The Power of Reputation

I believe personal reputation is really important, especially in a group setting. In my own committee, I have good reputation because I am really committed, and everyone can see that I am putting a lot of efforts into the group. From the word affirmation from group members, I am really relieved and feel rewarded, and somehow it motivates me more to make further contribution to the committee. From other group members’ standing points, they trust me because of my good reputation, that they are willing to share ideas and opinions with me. I get immediate feedback from group members, and I make them feel ownership that they are more comfortable sharing things with me.

Reputation is earned and it builds over time. Especially for a brand new committee, it takes time to build trust and reputation among group members. What I did all the time is that I tried to maintain great communication with team leaders, and make sure there is direct and indirect communication between leaders and their group members. I talked with executive boards in a regular basis, to make sure they gain something from the leadership role too. At the same time, I also spend some time with regular group members, and make sure their voice and opinions are heard, and even I don’t invent their idea, I will explain in the meeting why it is not applicable, and what case we can implement their plans. At first, it is hard to do it, because it takes a lot of time. But thinking back, I think it is definitely worthy of spending time in communication, and keep track of what is going on in the group. I believe my reputation maintains good because my consistent effort into this type of communication, and the message behind this is that our committee is really open-minded and it is really giving group members to contribute more with more ownership.

To enhance this good reputation among my committee, I also take time to have conversation with them about their own development in career and share my resources with them to help them to move to the next stage. I try to combine their interests with our committee’s mission or task, as well as suggesting them to do something for their own sake. I do it not just for enhancing the relationship with them and reputation for myself, but also just simply enjoy helping other people.

Occasionally, when there is pressure on events or task, I stayed away from it a little bit. There was a time, I pushed an executive board member too hard that she was a little bit overwhelmed, and felt hurt by the way I spoke with her. I took “cash in” because I was more focused on the goal and tight deadline, instead of giving her ownership to do things in her way, and providing her freedom and responsibility to take care of it. Because if she could do the way I wanted her to do, it saved me time and effort of following up and worrying about it. But from her perspective, I behaved like I didn’t trust her at all, and I doubted her ability of doing it, which is not good. In that situation, it was definitely not worthy “cash in” to gain benefit from it. Luckily, because of all the efforts I built over time, she was able to tell me the truth and how she really felt so I tried to avoid doing it again. When it is too stressful, I get a little bit crazy sometimes that I didn’t pay that much attention on people, where might lose my reputation. I learned from that lesson, and tried to be more careful of some details, which can easily erase my good reputation. Good reputation takes time to build, while bad reputation crushes easily.

I would like to share another story in one of my project this semester. We are working on a case that the company is concerned moral situation in workers. There are six people in the same line, doing the same job. Five out of six don’t do the job, and behave like slackly. The only one who is really taking effort in the work got screwed up because he reported five of the other coworkers of their slack work. The manager switched him to another line, but people don’t like him because they all know story about the fact that he will report coworkers to manager. From that employee, he didn’t do anything wrong, that he is considering for company’s efficiency and work force. However, because his reputation is ruined for something he did, which is good, he is isolated among the group. It is sad that the manager didn’t take good care of him, and put him into a position of targeted. A lot of cases like that happened in the company, and there is high possibility that the person will leave the company. My point here is that good behavior might lead to bad reputation too, and you may be screwed up because of good behavior. From the management side, you have to be very careful about it, to protect people’s privacy and make sure they didn’t fall into bad reputation for doing good things.