The Power of Reputation

Chris Komisarjevsky: I think the first thing is that we all recognize, whether it's in our business or our professional lives, that actually our reputation precedes us so when we walk into a room or we go for an interview or we propose a new program or deal with clients or we have to make a business judgment, how we are seen is probably one of the most critical factors and people look at us having seen, known or had some experience with us beforehand and that in essence, their perceptions of us is our reputation and it precedes us virtually everything that we do every day of our lives.

Rachel Salaman: Some people might listen to that and think well I'm just a lowly employee at the bottom of the totem pole, I don't have a reputation. What would you say to them?

Chris Komisarjevsky: I'd say on the contrary, actually your reputation begins very early in your career and in your life, whether it's been work that you've done prior to graduating from university or it's work that you've done after that or how you behave and what people see of you, whether it's through the media, whether it's online or whether it's through personal connections. You have a reputation, you are seen in a particular way and that reputation precedes you and people have an idea about what you're like because most people, when they go into an important situation, particularly in business, have done some research so they have a sense of the kind of person that you are.

Rachel Salaman: And your book is called "The Power of Reputation," In your experience how powerful can a reputation be?

Chris Komisarjevsky: I think it's very powerful, it either makes or breaks careers. From the standpoint of how people perceive you to a standpoint of how people view what you've done and more important than what you've done in many cases is why you've done it, and so people are trying to understand when you interact with them in your personal or your business life why you do things, what's important to you, what your values are because they want to know how you are going to behave, not only then but also in the future so relationships are built on the perception of what you do now in the anticipation and the expectation of what you're going to do in the future and that really centers on your values and it creates the basis for either a good relationship or a relationship that doesn't produce the kind of results that you want.

Rachel Salaman: How much control does an individual have over his or her reputation?

Chris Komisarjevsky: You know, that's a great question because a lot of people would turn around and say, well I really don't have much control because other people will make their own judgments but I don't believe that at all. I believe that you have almost 100 percent control over what your reputation is because if you do something you should know why and you should be able to explain it so that other people can understand it and if other people talk about you in a particular way, you need to be very diligent about how you address that and that's especially critical in today's online world where you don't have an awful lot of control of what people say but you do have control over what you do about what they say and how you respond and that being timely and that being very focused is absolutely critical.

Rachel Salaman: And yet lots of people don't actually think much about this do they? So in your opinion how much should they be focusing on this, on a daily or weekly or months basis? How much of it should be front of mind for people?

Chris Komisarjevsky: I think early stages of your career that it needs to be front of mind because you need to be asking yourself some very tough questions about why you're making certain decisions, why you are behaving in a certain way so that people then understand or at least you can articulate the answer to the why question. I think as time goes on in our careers, our actions become much more instinctive but if they don't start with a real recognition of why you do something and therefore they understand how you behave and they can expect certain kinds of behavior from you, then I think you have a problem.

Rachel Salaman: I was interested to see that some of the lessons in your book come from your time in the Army, early in your career. Broadly speaking, what did your military experience teach you about reputation?.

Chris Komisarjevsky: I think it taught me more than anything else that the reputation of who I am and what I'm going to do and whether or not they can count on me depends on my own sense of personal responsibility. In other words, do I take responsibility for what I do, do I take responsibility for what happens around us and around me? I think that's absolutely essential and if people understand and they know that if they talk to you, they ask you to do something, whether you are an employee or whether you are the boss, they want to follow, they want to understand, they want to know that you are as vested, if not more, in what goes on than they do and I think from the military you come away with a very strong sense of responsibility for the people around you, especially as an officer – and I was a helicopter pilot – for those troops that sit in the book of that airplane, I had full responsibility and there is nothing that drives that home more than turning around and looking at them and understanding that their lives depend on you.

Rachel Salaman: Well your book offers lots of helpful tips and lots of case studies on the subject of reputation and it's divided into three groups that reflect the three critical factor of reputation which you say are character, communication and trust. Now how do you define character in this context?

