional and personal reputations may well include the labels "risk-taker" and "reckless." But, if you present your activities in a different light, people may instead see you as bold and technically able.

Be aware that your hobbies and interests can still influence your professional reputation even if you don't discuss them in the office. A single tweet, or a photo posted to Facebook or other social media, could "give the game away" and change your reputation for better or for worse.

4. Your Organization and the People in Your Life

The organization you work for, your friends, associates, family members, and the other people you spend time with influence your reputation.

If you work for a company with a poor reputation, your personal reputation may suffer. People will assume that no one of quality would continue to work for a company that garners little respect or trust.

Similarly, if you associate with unsavory characters, your character will be perceived as similar to that of your friends. Perception is reality, as the saying goes, and it impacts heavily on your reputation.

Building the Reputation You Want

Now that you know what goes into creating a reputation, you're better equipped to build your own reputation, and to preserve it. Here's a five-step guide to how to do it.

Step One: Evaluate Your Reputation From Your Own Perspective

Use a Personal SWOT Analysis to assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in relation to each of the four elements of reputation.

To guide your thinking, consider what characteristics best describe your work habits. For example, are you dependable, trustworthy, creative, a poor timekeeper, a gossip, or someone who cuts corners?

Look at your professional skills, too: how up-to-date are they? Are they "fresh," or do you consider yourself a "dinosaur"? Do people come to you for answers, or do you have to go to them?

Then, think about how you discuss and present your hobbies and interests to others, and the kinds of reputation that your friends and your organization have. Are they consistent with your own reputation?

Step Two: Determine Your True Reputation

To uncover the true nature of your reputation, ask for a frank assessment from your boss, co-workers, clients, past business associates, and anyone who has dealt with you professionally. You're essentially asking them for a 360-degree evaluation of your reputation.

Ask searching questions to help you to understand which of your behaviors cause them to feel the way they do about you. Then dig deeper, by asking them how far they base their assessment on what they've experienced directly, versus what they've heard about you. Remember, your reputation permeates everything, and it often precedes you and your recent behavior.

Step Three: Compare and Contrast Your Assessments

Take your assessments from Steps One and Two, and analyze the reasons for the differences between them.

Are there any positive and negative elements that come up consistently? Look for trends, and ask questions. If your own evaluation differs significantly from how others see you, ask yourself why that might be.

Similarly, if you have a variety of different reputations, consider the reasons why different groups of people each see you so differently.

Step Four: Develop Your Desired Reputation

To build a reputation that you can be proud of, you need to ask yourself what you really want to be known for.

Use your current reputation as a starting point, and then benchmark the characteristics of people in your profession who enjoy the kind of good reputation that you'd like to emulate. Trustworthiness and reliability are two essentials to put on your "wish list."

It's important to note, however, that there is no one "right" reputation to aim for. Different professions have different expectations. You would probably respect an analytical accountant and be delighted by a quirky photographer, for instance. A quirky accountant and an analytical photographer might not elicit the same high regard.

When you've defined the kind of reputation you want, step back and consider whether or not it fits with your existing career goals.

Step Five: Devise Your Plan

Identify the steps that you need to take to develop or change your reputation, and then set yourself a series of goals that will move you toward the reputation you want. Prioritize fixing the negative elements of your reputation sooner rather than later.