Honesty builds toward the reputation you want

“Reputation management” is a concept that makes sense for organizations trying to maintain their brands. Whether they have a strong online presence or not, companies’ and agencies’ reputations are made or broken on the actions of managers or employees, products or services, tragedy or the everyday.

When it comes to individuals, however, “reputation management” starts to sound a bit shady. Reputation and character, after all, are two separate things. If you are managing the thing everyone sees, that implies the underlying character itself must be managed.

Of course, an organization has much less control over its reputation than an individual does over his or hers. An individual, at that point, shouldn’t need to manage anything; it should be second nature.

Second nature online

The problem with online reputation management isn’t the reputation or the person behind it; frequently, it’s the tools. People to whom blogging, tweeting, or status-updating does not come easily find themselves at a disadvantage: people who do it daily may get, and offer, more attention. Which might even translate into more business.

Making reputation management second nature involves making choices, and I don’t mean hiring a company like ReputationDefender or committing social media suicide. (You could, I suppose. But because social media amplify rather than create, consider whether you have an offline reputation you need to work on first.)

As I said on CyberSpeak, reputation management for an individual means honesty. This can take one of a few forms:

Honesty about stupid decisions

So your Facebook account shows incriminating evidence of—well, more than girls gone wild. This post (and accompanying comments) at Shel Holtz’ blog shows how conflicted many people are about whether employers and others have any right to make hiring decisions based on what they see on Facebook.

Note that it’s not about the behavior itself. As many pointed out, partying happens anyway. That it’s now both more documented and more accessible is the issue. Some believe that just because it’s documented doesn’t mean people should be fired or removed from consideration.

Others think if prospective employees are dumb enough to post it publicly, what other poor judgment will they display? (Think about this in terms of information security.)

Best of all: the employee or prospect who comes clean about going wild. No, it won’t guarantee job security. Only the employer can say that. But there is no better way to build character and reputation simultaneously than to own mistakes made. If you do lose a job? Then it’s an opportunity to move and continue to grow.

Honesty about what you know and what you don’t

Reputation for individuals is frequently about knowledge. Whether boss or expert, the person who can admit they don’t know something—and ask for enlightenment from the best qualified person to provide it—wins more respect than the person who tries to hide their insecurity by blaming, posturing, or anything else that makes it painfully obvious they don’t know.

Again, it’s about ownership. And, as with mistake-making, courage to learn. That can be much more difficult when you are in a leadership position. It involves giving up a certain amount of control, making yourself vulnerable to possibly less noble-minded people in your organization or outside of it. Worst of all: if this happens during a crisis.

There are many complicated variables in play here. Making yourself vulnerable through honesty means trusting your team, sometimes the public. What if you can’t trust your team? Well… sometimes that’s about them, but other times it’s about you.

The balance really lies in desire for personal growth vs. job security… but keep in mind, job security is very often flimsier than you think. Posturing and honesty may both get you to the same place, but if you’re fired for being honest, at least you can build your reputation on a positive quality rather than a negative.

Honesty about what you can and can’t manage

It doesn’t make sense to run out and get an account on every social network imaginable, because of the hundreds that exist. Even those of us with fewer than half a dozen accounts have trouble “scaling,” or adjusting the ratio of social networking to our regular work.

You might admire the way other professionals blog their thoughts three times a week, but if you only want to blog because you think you “should,” think about your real reasons. Are you afraid they’re getting business you want? That they appear to know more than you do? Blogging may not be for you. Think, instead, about Facebook pages—they frequently take less work to maintain—or networking via LinkedIn groups or even Twitter.

If, however, you have something to say about a topic no one else is covering, then blogging (or its siblings podcasting and vlogging) is something to consider. And, because it allows for a depth of thought not enabled by quick-fix status update services, it’s a good way to give others a feel for how you think and seek to be perceived in public.

Starting fresh

Trying to wipe out your checkered past is too obvious. As shown in the comments about this judge, attempts just tarnish one’s reputation further.

It would be refreshing to see the dishonest own their troubles rather than try to cover them up or destroy them outright. And I do mean own, not make public apologies no one will take seriously.

The truly repentant act it. That means forming new habits, challenging yourself to push past the more convenient ways of doing things. Unless you’re a sociopath, that kind of challenge can only give you the reputation you so desire.

Image: OliBac via Flickr

I’ve heard this before, just never seen it on the front bumper of a public vehicle. But I want to discuss it in light of how I’m building my business.

Personal branding?

In my blogroll is Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog, a blog I read regularly because it does have good career advice for young people in particular. But I have never been fond of the term “personal branding.” Dan himself theorized why people feel this way: “Could another term downplay the marketing connotation that risks reducing human beings to commodities?”

His answer to that particular concern:

Human beings start off as commodities and by way of personal branding, they can stand for something, achieve greatness and become visible to their audience.

He’s got a point about humans starting as commodities. People young and old do need to learn how to stand out from the rest of the labor force.

Still: branding? Do we have to put people on a par with Pepsi or J. Crew? Kami Huyse writes an even better explanation for those of us uncomfortable with the term: “…it leads to an undue focus on the self rather than developing and communicating character.”

Character as part of a team

Implicitly, what this means is that “personal branding” doesn’t do enough to support “team branding.” When you’re focused on reputation—what you do when others are watching—you’re not working with those others. You’re not part of a unit. You’re doing what you think is the right thing without considering whether it really is the right thing, whether it works for the team. You’re doing the right thing for you.

This is a crucial point when dealing with law enforcement and allied professions like digital forensics. Many of these professionals have the kind of character that deflects individual praise. They’d rather support team efforts. That’s because they know they wouldn’t be where they are without strong community support.

And yet they have great ideas, great talent, which deserves to be noticed so that they can help the wider community. Sometimes professionals know this; they want to go beyond where they’re already known, from law enforcement to the private sector, or focused on a new aspect of their careers.

Others are content just to help their team members and friends via training, doing favors, and such. They wouldn’t mind putting their expertise out there for more to see. It just isn’t a high priority. And that’s character.

Thus, good reputations. Even at times when they thought no one would be watching, someone was. They went the extra mile for a colleague or client, thinking it would stay just between them. And maybe it did. Except that even when loyal friends and fans don’t talk, people pay attention to loyalty.

Promote the mission

Writes Kami Huyse, “A better model is for the company (or individual) to develop strong values that they can live into and put all of their focus on that.” Values are related to missions. The best “personal brands” are those who have missions like, “Find the bad guys and put them in jail.”

Because when there’s a solid mission, and a person who’s devoted to it, they will do whatever they need to to make it happen. They’re not thinking a whit about what’s in it for them. They’re thinking about what they can do to strengthen the team to move as a cohesive goal toward completing the mission.

Professionals don’t just need to be scared into realizing that the Internet is as wide and as public as Times Square. They also need to be inspired to make that square their own digital billboard. Yes, this will be uncomfortable. No one likes to self-promote. Promoting the mission, though, is a whole different story.

What mission can you promote in the online square?

Image: striatic via Flickr