How Can You Take Control Of Your Reputation And Build A Powerful Personal Brand?

Why Should You Be Concerned About Digital Attacks Even If You Live An Honest Life?

Master reputation management with Lida Citroën’s Control the Narrative. Learn actionable strategies to build trust, protect your brand on social media, and repair your image if crisis strikes. Don’t let others define your story. Continue reading to discover proactive steps for taking charge of your narrative and securing the professional reputation you deserve.

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You may not have complete control of how others perceive you, but Lida Citroën, an executive branding and reputation management expert, suggests your influence is greater than you think. In this comprehensive guide to protecting your good name, Citroën offers a step-by-step strategy for understanding, building, and advocating for your personal brand. She also provides advice for rehabilitating your image after someone tries to damage it. Citroën advocates taking proactive steps before you find yourself in a worst-case scenario. Social media have changed the rules, she emphasizes. Executives must develop increased awareness of the dangers lurking in the online universe. Reputation is critical for corporations, institutions, and leaders, so you can’t afford to leave yours to chance.

Take-Aways

• Take proactive measures to prevent someone from hijacking your reputation.
• First impressions leave you vulnerable to misperceptions.
• Trust exerts an enormous influence on perception.
• Don’t allow the market to dictate your narrative.
• The formula for credibility is values plus action.
• Harness social media’s powerful influence.
• Damage control is difficult and time-consuming, but necessary.

Summary

Take proactive measures to prevent someone from hijacking your reputation.

Leaving your reputation to chance is risky in today’s age of pervasive social media, where one click or post can cause irreparable damage. Without knowing the truth, the public often presumes individuals are guilty when allegations of misdeeds or indiscretions appear online. This leaves many people living with an unjustly tarnished reputation for years. You may believe that leading an honest, principled life is sufficient to protect your good name when someone attacks you. In fact, how others perceive you turns out to be the factor that can determine your lasting reputation.

“If you choose to leave to chance that others will see you in the way you desire, I believe you truly give away power.”

If your boss considers you lackadaisical and selfish, he or she will block your path to advancement. You could even lose your job. That’s only one reason to prioritize carefully safeguarding your personal brand. You can’t protect yourself 100% from character assault, since you can’t control other people’s thoughts and feelings, but remaining passive means foregoing crucial opportunities to improve your position in an unpredictable environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the workplace dramatically, forcing industries worldwide to deal with calamitous economic developments. Thousands of people lost their jobs. Countless others started working from home instead of in an office. Entrepreneurs became wary of approaching investors amid the pandemic’s unpredictable financial climate.

In such uncertain conditions, professionals must utilize every available tool and resource to gain a competitive advantage for their companies and themselves. A crucial aspect of that competitive advantage is ensuring that others hold you – and your company – in high regard.

First impressions can leave you vulnerable to misperceptions.

Perception is in the eye of the beholder. People instinctively form positive and negative impressions of others on the basis of their “upbringing, culture, and personal belief system.” All human beings have unconscious biases that influence their feelings toward specific individuals and groups. For example, you may believe the wealthy cheat on their taxes, that people from a specific country excel at mathematics, or that certain politicians are more trustworthy than others. Be aware that such prejudices cloud your objectivity.

“Research provides evidence that we form perception based on conscious and subconscious stimuli or ‘triggers’.”

Your reputation can suffer if you’re not aware of how others perceive you. The “power of perception” means everything in business. That’s why companies put tremendous effort into creating and sustaining consumers’ positive associations with their brands. Similarly, you can employ specific strategies to affect how people feel about you. Almost everyone learned as a child that judging a person on the basis of his or her appearance, mannerisms, tone of voice, or posture is wrong. Nonetheless, judging occurs constantly – particularly on social networking sites. Fickle followers, with quick clicks of approval or disapproval, drive assessments.

Trust exerts an enormous influence on perception.

Trust is an attribute others assign to you, so you have to earn it. When others view you as trustworthy, they give you the benefit of the doubt more often than they suspect you of wrongdoing. People recognize that forming an authentic, balanced relationship with unreliable or dishonest individuals is almost impossible.

“Only other people can call you trustworthy; it’s not enough to say it about yourself.”

Today, loyalty and trust are declining, according to the 2020 Trust Barometer, which the public relations giant Edelman has published yearly since 2000. The report indicates that more than half of people who answered the survey from developed nations don’t think their material circumstances will improve within the next five years. Additionally, more than 50% of respondents worldwide say capitalism now causes more harm than good. This latter belief is only one example of how broken trust in business and personal relationships carries potentially disastrous consequences.

Don’t allow the market to dictate your narrative.

Branding isn’t a priority only for image-conscious corporations and high-profile executives. Anyone seeking to forge a positive self-narrative or company narrative must pay attention to personal branding. With proper execution, personal branding defines and solidifies your values, helps shape your identity, and affects how others perceive you. The branding process enables you to pinpoint your assets and recognize the areas in which you need to improve. Regardless of your profession or experience, you are always competing against similarly qualified individuals. In the global marketplace, you must scrape for every advantage.

“Without a strategic and intentional personal brand strategy, the market defines you.”