Chris Komisarjevsky: I think character is defined most clearly by a sense or by an understanding of your own values and it goes back to the question of not so much what you do but first trying to understand why another person or to understand for yourself why it is that you behave in a particular way. So what are your values, what is it that you hold dear, what is it that you would not sacrifice for anything that might come about? And people want to know what that character is so that character is what you believe and what they see is how you live what you believe.

Rachel Salaman: It's sometimes quite hard to be objective about yourself isn't it and to really know what your values are, what tips do you have for someone who might want to get to the bottom of what they really stand for?

Chris Komisarjevsky: That's actually a big challenge for a lot of people because sometimes it's very difficult to really be honest and introspective and in the book one of the things that I talk about is the importance of mentors and the importance of champions, people that you can go to and talk through and without being condemned for doing something wrong or overtly praised for doing something right, get the kind of feedback that focuses on their understanding of how you are seen, what your values are and how you actually live those values in your day to day, especially work experience. So having people that you can go to, seeking out mentors, seeking out a champion, someone who can provide that guidance, is absolutely critical. Plus there are sources that you can go to, you can go to different online sources and talk about values, where they list a series of values which is what I've also done in my book, and it gives you an opportunity to ask yourself some questions. There are about a dozen questions, what I call sort of the Dirty Dozen questions that you must ask yourself about why you would do something and what values at the end of the day are values that you would not sacrifice. Sometimes in our relationships with people, as they begin to know you, they understand not only do you say that you believe that but by virtue of your actions you prove that you do and as we know in life, in any endeavor that we've gotten, talk is cheap. The question is, with your values does your behavior then track with those values, do you walk the talk as they say, do you do what you say you're going to do and can you be trusted to do that?

Rachel Salaman: Is that kind of character becoming rarer in today's business world, do you think, or is that just an impression that we might get from certain news reports?

Chris Komisarjevsky: I think the media, just by virtue of its nature and historically going back to its role as the Fourth Estate is there primarily to focus on and shed light on those things which need to be seen by others and I think it's one of those things that you just have to deal with so the media looking for the sensational is always going to focus on the cracks in the armor but I think that if you even take some individuals who have had some very, very tough challenges, when they think about what they've done and they have to talk about it, they do understand and they are willing to acknowledge that they've made a mistake and that they need to do something different in the future. So the media tends to focus on the negative, it tends to focus on the sensational but that doesn't necessarily mean that there is an underlying decline in values, it just means that the media highlights that and quite rightly so, because there are situations in which business leaders, people in general, have done things that they shouldn't do and it should be highlighted because perhaps at the very least it is a starting point for behaving differently and behaving more in line with the values that count for the values that endure.

Rachel Salaman: In the book you talk about the importance of authenticity to reputation which ties in to what you've just been saying, now what tips do you have for people who don't actually know what it means to be authentic in their work lives?

Chris Komisarjevsky: When people are put in situations in the business or even the non-profit world, in which they realize that there is something that's going on there that touches both a personal and a professional cord, sometimes those individuals are very reluctant to show their emotion or show how important something is and being authentic means that you don't necessarily walk around every day with some kind of a shield as if you are a cold kind of business person but rather that you demonstrate things that are important to you, so when you think about how someone is going to demonstrate their authenticity it becomes almost a way of life, it becomes the fact that they are willing to share things that have to do with themselves personally, that they relate on a personal level to the individuals with whom they deal. In other words, that they are interested, that they want to listen, they want to understand, they just don't want to tell people what else to do, that they handle things in a very personal way. One of the things that I talk about is caring and crying and caring is demonstrated by being interested in the other individual and that person's success and crying is demonstrated by the fact that it is often a very good idea to show your own emotions and it creates a sense of personal relationship beyond the professional relationship that then creates a sense of allegiance and understanding. So authenticity that you are who you are and you're not afraid to show it, becomes an important ingredient in developing strong business relationships which ultimately lead to loyalty, to allegiance, to working very hard, to doing the right thing and ultimately to success.

Rachel Salaman: Can authenticity ever backfire in your experience? I'm thinking there are certain opinions and behaviors that won't help someone's reputation no matter how authentic they are.

