Your reputation speaks first.

Edition 02 of 'Reputation means business' came out of a lunch, a partnership announcement, and a late evening post that started more conversations than expected. Three different moments with the same question underneath: what does your reputation say about you when you are not there to explain it.

This month had a theme that showed up in a lunch conversation, in a partnership that was taking shape behind the scenes, and in a post I wrote late one evening that turned out to be the one that started the most conversations.

The question underneath all three was the same: what your reputation says about you. The person you are in person versus the one others see in public appearances. What remains when the role and the company are gone. Whether visibility is building what you think it is.

The public leader versus the real one.

Earlier this month I wrote about the gap between how executives present publicly and who they actually are in person. The polished version versus the real one. I did not expect to find such a clean illustration of the opposite so quickly.

I had lunch recently with the CEO of a private bank. The person across the table was exactly who you would find if you read anything he had written or heard him speak publicly. The same opinions, the same directness, the same personality in conversation as in any public appearance.

That kind of consistency is rarer than it should be at senior level. It is also the foundation that everything else in your reputation is built on.

What remains when the company and title go.

Career transitions expose something most executives do not see coming. Whether stepping into a new role, navigating a departure, or figuring out the next chapter, the credibility was there, so was the track record and the relationships built over the years.

What is often underestimated is how little of that travels, because much of it was living inside the walls of the organisation. When the title is gone, the company backing has disappeared and the context has changed, what remains is what was built independently. For many, that is less than they assumed.

That is why I am partnering with LHH ICEO, the executive career advisory practice of The Adecco Group, as Strategic Advisor to support their executive community across Europe. Reputation is at its most exposed and most needed in these moments. 

If you have not looked at it deliberately yet, it is a good time to start. The strategic layer is the foundational work that makes all the activity land faster and go further.

Doing more does not build more trust.

A lot of advice tells leaders to be more visible. Post more, go to more events, just do more. The frustration that follows is predictable: more activity, the same results. People see you more but cannot quite place you, conversations start and go nowhere.

Visibility only works if the people you are trying to reach are clear on what you stand for, how your thinking speaks to their challenges, and how they can relate to what you specifically add. That starts with how clear you are. 

The question worth asking first is what you want to be known for, by whom, and what makes your perspective distinct. When that is clear, everything else falls into place.