I have been in two conversations this week about reputation management. I am pretty sure that I had never heard of reputation management before this week. It must be “trending”.
What does it mean to manage your reputation? It’s not like we are celebrities or anything. We don’t have teams of PR people putting a positive spin on our actions.
Nope, we have to manage them ourselves.
We do this by doing the right thing. It’s easy to do the right thing when we need to cover our ass or when there is money involved. We don’t give that a second thought. And our lawyer friends have taught us, especially in the HR profession, that our actions have to be defensible. And while that certainly is true, we can do better than that.
- We can stay in touch people from our old jobs and people who have moved on.
- We can make sure we check in on people during difficult assignments.
- We can ask for permission rather than forgiveness when we think things might go off the rails a little.
It might take a little courage but people recognize and appreciate those kinds of actions. And that’s how you manage your reputation.
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