Chris Komisarjevsky: Yes, I think an individual needs to be circumspect. I'm not talking here about doing something that's inappropriate in relationships with other individuals, I'm not talking here about espousing a particular political view or a particular moral view that is not appropriate within the work environment. I'm talking about things which are very work related and ultimately boil down to a sense of commitment that other people feel in you so being in the workplace is not an opportunity to get on a soapbox, it's not an opportunity to try to influence other people into a particular way that you're thinking and it is dangerous, it is potentially difficult in the sense that people may carry it too far but then again, if they have certain very strong values such as respect, then they are not going to try to do that, they are going to understand that being authentic, being seen as real, is a very important element in getting the most out of an individual and not to do something that would turn against them.

Rachel Salaman: I suppose the idea is that people can tell, can't they, there is a kind of instinct that kicks in when you are talking to someone which enables you to trust that they are being authentic.

Chris Komisarjevsky: You are 100 percent right, that is one of the important elements in a relationship between people and for people to understand when it comes to reputation and when it comes to perceptions is that people are not stupid, people get it, they see, they understand far more than some people might want them to understand. So they can tell truth from falsehood, they can tell the genuine from the phony, they can tell the authentic from the person who is trying to influence them in an inappropriate manner. So people are very smart and I think that if you begin just about everything you do with an understanding that people are smart, then things fall into place, so when I think – since I was in the public relations and the public affairs business so much of my life – when I think of the term that's used, spin, I think that is extraordinarily disrespectful because what it means is that someone believes that they can influence someone else's thinking by giving that individual only partial information or somehow skewed information and that is not right. That doesn't work because people are too smart and they see through it. We see this every day in terms of the way that some company's communicate and see it every day in the way that some politicians communicate.

Rachel Salaman: So in a way the public relations industry needs to do something about its own reputation so people don't blame it.

Chris Komisarjevsky: Well it's a very good observation because as worldwide CEO I would walk into situations where people would ask me and they would actually talk about whether one of our jobs is to spin things so that it is favorable to our client and my reaction to that always would be the same, that I think if it's done well there is no such thing as spin because spin is disrespectful.

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Rachel Salaman: Well that moves us on to the second of the three critical factors of reputation that you explore in your book and that's communication. What are some of the common mistakes that people make when they communicate, what do they tend to get wrong?

Chris Komisarjevsky: Most of the time people look at communication not as a dialog, not as an opportunity to engage with someone else and learn as much as they share information and so the first thing I think that people need to think about when they think about having an effective communication is the old adage that you should listen first and talk second, that it's most important to demonstrate respect to earn an understanding of the way the other person thinks and have a chance then to share views in very much of what is seen as an open and equitable dialog so most people try to come in and tell other people what to do and I think that's a critical mistake so communicating in a fulsome and forthright manner, making sure that you have enough information so people can then make reasonable decisions when they have to make a decision, have enough information to make reasonable decisions – those aspects become very, very important. They become an element of developing respect between two individuals or between an organization and its stakeholders, so being able to have engaged discussion, not a lecture but an opportunity to talk and learn is an exceptionally important element of communication.

Rachel Salaman: You used the word engage there and in the book you go into the importance of engaging others, can you talk a little bit more about that?

Chris Komisarjevsky: It's very important for people to understand that you are as much interested in their views as you are interested in sharing your own views. The challenge is for a lot of people who begin to lose sight of the importance of communication is that they are more interested in telling people what to do rather than hearing what they have to say so I think a very important element of an individual when they take on a new job is that they spend enough time talking with others so they can learn, talking with others so that people will walk away and say that individual really wants to understand and is not someone who is coming in telling other people what to do. The most often element that is criticized in leaders and people in business is that they come in without an awful lot of knowledge about a particular industry and they try to dictate by what they have done before what they will be doing in the future.

Rachel Salaman: So how much in general should people plan in advance how they are going to communicate in an important meeting for example or in some other key work situation, how much should that kind of thing be planned?

