Control the Narrative:  The Executive's Guide to Building, Pivoting and Repairing Your Reputation, by Lida Citroen, Kogan Page 2021

Do you know what your "brand" is, your reputation?  

Scandal!  Lawsuits!  How many politicians and execs can you name who need to read Citroen's instructions for rebuilding their reputation?  Not to mention that a rebuild takes time and energy - and sometimes $$ - it's smarter and easier  to build and maintain a good reputation in the first place.  Just one mishandled event can shatter it all and its a hard, hard road back.  

Sometimes a crisis can be managed, reversed from becoming a potentially damaging scandal - like Johnson and Johnson's 1980s Tylenol poisoning crisis  - into a heroic stand in which we are all victims, and we all fight back.  That's a very positive turnabout result from what could have been terminal for Johnson & Johnson.  As Ralph Nader proved with Unsafe at Any Speed, his ground-breaking examination of safety in the automotive business, reputations cost money and concentrated public scrutiny does as well.  

But if you're interested in scaling the reputation question down to a personal level, Citroen's detailed suggestions, supported by memorable case stories drawn from her practice can be a lifesaver, a swim ring heaved overboard to a struggling swimmer.  Believe it or, reputation coaches and managers can now draw on a specific toolkit to craft just the right strategy.  Included in Citroen's toolkit are these basics:

*  How branding works to manage reputation and perception

*  How to manage optics and executive presence

*  Creating a personal brand agreement

*  Taking control of reputation

*  Reputation repair

*  Reputation risk management

Take a look at Chapter 6, "Repairing Your Reputation," for a great case on gaslighting, the situation in which a perpetrator manipulates the confidence and self-esteem of a victim or recipient, causing the victim to question himself, and fall back from a strong reputation and self-confidence position.  What may have started with a few well-directed jabs can roll into extremely destructive  loss of self-esteem, depression and anger, as well as bad responses, bad choices and a waylaid future path.  That's what happened to Peter, an aspiring and talented software architect who was gas-lighted at several key points during his life - by a father who belittled his son's ambitions, and later a boss who bullied Peter and then stole his designs AND CODE!    

With coaching and much new hard work Peter slowly rediscovered and recommitted to being the person he knew he was.  Filled with self-doubt and wavering confidence, it seemed that the computer engineer needed to start over in life, re-seeing people and relationships for what they really were and their true intent.  One big change on his life coach's to-do list was to surround himself with only positive people; another recommendation was to volunteer to help others.  Mindfulness training and frequent professional coaching continued to reinforce his fragile confidence, and even after leaving the company, texts and emails from his bullying former boss, who predicted that the engineer would never achieve his dream of owning his own software company, continued to be a challenge..  Peter had to feel strong enough to dismiss these jabs and to delete those people who clearly did not have his best interests at heart.  

The author offers advice on managing your social media reputation.  She recommends, for instance, that professionals carefully observe how Google and other apps work because in terms of simple reputation maintenance it is important to not underestimate the far-reaching and instantaneous power of the media.  Illustrating with four frightening client examples, we see how big social media problems can be tackled despite a seemingly overwhelming push to create negative news, thereby destroying a reputation.  It's a situation none of us want to find ourselves in, but nevertheless, as her client stories show us, a challenge - a warning -  that everyone who accesses social media risks. 

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com