Two Reputations

Think you have a reputation? Actually, you have two.

Your two reputations – one personal, one professional – while different in source, are tightly intertwined. Each is of great importance, and each affects the other.

Much like your physical fitness, the state of a reputation is solely up to you. You can have coaches and trainers, but the hard work is on you, alone. A great reputation doesn’t “just happen”. If you don’t approach them purposefully and with discipline, neither your personal nor your professional reputation will grow to anything like their potential. On the other hand, loss or diminution of reputation takes no planning and little effort.

Notwithstanding the talk about reputation taking a lifetime to build, but only an instant to destroy, that’s not entirely true. The “lifetime to build” part is true, but the “instant to destroy” part is mostly not the case. Most of us are like the iceberg, ten percent visible and ninety percent below the surface. Generally when some seeming paragon of virtue “snaps under the circumstances”, it’s because there was already more than met the eye in the hidden ninety percent. This is equally true for both types of reputation.

Almost without exception, truly great professionals enjoy towering reputations on both fronts, and this is no surprise. A person with a stellar reputation as a great human also possesses the wisdom and the work ethic to be their very best “on the job”, and that is how exceptional professional reputations are built.

It works in both directions. Those professionals who are at the top of their game don’t spend their time swamped in the minutiae of grunting, boring, enervating busy work. The reason they get good work is because they do good work. They get interesting work because they do interesting work, and they are invariably well compensated for doing so. But this is cyclical: because they’re well compensated for doing interesting work, they have time, energy, and resources for life outside the office, where they continue to contribute to friends, family, and community, thus building their personal reputations. It’s a virtuous circle.

Building the very best professional reputation doesn’t happen mindlessly. You can’t just wish it into existence. It’s a deliberate, purposeful, and long-term project. In fact, it never ends. To the last day of your professional life, you’re building (or destroying) your reputation.

Reputation is not the same as branding. You can buy branding, pay for search engine optimization, have a slick website, sponsor sports teams, whatever, all of which can be effective if you’re running a commodity business like McDonald’s. But if you do custom, one-off, unique work, branding’s sole purpose is to support your reputation and to let people know where to find you. Nobody calls Boots and Coots because they saw an advertisement, but because they have a raging oil well fire and everybody in the oil business knows Boots and Coots by reputation.

Reputation may seem to be what you’re known for, but in substance it’s really about who you are, what you do, and how you do it. It is laid down board by board whether you’re being watched or whether you’re not.

Professional reputation is nearly impossible to create if you are not in the place of Alignment with your Giftings. When you’re doing the things you love to do and at which you excel, professional reputation rises naturally, almost effortlessly. When your work seems more like play, how can you not shine?

But if you want to supercharge the growth of your professional reputation, one of the most effective things you can do is to share your knowledge and expertise with colleagues, students, and the public. If you are a chef, for example, nothing creates reputation quite like showing others how to replicate your masterpieces, and nothing enhances a lawyer’s reputation quite like producing interesting, useful, provocative writing on your specific area of law. It’s no coincidence that the most successful in all professions are also those who teach leading-edge capabilities to their colleagues.

As it happens, almost invariably those with the most stellar professional reputations are also renowned for being “good people”, men and women who give generously to the community, find quality time for family and friends, and most importantly, time to invest deeply in their own mental, spiritual, and physical wellbeing.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.