Chris Komisarjevsky: Given the importance of communication as it relates to an individual's ability to be successful, build a reputation and an understanding that they really care, it requires as much time and effort as an Olympic athlete or as a top flight individual would need in order to prepare for what they have to do. Athletes rehearse, people on the stage rehearse, people who are in the theater rehearse, it is very important that you spend enough time thinking through what the issues are, what the arguments might be, what the reactions might be and how you would respond to them so prior planning is absolutely critical, it's a form of rehearsal and it shouldn't be neglected when it comes to sitting in front of a group for a meeting or even participating in that meeting.

Rachel Salaman: And that would be a big change for some people won't it, because it actually requires putting time aside for something they probably haven't before in their career?

Chris Komisarjevsky: I think it's difficult for people for two reasons, one of which you said, yes, they probably haven't put time aside, they figure they can handle it and they walk into a discussion but it is also important because it dictates or demonstrates to other people that you care about them and that means you have to put your ego aside in order to believe and understand and genuinely operate on the basis that there are some things that you can learn so that you can become a more effective manager, a more effective leader and that comes through communications in a manner that is open, engaged and a very fulsome dialog.

Rachel Salaman: Now you mentioned earlier on in this interview how the Internet has changed communication and the relationship between communication and reputation, particularly with the advent of social media so could you talk a bit more about how social media has changed reputation?

Chris Komisarjevsky: Social media has had a dramatic effect on reputation both from a positive and a negative standpoint. On the one hand, from a positive perspective, it gives many more people an opportunity to share their ideas through social media, talk about what they hold dear, talk about what's important to them, even talk about what they've accomplished and that is an opportunity for people to make sure that how they believe and what they think is important is known by more people than ever before because there is no intermediary, there's no one who's filtering that information so it is seen as a very genuine discussion. On the other hand, social media's dangerous. People tend to say things, do things and they don't understand the speed with which social media travels, the number of people who have access to what they do and also the idea of whom you speak with, whom you associate with, whether it's on Facebook or whether it's on Twitter, those people obviously or over a period of time seem to be or are perceived as having a connection to you. So it's like the old adage that our parents tell us – I can tell something about you, I can judge you by the company you keep, so that if you are in a situation where you are surrounded by or talking to people that don't have the same values that are necessary for you to be successful, you will be judged in the same way so it's dangerous. You have to be very careful and you have to be very circumspect and in fact you have to be very protective.

Rachel Salaman: And do you yourself tweet?

Chris Komisarjevsky: Yes, I do Tweet and I am also very, very protective of who it is that follows me and I look at every individual and every group that follows me and if I believe that that individual or that group doesn't have the same sense of values or importance that I place on certain things then I will block them, it's very clear.

Rachel Salaman: So it's about having the right amount of control so that you can use it to your advantage.

Chris Komisarjevsky: In the social media world, the most difficult challenge is to make sure that you have control, you are absolutely correct. The fact is that you need to assert control, it is not a free-wheeling environment if you view it through a reputation lens and the fact is we need to view more and more what we do and how we do it through a reputation lens. Reputation is the one thing that carries forward in our personal lives and our professional lives from day one and what we do early in our careers, early when we are teenagers, makes a difference in the way that other people will see us and that can be an advantage and that can be a disadvantage depending upon how much we control that environment.

Rachel Salaman: Well let's talk now about the third critical factor of reputation which is trust. How can someone build what you call a circle of trust?

Chris Komisarjevsky: Trust makes the world go round. The fact is that we engage with other people, we become stakeholders in a business, we work for certain companies, we make decisions based on whether or not we can trust that the people or the organizations will do what they say they will do so that, by virtue of how important it is, then tells us that if we want to build the circle of trust, those around us who share the same values and the same views, then we must be in a position of making sure that we do that in an aggressive and a proactive way so if we want to bring and associate with those people who have the same sort of values, the two most critical words are trust and respect. You have to ask yourself, are the people that you are doing business with, is the company that you are going to work with one that you can trust and one that you ultimately respect and in turn, will that lead to your being trusted and your being respected?

Rachel Salaman: In the book you talk about threats to trust, can you explain what you mean by that?

