How to build your leadership reputation before you're in the room
If you're a founder, CEO, MD or business owner and you're looking to shorten your sales cycle, secure investment, energise and engage employees, as well as make connections and grow your network, building a strong reputation is important.
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And it's even better if you are already building that before you enter the rooms where your key relationships are shaped and formed.
'If marketing is like asking someone on a date, branding is why they say yes,' Goose Agency founder Tom Pestridge said on LinkedIn recently. And reputation is why they agree to become exclusive. Ensuring that your reputation speaks for you before you enter the room is based on three things: narratives, behaviours and networks.
Build your narratives
People who read management texts, have a communications team or spend a lot of time on LinkedIn are probably tired of hearing that they need to tell stories. Stories have several important functions. Firstly, they serve as connective tissue between humans. They help us build relationships – these are key when growing a business. But in addition to connecting us to others, stories have a reputational function for founders, entrepreneurs and leaders. In his recent book The Narrative Age, Staffbase co-founder Frank Wolf says that reputation consists of narratives, and narratives consist of stories. While his focus is on organisations, it is the same for leaders. 'Narratives enable strategic control over the organization's reputation.
While individual stories are important components of the way in which an organization is perceived, narratives offer a more consistent, coherent and practical approach to reputation management.' This practical approach is what one of my interviewees in We Need New Leaders calls vitamins instead of aspirins. The more stories you tell about yourself now, the more trust you build, the more you grow a healthy immune system for you and your business. Then when the inevitable crisis unfolds – and it will – your immune system (the trust you have built with others) protects your reputation during the crisis.
Owning the narrative about yourself matters. And to do this, you communicate your perspective through a thought leadership practice of personal and business-related stories on channels that reach your intended audiences wherever they might be – LinkedIn, Substack, TikTok – using a delivery method you're comfortable with (written, video, carousels, podcasts, LinkedIn Live or a combination of these).
Behaviours
You've met someone – a boss or a peer – who says one thing and does another. We immediately lose trust. Trust is a verb and needs to be demonstrated in our behaviours. People devastate their reputations if they don't behave according to their words. It's that simple.
And behaving according to your reputation and values can be immensely beneficial. A recent example is ivee co-founder Amelia Miller, whose business is a back-to-work platform for women who've had career breaks. Amelia says that she and her sister Lydia 'built ivee after watching our mum struggle to return to work, ultimately accepting a 60% salary cut for a role far below her qualifications - which offered limited progression. This is a fate shared by 7 out of every 10 UK women.'
It is clearly documented that female founders like Amelia and Lydia do not receive funding at the same rate as male founders do. Atomico's 2024 report showed that only 5% of European Seed funding goes to female founders today. When a new fund called Project Europe was announced, Amelia wrote an emotional LinkedIn post that began, 'Project Europe DO BETTER. The newly announced Project Europe Fund could have been a turning point. Instead, we get the same old story.' She said that the three fund sponsors were all men, that of the 150 founders, only five were women, the investor line-up was almost all men, and eight out of the nine mentors were also men. She continued, 'This is SO dangerous. The start ups getting funded today will build the world we live in tomorrow. And right now, that future is being shaped by an alarmingly homogenous group.'
By calling out a powerful group (in her behaviour), Amelia was adhering to her narrative of supporting women. The post went viral. To date, it has 3,978 responses, 447 comments and 144 reposts. Amelia received 28 inbound requests from VC firms, 12 media requests, 450 new ivee sign-ups and new inbound B2B clients. Since then, she's been interviewed by The Times and the Financial Times. Her behaviour matched her story. But in reputation terms, there was a third ingredient in the mix: her network.
Networks
Amelia is building ivee by having a strong presence online, both on LinkedIn and Tiktok, where she posts regular videos on 'A Day in the Life of a Tech Founder.' Social media, and how you show up, plays an enormous role in the network effect of your reputation. This is why executives in B2B focus of a lot of time and attention on their social media, building a thought leadership practice and making connections that could lead to customer relationships. One CEO I interviewed said he spends up to six hours on social media a week, and that time has increased after he moved into his second CEO role.
Some of our networks are digital; many are in person. What other people say about you in your networks is part of your reputation – the uncontrollable part. However, you have a better chance of having a good reputation in all your networks if your words (stories and narratives) match your behaviours. And having a good reputation before you get into the room matters, because people are more likely to want to do business with you. Referrals, goodwill, new clients – these all happen by word of mouth. You build your leadership reputation by telling great stories, behaving in a way that matches your words (and build trust) and showing up in your networks – in a way that is real and authentic to you. Watch the business flow in.
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