Taking Control of Your Reputation

Building a great reputation as a leader is crucial to earning respect and trust from colleagues and fulfilling your career goals. Many leaders who have newly entered their role don’t know how to navigate the ins and outs of leadership while making a good impression on others. Here are seven tips on how to build a great reputation as a leader.

Act on Your Intentions: No one can see your intentions, just your actions. Therefore, your reputation is based on your actions, not your intentions. You know that you have the best intentions to help the organization, but you must take the next step. Turn your intentions into a reality by creating an action plan of the steps needed to accomplish the goals. 

Maintain Authenticity: Leaders with great reputations are truly genuine in their actions. If you express your genuine concern for the well-being of your employees and the company, it will positively influence your reputation. Being authentic will also require you to listen to your employees actively. Listen to their feedback, concerns, and suggestions. When employees feel heard, your positive reputation as a leader will increase.

Be Transparent: Leaders with a great reputation will be transparent with their employees. If you can present the good and the bad news to employees, it will build even more trust and respect with them. Keeping everyone in the loop by being honest sometimes will cost you something but, in the end, will gain you a great reputation as a leader people can trust. 

Hold all Team Members Accountable: Having different standards for different team members will make others perceive you as unfair. This becomes especially apparent when some team members are allowed benefits and rewards that others with similar achievements are not. Or, when poor performers are allowed to slide. Holding all team members accountable to the same standards is critical to upholding your reputation. 

Be Friendly, Be Caring… But Don’t be Friends: This is a point that many of our clients like to debate. They strongly feel that leaders can be friends with direct reports and that the other employees should just accept that fact. I’d beg to differ. You should never be friends with your direct reports because, when you are, it becomes even more difficult to make the right business decisions. With that said, you should be friendly and caring to each of your direct reports; hopefully, they will return the favor. Over the years, I’ve noticed that leaders who are friends with their direct reports, tend to need a lot more consulting support to navigate leadership’s white waters.

Share your Positive Vision: Nothing gets employees on board quicker than a leader with a positive future vision. Great leaders communicate a positive, compelling vision of the future and the goals that will need to be achieved to accomplish the vision. Meet with your staff and relate your vision to them and include them in the journey.

Conduct a Leadership 360: Not sure what your reputation is or how others view your leadership? Conduct a 360 Leadership Development Assessment. This assessment will ask you, your manager, direct reports, peers, and internal customers to rate you on leadership competencies. The results will allow you to see how others perceive your leadership as compared to how you envision your leadership. Priceless in the road to building your reputation. You can see where you are doing well, where you could improve, and if you have any blind spots with any group. 

There are two types of reputations for a leader, good and bad. After reading through these tips, look in the mirror and ask, “Am I doing the best I can to be a great leader?” If you don’t know where to begin when building up your reputation, following the tips above may push you in the right direction.