Character Building • Finding The Words

About This Episode

Character building may not help you in the moment of crisis. But, what could it could do for you if you started investing back into your own character-building today? Because character-building may be the very best way to maintain your reputation for the long term.

This week’s episode comes from the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights directly to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.

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• Episode Transcript

  Carrie Fox: Hey there, and welcome to the Mission Forward podcast, where each week we bring you a thought provoking and perspective shifting conversation on the power of communication. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified b corporation. Today, I'm bringing you a short form episode drawn from my weekly Wednesday column. If you like what you hear, I hope you'll head over to missionforward.us.

  Sign up to get these insights straight to your inbox each and every Wednesday morning. You can also help me by forwarding the show to a friend and giving it a 5 star rating wherever you're listening right now, which helps make sure the content gets out to more people who can benefit from it. Now enough of that. On to today's show, character building. Quote, our reputation is at risk, end quote.

  This is one of the most common lines that I hear from executives and leaders who reach out seeking communications counsel. Often, the call comes as a crisis is looming or an issue among staff members, employees, or customers is mounting. The first instinct in those moments is we need to protect ourselves. This isn't necessarily a misplaced instinct, but it's become a signal of something larger within the fabric of organizations and something I've seen intensifying in recent years. Business books, magazines, trade press, they all spend enormous amounts of editorial space on reputation management.

  From the coverage of high profile CEOs and politicians who have tarnished their reputations to reporting on the reputation of companies and countries in the face of crisis or public scrutiny. Reputation management, it's an entire industry with 100 of agencies specializing in the service and millions of Google search results on any given day. No surprise then that this obsession with reputation trickles down to our own personal and professional behaviors. Organizations spend 1,000,000 of dollars monitoring their organization's reputation via social listening platforms, and individuals spend 1,000,000 of hours doing the same just to see what others are saying about them. We care so much about what others think and say about us.

  What if we redirected even a small portion of that energy to managing something greater than our reputation? John Wooden. He may have been onto something here. Wooden, who was one of the most admired and decorated basketball coaches of all time, knew that reputation was an output of something much more important. In his words, he said, be more concerned with your character than your reputation because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

  Oh, I love that so much. In his best selling book, Wooden, coach Wooden comments on how a focus on character versus reputation affected his approach toward competition and how he felt it could be applied in business. And here's what he said. While others will judge you strictly in relation to somebody or somebody else, The final score, the bottom line, or a championship, that is neither the most demanding nor the most productive standard. The highest, purest, and most difficult standard of all, the one that ultimately produces one's finest performance, and the great treasure called peace of mind is that which measures the quality of your personal effort.

  One of the best ways to manage our reputation and more importantly, to achieve that treasured peace of mind likely stems from lessons we learned in elementary school. As children, we began the process of understanding, caring about, and acting on core ethical values, such as respect, moral courage, civic virtue, and responsibility for self and others. And then somewhere along the way, those character building lessons slowed just as our interest in reputation began heating up. Building our character and building our reputation have become disconnected when they're in fact deeply connected. Building our character, building our reputation, they've become disconnected when they're in fact very connected.

  While character building may not help you in the moment of crisis, think about what it could do for you if you started investing back into your own character building today. If you or your organization started filling up your character bank with goodwill, what might it do for your reputation and your relationships with others? And how might your reputation over time improve? Because here's the bottom line. Character building may be the very best way to maintain your reputation for the long term.

  Consider what you can do today, this week, or this month to fill up your character bank. What small ways can you focus your energy on something other than yourself? A guarantee that over time, not only will you find more peace of mind, but your reputation will improve too. And that brings us to the end of another episode of mission forward. If you like what you heard today, I hope you'll stop right now and give this show a 5 star rating wherever you are listening to this podcast.

  Maybe even forward it to a friend who you think would enjoy today's conversation. And, of course, check out the show notes for all of the links referenced in today's show. Mission Forward is produced with the support and wisdom of Pete Wright and the True Story production team as well as the wonderful Sadie Lockhart of Mission Partners. You can learn more about our work over at missionforward.us, and, of course, reach out to me anytime at carrie@mission.partners. Thanks for tuning in today, friend, and I'll see you next time.