What makes your reputation great

Theory suggests that autonomy within an organization will increase if an individual has a powerful personal reputation because organizations feel less of a need to monitor that person’s activities as closely as they might otherwise. In addition to receiving increased autonomy, individuals with strong personal reputations may also be rewarded with increased power. Such phenomena occur because of the desire of others to be identified or associated with individuals who have positive personal reputations. 

Career success is yet another outcome of personal reputation. One study showed that workplace achievements are based more on social factors than they are on objective performance measures. This suggests that those with powerful reputations are able to use them in a way that influences those around them. Furthermore, even when objective measures are utilized, personal reputation has been shown to be related to actual performance.

On the other hand, people might develop positive social reputations for being likeable, but audiences may not see likeability as a reason to grant such rewards. Likewise, some individuals who possess great technical skill may gain a certain level of autonomy, but may not necessarily advance in their chosen career. Although reputation has been shown to be typically advantageous, it does not automatically equate to success.

Q. Are all the aspects of one’s reputation observable?

In the research on personality, identity and reputation are considered separate aspects of the personality. Reputation is the outward part and identity is that internal world. There are definitely parts of people that others don't have access to. Just think about how people process emotions. Research shows that when your reputation matches how you see yourself, people are happier. 

Q. What are some of the key components of a great reputation?

In terms of the workplace, the thing people care most about is task performance. My Rotman colleague Maria Rotundo has studied this and found that people care about an individual’s ability to perform the various aspects of a job and do them well. The research also shows that reputation can be based upon more than just the tasks that one performs as part of their job. It can also be based, for instance, on social aspects such as being ‘the life of the party’ or having a high degree of integrity. When considering social reputations, research suggests that those who are highly politically skilled often develop social reputations in which they are fast-tracked—sometimes beyond their technical abilities.

There is also a darker side to reputation that Maria has studied: ‘counterproductive’ work behaviour. Are you aggressive with co-workers? Are you bullying people? These are things that get weighed heavily in the workplace.

Q. Can people proactively manage their reputation?

There's a lot of research on ‘impression management’—whereby people proactively try to manage the way they're seen or project a particular reputation as a way to gain status. This is a key aspect of workplace politics. People ‘manage’ their reputations for good reasons and bad. For some, it can be pretty Machiavellian. They will be manipulative and use whatever means necessary to make themselves look good.  Impression management isn’t always bad; if you're trying to build a reputation for positive organizational ends, that isn’t necessarily problematic. 

Social media is a relatively new phenomenon in the area of reputation. Social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn enable people to connect and share information about themselves and their organizations with a large number of others online. These platforms have the potential to empower individuals and have some effect over their personal reputation. For example, they allow individuals to strategically manipulate their reputation by regulating the type of information that they display to others (i.e. ‘signaling.’) Social media can also help to satisfy the need to belong because it allows individuals to embed themselves within a community of relevant others.

Also read: How to build innovation and trust at scale

Q. What if someone feels that their reputation is unwarranted or unfair? 

There isn’t much research on this, but I would say in these cases, a useful thing to do is to start by taking stock of the situation. Ask yourself, ‘Is there something I should be attuned to that I might be missing?’ Next, figure out where the reputation is emanating from. Did a particular person or group make a harsh judgment of you about one particular thing that happened? In some cases, you can then address it directly. Say to the people involved, ‘I know I have a reputation for this, but I think it's coming from this one thing, and I’d really appreciate another chance.’ 

Q. Reputations exist within a defined context, whether it be a family setting, a friendship setting or a workplace setting. Are they usually consistent across contexts?

Reputations exist within the social norms and values of a particular context. In order to understand how reputations occur, you need to look at the behavioural norms of the context. What might be unusual in one organization or family may be very commonplace in another.

My co-author Samuel McAbee and I just submitted a study that looks at this on a large scale. We found that there is definitely an overlap between the different contexts. The way family members or friends see a person lines up reasonably well with how their colleagues see them. There can be parts of the way your friends see you that are different from how others see you, but we did find consistency overall.

