Character Building.
This article is part of Finding the Words, a newsletter that delivers practical insights on the day’s issues.
“Our reputation is at risk.”
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 as an issue among staff members, employees, or customers is mounting. The first instinct in these moments is: “We need to protect ourselves.”
This isn’t necessarily a misplaced instinct, but it has become a signal of something larger within the fabric of organizations—and something I’ve seen intensifying in recent years.
Business books, magazines, and trade press spend enormous amounts of editorial space on reputation management: from 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 is an entire industry, with hundreds 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 millions of dollars monitoring their organization’s reputations via social listening platforms, and individuals spend millions 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 reputation?
John Wooden (1910-2010) may have been onto something here. Wooden, one of the most admired and decorated basketball coaches of all time, knew that reputation was an output of something much more important. “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.”
In the best-selling book Wooden, Coach Wooden comments on how a focus on character vs reputation affected his approach toward competition and how he felt it could be applied in business. As he said:
“While others will judge you strictly in relation to somebody or something else—the final score, the bottom line, or a championship—this 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 are, in fact, deeply 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 that might do for your reputation, and your relationships with others? And how might your reputation over time improve?
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 someone other than yourself? I guarantee that over time, not only will you find more peace of mind, but your reputation will improve, too.
Ready for more? Listen to this article on the Mission Forward podcast.
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