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Hi, I'm Allison Kluger,
and I'm a lecturer at Stanford's
Graduate School of Business.
I teach a course called
Reputation Management, Strategies
for Successful Communicators, and
I'm going to share the top five
tips from this course that I teach.
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I believe that your reputation
is like an echo.
It precedes you into a room, and
it's what remains behind after you
leave.
Imagine that someone talks about
you before you show up,
wait till you meet Allison.
She's an expert at reputation and
she has amazing tips,
you're going to love her.
Well, then the audience is going to
be predisposed to like me and
appreciate me even before I get to
the room.
And then what is said after I leave
the room is equally as important.
Things like, wow,
she really did a great job, or
I loved how funny she was, or
those tips are excellent.
I've gotta introduce
her to somebody.
That's how your reputation can get
you new business opportunities and
new contacts.
It's not just your primary audience
that you're affecting with your
reputation, it's your secondary and
your tertiary audiences.
It's how someone talks about you
and then it gets passed on, and
passed on.
And that is why your reputation can
really help you if it's
a good one to start with.
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If you or your company is
experiencing a negative reputation
issue, I recommend that you follow
Daniel Diermeier's Trust Radar,
which is out of his book
Reputation Rules.
This framework is excellent for
reputation recovery.
This radar has four axes, and
at the top of it is empathy.
And what this means is
that the first
step is that you show empathy for
whoever feels that they were harmed
or hurt by this reputation issue.
And you take full accountability,
and you show that you're very sorry
for the hurt that was caused.
To the right of the radar
is transparency, and this means
you can't say no comment.
It means you have to give context
to why what happened happened, and
also take accountability, but
explain what was involved.
On the bottom of the radar is
expertise, and this means that
you are going to put whoever is
the most appropriate person and
that they're going to take
the responsibility to fix this.
And finally, on the left
side of the axes is commitment, and
this means you're committed to
making sure everything gets fixed
the way it should, and
providing a timetable so people
know what the expectations are.
If you can hit all these four axes
of the trust radar,
then you can repair a reputation.
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If you have a bad reputation,
there is a way to change it.
And what I always say is,
behave your way out of it.
And what I love about that is
you're never stuck in a reputation,
reputation is fluid.
So take for example,
if maybe you're chronically late,
and everybody thinks it's funny and
quirky at the beginning, but after
a while it starts to get annoying.
And then people think you're being
very disrespectful and it becomes
this fixed bias against you.
You can't just say, you know what,
I'm going to start showing
up early, no one will believe you,
you have no credibility.
So what I suggest is you show up
ten minutes early for
every meeting.
So the first meeting, you're
going to show up ten minutes early,
and people are going to be like,
what are you doing here?
You're early and you'll say,
I know, I'm going to be early from
now on, and they're going to roll
their eyes and say, sure.
Then you're going to come to
the next meeting ten minutes early,
and they're going to say,
still doing that early thing?
And you're going to say, yep,
I'm going to be early every time.
But you'll see by the time you get
to the fourth or fifth meeting that
you've shown up early, all of a
sudden that bad reputation is going
to fade, and this new behavior is
going to become your norm.
And that is how you can change
your reputation by
behaving your way out of it.
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My favorite reputation mantra is,
it's not what happens, it's how you
choose to deal with it.
Because let's face it,
things happen in life,
they're difficulties,
they're challenges, but
it's not what happens to you, it's
how you choose to deal with it that
really sets your reputation apart.
You can make something a moment of
disaster or a moment of triumph.
Let's take the Tylenol scandal of
1982 as an example.
Someone got into some Tylenol
bottles in Chicago and people
were poisoned by cyanide and died.
It was a terrible,
terrible scandal, but what Tylenol
did was really amazing.
They took complete accountability,
they never tried to point
the blame at a random killer.
They said, this is our medicine,
and we're going to take everything
off the shelves.
We're going to give you your money
back, and we're going to do better.
And what they did is they actually
created tamper-proof lids for
all of their medicines from that
point on, turning this moment of
disaster into a moment of impact.
And as a result in all their future
products, they would actually put
a little catchphrase that said,
by the makers of Tylenol,
because everybody knew that Tylenol
had a reputation for commitment,
caring, and safety.
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When you are a leader at work, you
are a role model to everybody else,
and your reputation is a signal of
how you're going to lead.
And imagine that someone has bad
behavior and you're the leader, and
maybe it is actually your boss, or
it's somebody who is an employee.
But they're confronting you,
they're challenging you,
they're yelling at you,
they're blaming you.
What I suggest is instead of rising
to their anger, you sit back,
you take a breath,
and you show compassion, and
empathy, and patience.
They are looking for a fight,
and so when
you don't rise to the occasion and
meet your antagonist where he or
she wants you, you basically take
the wind out of their sails.
And then if you show compassion and
say, hey, you look really upset,
what's going on?
Or, wow, something's bothering you,
how can I help you?
You just change the whole dynamic,
but the important thing
to remember is don't let someone
else's bad behavior
affect the kind of leader you are.
Their behavior should not define
you, stay in control, and
be the best version of yourself,
and you will have a very strong
leadership reputation.
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I have two teenage boys, and
believe it or not, they are so
proud of me.
However, if I say something that
they don't like or they pretend
they don't want to hear,
they'll say, well, you didn't
communicate that very well.
And that's a shame because you're
a communication expert.
Double-edged sword, I say.
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