All I Have Is My Reputation (not really)

I was working in a senior leadership position at a thriving business. We were doing well. We were exceeding sales. Because of this, there was probably a bit more latitude for innovation and creativity than there normally would be – where top and second-level leaders, and even the next level below, were given more liberating space to run free and try new things.

As this was going on, I had planned a meeting with a few high-level strategic partners to run some innovative ideas and try to close some really big business.

One of the senior leaders in the organization had heard about the meeting and was surprised that he wasn't invited to attend. I wasn't intentionally trying to box him out, but he felt like I was. He called me out on it and got pretty chippy with me. I immediately went into full attack mode. I was shocked that he was calling out my integrity and my character, and I responded as such: "How dare you assault my integrity. I would never try to box you out of a meeting intentionally." I continued to lob grenades at him. I raised my voice, even to the point of yelling. Other people in the office heard the conversation and ran for the hills. These were two strong personalities going at each other.

Many points could be made about what went sideways here and what led up to this heated interaction. A lot of dissecting could be made about the miscommunication and/or misinterpretations of each other's actions. However, my point today is to illuminate why I got immediately defensive and came out with my guns blazing. It was because I thought he was tarnishing my reputation.

Have you heard the adage, "All you have is your reputation"? I've been mentored around that principle by more than one person, and it stuck with me for years.  

There's a lot of cognitive and sociological understanding that can get me to see the validity of that. There's also a lot of insecurity and junk that can go into that as well.

But here's the bottom line: All you have is your reputation. That's a bunch of rubbish.  

I'm not arguing that you shouldn't care about your reputation. I'm not arguing that you shouldn't do your best to build a good reputation or to manage your personal brand. But as your reputation comes a bit unraveled from other people and their miscues, misinterpretations, misperceptions, or, sometimes, flat-out sabotage of you, your reputation will be impacted. So, no, you don't have your reputation. Not the one that you want, anyway. Not always.

At some point in life, a hit against your character will happen. Ultimately, all you have is this: You’re doing the right thing. Let's unpack that a bit: Are you a liberating leader fighting for the highest possible good of those around you? Do you see that you've been blessed to bless others? Are you somebody who's in the world emptying your cup and not just being a consumer?

If you answer "yes" to all of those questions, that's going to return you a favorable reputation. Usually. But not always.

A couple of years later, it happened. My character and reputation were flat-out assaulted. Lies were said about me. Honestly, this was pretty soul-crushing. It hurt. I lost sleep over it. I had pain in my heart because these things were simply not true.

Plenty of people would argue that I should have gone on the offensive and shot all that stuff down. Instead, I tried to rest in this: I knew who I was and what I had done, and it didn't align with what was said about me. I relied deeply on who I am and who I was created to be: A liberating leader who fights for the highest possible good of those around him, a person who is blessed to bless others, a person who realizes he can’t control others but he can control his own response.

The truth ended up coming out. It usually does. And I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a painful road. It was painful. But YOU, me, we, are more than our reputation. Ultimately, what is most important is our character. Hopefully, we are being liberating leaders who fight for the highest possible good of those around us. Leaders who realize we are blessed to bless others. Leaders that can do the right thing all the time.

So, the question is, how do you handle when someone throws a dart at your reputation? How do you respond? How much does that overtake your life?