Typical professionals aren’t concerned with personal branding when they first embark on their careers. They care more about gaining knowledge, making contacts, and building strong résumés for the next opportunity. Their parents and mentors have told them to believe in themselves, maximize their talents, and not worry about what other people think. Yet the impression you make means a great deal, personally and professionally. How others perceive you influences whether they will find you sufficiently impressive to advocate for you.

When you allow “others to define you,” you surrender the opportunity to advertise your uniqueness. You risk becoming another faceless member of a generic group and, thus, subject to other people’s distorted perceptions or stereotypes. For example, someone might ask a financial planner, “Oh, so you’re like a Suze Orman?”

Once you understand how people perceive you, you can take corrective action to address any negatives and to guide their perceptions in a way that differentiates, builds, and nurtures your public profile. Prior to the 2008 launch of her company, LIDA360, author Lida Citroën worked successfully for many years in corporate marketing and branding. She knew she needed to “inventory her reputation” before making the pivot to being a business owner.

“Starting with what’s in your heart and building to be able to influence how others will perceive you is the power of personal branding”

Citroën considered herself ambitious, competitive, and committed to excellence. Yet the feedback she received from trusted mentors included such descriptions as, “cutthroat, aggressive, and non-collaborative.” These insights, while painful, motivated her to address how others perceived her, within her field and without. This feedback also showed Citroën that her sense of how others viewed her was inaccurate.

The formula for credibility is values plus action.

Formulating your strategy is the most challenging aspect of personal branding. Once you establish that strategy, however, you’ll have a measurable, scalable foundation that informs your actions and decisions. Credibility is the first and most important ingredient in your foundational mix. You can’t accomplish anything unless people trust you. Credibility is a combination of values and action. Your values represent “what you stand for” at your core. If you could not live according to one of your deeply held values, you wouldn’t feel like yourself.

“Enlisting others to give you feedback on your reputation and brand is terrifying for most professionals.”

Values are totally subjective. In assessing her values before she created her business, Citroën determined that “gratitude and generosity” topped her list. But values require action: You must live them. People view with great suspicion politicians who promise sweeping change, but then carry out only spotty advocacy. Your self-evaluation should include a “brand survey” that reveals how others perceive you, and whether their feelings align with how you view yourself.

To that end, an email to “trusted advisers, influencers, and stakeholders” might include these questions.

• How would you describe me and my reputation in five words?
• What type of opportunities would you refer me to?
• What makes me stand out?
• For what reasons would you seek my advice?

Seeking feedback is a leap of faith for many leaders. You’re not trying to find out how others perceive you as a professional. You’re asking others to evaluate you as a human being. This prospect seems frightening, but what you can learn often proves extraordinarily helpful. For example, you may not realize that you avoid eye contact during conversations – or that others haven’t seen evidence of your passion for social justice. You don’t necessarily have to act on every piece of feedback you receive. Focus on the information that advances your personal brand.

“Your target audience is the individual or group of individuals to whom your brand needs to be relevant and compelling.”

Feedback is only one aspect of building your brand strategy. You must identify your target audience – the people who care about what you’re offering. To illustrate: A luxury automobile dealership wouldn’t target young drivers who can’t afford its product or people who prefer modest vehicles. Entrepreneurs seeking capital target investors, executives who like them, and media influencers who cover their sector. Similarly, if you’re seeking a better job, you’d reach out to recruiters, your network connections, and those you can count on for strong referrals.

Harness social media’s powerful influence.

Social media revolutionized reputation management. Platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn provide unprecedented exposure for professionals worldwide. The internet is one of the most potent weapons in your personal branding arsenal. The world is your audience. People can scrutinize your online presence anytime to decide whether to reach out to you. Social media exposure is both scary and enormously powerful.

“When someone has a thoughtful, consistent, and authentic online persona, audiences learn to trust what they see and read.”

Keeping your brand in mind when you use social media should prevent you from posting inappropriate material or dubious commentary. Make sure you use language and terms relevant to your desired audience. Ease the way for others to find you and to understand your perspective. Determine which social media platform best suits your needs. LinkedIn primarily serves the business community, but if you suspect your target customers are heavy Facebook users, establish both a personal and a public page. Another option is Instagram, which requires users to include a visual element with their text.

Damage control is difficult and time-consuming, but necessary.

It doesn’t take much to tarnish your good name. An ill-advised post on social media or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, can seriously damage your reputation and send your career into a tailspin. Reputation repair is challenging and takes time, but if you have a problem you must be proactive instantly or risk having unflattering information following you.

“Today, anyone with access to the internet has the power to begin, participate in, or fuel conversation, negatively or positively.”

Reputation repair begins by determining the extent of the damage. Is someone intentionally trying to ruin you, or is an internet troll merely looking to start trouble? Ignoring the situation will not make it go away. You must deal with it. On the other hand, resist the temptation to lash out emotionally. Also beware the urge to shut down all your social media accounts.

A rapid defensive response often plays right into an agitator’s hands. Take your time. Decide what you need to be accountable for, what things don’t require a response, and whether apologies are necessary. You also should determine if legal action is appropriate.

About the Author

Lida Citroën is an executive branding and reputation management specialist.