What Do You Value More: Reputation or Character?
Your character is set at an early age — choices you make effect you for the rest of your life.
A little quiz for you.
- What can we influence but never control?
- What is both critically important to us and at the same time utterly trivial?
- What can take effort, patience and time to build, but destroyed in a single misstep?
- What is fragile, but requires constant feeding?
- What represents a great marketing strategy, without condemning the competition?
In all five questions, the answer is reputation. A good reputation will inspire other people, especially a positive role model, whether it’s someone we know or someone “we know by reputation only”.
You may ask, why should I care about what others think of me? Aren’t they entitled to their opinion?
Correct, anyone can have an opinion, and we can’t control how or what others perceive or believe about our reputation.
Critical alignment of reputation in business
Even without controlling others’ perception of us, this opinion remains vitally important to many.
How so? Firstly, let’s think about the critical alignment your reputation has if you’re in business. Does this align with your business, or your branding?
Is your reputation the basis for the public’s belief in your product? Are all your marketing and strategic efforts directed toward a “squeaky clean persona” of who you are and what you stand for in the marketplace? Especially the online marketplace?
I’m sure there are entrepreneurs you can name who fit this persona.
Think about the many times we’re inclined to change our mind when we read or see behaviour that doesn’t concur with our image of this person.
Or how we’re influenced by gossip and innuendo about someone we haven’t met or communicated with.
Can we be certain of someone’s reputation when we’ve only read about their bad reputation online, or by someone else giving us the story.
Secondly, we may even wonder if their reputation aligns with their ego.
Why else would a reputation be considered fragile? If the person is true to themselves then shouldn’t the foundation of who they are and what they stand for speak volumes to us all?
Well, no, and less now than in the previous century. Heroes are like fly in fly out (FIFO) workers on contract.
Think about a fashion model or an influencer, especially one who dominates social media. Although their reputation can take some time to build and establish them as a credible source of power or authority, one hint of disloyalty to fans, one awkward misstep in an interview and they become old news.
Here in Australia, we saw this example in the last decade quite frequently, through the top position in politics. The highest seat of our democratic reputation may be respected, but the door to the office revolves, and unfortunately some of the incumbents are found to have “feet of clay,” and no credibility or skill for the powerful position.
Irrespective of a lifetime spent living with a blemish-free reputation, their grip on the reins of the country can remain tenuous. One misstep and they stumble, replaced by another, and with a reputation left in tatters, they move to the back benches or into obscurity writing their memoirs.
There’s a new breed of entrepreneurs or “reputation makers” who work with these incumbents to influence the feelings of voters. For example, a very skilled Chief Adviser may manage any errors of judgment in the office; ensure press releases are maintaining the image of the reputation; or even manage positive efforts in public speaking skills to eliminate the distracting audible pause.
Enter the enterprising manager
The concept of advisers/managers is not entirely new. Publicity managers have been diligent in managing or “spinning” gossip about politicians, high profile businesses, or celebrity clients for decades. Traditional social media marketing management includes the monitoring, engaging and listening to customers on social media sites, to influence public perceptions and promote the sale of products. An online fabrication or a business undergoing a product recall may imply there is no comeback at all from a loss of trust or a negative reputation.
Management is now a burgeoning business, targeting influencers and the emotions of their followers. Online Reputation Management (ORM) firms will offer to remedy a negative online reputation for you as easily as changing your outfit.
An online fabrication or a business undergoing a product recall may imply there is no comeback at all from a loss of trust or a negative reputation.
Exercising influence
Reputation is a noun originating from the 14th Century, meaning the common opinion that people have about someone or something: the way in which people think of someone or something.
Although our reputation is an external factor and lives a very real existence apart from us, Alex Lickerman M.D. writes,
Even those of us with resilient self-esteem live in a great social network and need a good reputation for practical purposes — friendship and income chief among them…
[O]ur reputation is a tool — not, hopefully, for creating or maintaining our self-esteem but for practical navigation through daily life. A good reputation smooths out the journey somewhat, and a bad one causes doors to slam in our face and tests our confidence in ourselves.
But we can exercise considerable influence over how others view us, particularly through our behaviour. You may ask if reputation is so easy to tear down then why bother? Why bother indeed.
What’s more important than our reputation?
If our reputation isn’t the right fit, or not needed, then what?
Why not something more credible, more enduring, more realistic, more authentic? And blessed with values.
Character. The specific qualities of an individual. The mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.
We know a person can have either a positive or negative character. We also know we’re drawn by our nature to those with positive characters. We appreciate and consider them as role models for others in our society. We want to emulate them.
What are the qualities a person needs to cultivate for this recognition and appreciation? Specific qualities, such as honesty, morality, integrity, faithfulness, kindliness, purity of actions. You’ve no doubt noticed that these are qualities based on beliefs, not personality traits, which research has shown to be easier to recognize than character traits, immutable and determined by hereditary.
Conversely, character traits based on a person’s beliefs (or not), can change although it’s more difficult than most realize.
Judgments, observations and assumptions
We can and do form judgments about another’s suitability for roles in our lives such as employee, friend, lover. The problem with these judgments is that we may confuse behaviour we observe as attractive personality traits and manufacture those traits into positive character traits for this person. They may be outgoing, confident and fun, and we translate this into thinking they’re honest, moral and kind.
Lickerman says the assumption is often wrong, as
…unconsciously we want to like people we already like, and the most reliable way to assess a person’s character is laborious and time-consuming… we actually need to observe people in character-challenging situations in order to make reliable deductions about their character… because the beliefs that drive us to do things like lie easily, or tell the truth, are present in us at all times. They may remain “dormant” until circumstances stir them up in such a way that they motivate observable action, but they’re rarely hidden away deliberately.
Is there a secret to building a good reputation?
It’s not really a secret.
- Simply become the person who deserves one
- Care about your reputation and let others think as they do
- Embody the characteristics others will associate with you
- Let others discover in you, qualities such as honesty, loyalty, determination, and a fondness for ethical effort, by living these qualities.
William Hersey Davis writes,
Reputation is the photograph; character is the face.
Reputation comes over one from without; character grows up from within.
Reputation is what you have when you come to a new community; character is what you have when you go away.
Your reputation is learned in an hour; your character does not come to light for a year.
Reputation is made in a moment; character is built in a lifetime.
Reputation grows like a mushroom; character grows like the oak.
A single newspaper report gives you your reputation; a life of toil gives you your character.
Reputation makes you rich or makes you poor; character makes you happy or makes you miserable.
This process of identifying and more importantly living your character and your virtues is a lifelong journey. Even the best of us won’t come close to living perfectly. But, does that mean we shouldn’t try?
What do you value more: reputation or character?