Chris Komisarjevsky: You know, inadvertently at various times in our careers we make decisions. Some may be good decisions, some may not be good decisions, but what we need to do is we need to evaluate those decisions against whether or not something that we might be doing would be undermining the trust that we want other people to have in us because it's very simple, you do business with corporations, you do business with other people, you relate to other people, you shake their hands, you look them in the eye and you ask yourself a simple question – do I believe that this individual can be trusted? Will this person live up and do what they said they would do? That is part of the trust environment that you want to circle around you and have encircled around you. Anything that undermines whether people will trust you to do what you want to do is a threat, so the day that you make a proclamation, you make a commitment and you don't live up to it is a threat to the trust. The day that you associate with an organization that doesn't have the same values or doesn't live up to its commitment, that is a threat to the trust and the trust that you want others to have in you. Nothing happens without an individual instinctively, subconsciously or consciously believing I trust you, I believe you're going to do it so I'm going to partner and become part of that enterprise, either because I buy a product or I invest in a company or I go to work for that company.

Rachel Salaman: And there's a really useful section in the book that offers some tips on what to do when you make a mistake. Can you tell us about that, perhaps using an example to illustrate your point?

Chris Komisarjevsky: In the book we talk about there's eight different concepts that you need to put in place when you make a mistake and that goes against a background that we all need to recognize and not shy away from the fact that we're human, we make mistakes, we do things that we're not supposed to do but of those eight, beyond the idea that you have to carve a path for the future which means that you won't make that same mistake again, the first and most critical element is to acknowledge the mistake and, if it's warranted, and most often it is warranted, to apologize. The three words "I am sorry" are the most difficult words for many people to say. It comes out pretty easily when you are talking about someone else and they have had a difficult to situation but when you have to be humble enough to say, you know, I made a mistake, I'm sorry I did it, that is sometimes the most difficult but the most, the words that will create an opportunity for the future but it's hard to do.

Rachel Salaman: So if someone wanted to strengthen their reputation, starting today, what would be your top three tips for them?

Chris Komisarjevsky: I would choose to give you six rather than three because I think it is all part of a continuum of the way we think about this and I think the first is that you need to define your values, you need to be sure of what you stand for and really drill down to make sure that these are values that you would not sacrifice under any circumstances even if it meant losing your job. The second one is to understand that you earn respect, people will respect you when you respect others. Give and you get in return, so respecting others, listening to their views, wanting to know what they think and taking that into consideration, provides a very important framework for strengthening reputation. The third is that authenticity rules. People want to know that they are dealing with a human being not an automaton, they want to know that they are dealing with somebody who understands and sees shades of gray not necessarily everything in black and white and they want to know that you not only care about them but you also demonstrate some things that are very human for yourself so I talk about that in terms of caring and crying, caring about what's going on with other people and that you help them be successful and crying in the sense that you're not afraid to show some emotion when it's appropriate. The fourth is what I call listen first, talk second. It's the concept that you need to engage, don't go into a situation where you are telling other people what to do, go into a situation where you want to make sure there has been a fulsome discussion and then you can make whatever decision you want and share that in a way that's respectful of others views. The fifth is what I call acting fast in the digital world. I talk about it in terms of twelve hours or dead meat. What that means is if your reputation has been attacked on online media, you have very little time with the speed with which information travels to be able to react. If something needs to be said, say it. If you need to apologize, apologize. Move quickly or else you will have lost the opportunity to address anything that's been said, positive or negative. And sixth, which I think underlies everything, is the fact that reputation is your most important job. It starts when you're a teenager, before you go to university, it continues through the rest of your life. Look at what you do and why you do it through a lens that says what will people will think of me and ultimately, does my behavior track with my values, does my communication demonstrate respect and have I generated trust among people so that they will be willing and eager to help us accomplish things together? To me those are the six most critical issues underlying the whole concept of building a reputation.

Rachel Salaman: Chris Komisarjevsky, thanks very much for joining us.

Chris Komisarjevsky: My pleasure, thank you.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Chris's book again is "The Power of Reputation: Strengthen the Asset That Will Make or Break Your Career." I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.