Someone’s personality can be judged from two different perspectives: by the person themself and by someone else. We also found that self-judgments and judgments made by others show some agreement, but it is typically moderate. That is, there are some things about our personality that everyone agrees on, but there are also things that only we think about ourselves (our identity) or that only others think about us (our reputation). For example, other people can only observe what we do and say, whereas only we also know what we are thinking and feeling. 

Q. Tell us a bit about your TRI Model.

Our Trait, Reputation, Identity Model defines three different areas of insights that can exist for a target individual. The trait ‘bucket’ contains knowledge that both the self and others share. The identity bucket contains the target’s unique self-perception—insights that only the target holds and does not share with others. And the reputation bucket contains insights about the target that are shared by others but are independent of the target. 

Q. What are some quick ways to damage a reputation?

I touched on counterproductive work behaviour earlier. Those things swing reputations pretty quickly. This includes any kind of interpersonally-directed counterproductive behaviour towards other people. Once you've broken trust on this front, it's really hard to get it back. There is also organizationally-directed counterproductive behaviour, which can range from minor things like absenteeism and withholding effort to theft, sabotage and vandalism.

Q. You have found that gossip plays a significant role in reputations. Tell us a bit about that.

Although an individual is able to control his or her actions and may thus has some influence over their reputation, it is ultimately determined by an audience of others. And one of the primary mechanisms by which an audience determines a reputation is by observing deviations in behaviour that go beyond what organizational norms prescribe. In such cases, the audience transfers these observations to others by disseminating gossip. Unlike information that is received directly from an individual attempting to create their reputation, information received through gossip is more readily believed and accepted by an audience. 

Although gossip may be viewed as a negative aspect of organizations, in the context of personal reputation, it is a necessary component. Gossip contains an evaluative component regarding its subject, and this is crucial for developing and maintaining a reputation. 

Q. What do great individual reputations do for an organization?

Because there is often uncertainty as to the level of trust that should be granted to an individual employee, organizations look to reputations in order to decrease ambiguity about the individual. For example, if someone has a reputation for successful innovations, it can be assumed that this behaviour will continue once they join a new organization. 

‘Signaling’ is another benefit of reputation-building that is shared by both individuals and the organization as a whole. Like individuals, organizations can signal their intentions though actions. For example, the entry of an individual with a positive reputation sends a positive signal to the audience. In the marketing arena, positive signaling communicates a message to consumers and competitors that the organization is responding to market expectations. 

Back when Apple’s sales were slumping in 2005, the company brought back Steve Jobs, and the market responded positively. Jobs was known as an innovator, a reputation that Apple was losing at the time. By associating themselves with him, Apple was able to ‘signal’ its intent to ramp up innovation.

Q. After analyzing copious amounts of research in this arena for your recent paper, you and Professor McAbee created a framework that integrates the individual and organizational bases for personal reputations.  Please describe it for us.

We organized all the findings into three elements of a ‘reputation framework.’ The first covers all the ‘internal drivers’ that propel an individual to develop and maintain a personal reputation.  This covers how individuals foster images of themselves that they wish to strategically present to an audience. This image is driven by a need for self-esteem, a sense of belonging and a desire for rewards. 

The second part of the model looks at the organizational environment and the role it plays in the development of reputations. It offers the ‘context’ for the reputation in that it provides the norms against which the individual is judged. That is to say, when the individual deviates positively from the norms in an attempt to develop a positive reputation, others consider that individual within the context of the values of the organization. 

The final section of our model looks at all the positive outcomes for both the individual and the organization. The majority of prior examinations of reputation have explored the personal benefits of holding a positive reputation, but we found both positive outcomes for the individual and the organization. The latter include the ability to predict future behaviour and the effects on others of ‘basking’ in the glory of a high-reputation employee. There is a widespread desire to be associated with people who have a powerful reputation. And it’s not simply about gaining rewards for oneself; research suggests that there is a primal human drive to be associated with such individuals.

Brian Connelly is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Management in the Department of Management at the University of Toronto-Scarborough, with a cross-appointment to the Organization Behavior and HR area at Rotman. His recent co-authored paper, “Reputations at Work: Origins and Outcomes of Shared Person Perceptions,” was published in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behaviour. The complete paper, including all citations, is available online.