How Your Reputation Makes Business and Life Easier or More Difficult

Do you know that a quality reputation is an asset, a currency that you need and benefit from in life, whether in your personal or professional life? 

Most people don't think about reputation that way, see it that way or believe it yet it's factual and evidential. 

When your are continuously building your reputation, it is like any currency you own and it becomes "working capital" to help make life easier and protect you. The same holds true if you are neglecting your reputation or worse, do damage to it, whether one time or repeatedly, whether in small negative experiences for other people or one large, significant one.

When you have sufficient reputation capital and are always adding to it by building it with high character when you are interacting with others, when you make a relative minor mistake (in the eyes of others) you can better weather the judgment you receive, better than if your reputation is shaky or poor. 

If a reputation crisis hits, and no company or individual is entirely immune, then a high-quality reputation will often allow you to weather the storm if the crisis is not due to an egregrious scandal, if you also respond in a way that is deserving of a lofty reputation.

However, this is where many individuals and organizations compound their misery and either fall short or correcting reputation damage, or they fail.

Communication and subsequent actions, the correct ones for the situation, can help restore or rebuild trust, credibility and reputation. 

People in reputation crisis, individuals and organizations, get lost in emotions and analysis paralysis and rarely respond most effectively for protection or correction or both. That's where a specialist can prove valuable, if not invaluable to assist you on one specific reputation difficulty or crisis, or become an ongoing resource asset for you, or to conduct the communications for you. 

Michael Toebe is a specialist for reputation and crisis - serving individuals and organizations with advisory, consulting, coaching, communications and risk management for reputation and crisis. His published articles have appeared in online magazines Chief Executive, Corporate Board Member, Corporate Compliance Insights and the New York Law Journal. He publishes the Reputation Times newsletter and is writing a book on reputation crisis (expected publishing date, early 2020). You can find him on LinkedIn and Twitter (ReputationTalk).