Are you thinking about your reputation? Maybe you should be.

2011-12-16T09:53:00.000-08:00

In the SEAL Teams, an individual’s reputation is everything, it is his identity among his peers. The SEAL community’s culture promotes this, and it works very well. Sure there are official yearly evals, but they don’t tell much and are written for advancement in rank, not a true representation of how an operator truly operates, his weak points, his strengths, his ability to get along with others, his religion, his family life, his drama, does he do well under fire, can he shoot, what is his job history in other platoons. In an environment where working with the wrong person can literally mean your life, a SEAL’s reputation that precedes him is the only way to know anything about that individual prior to meeting them and working with them. It is a measuring stick, and rarely do they misrepresent. These reputations are built over years of how well you operate, or how not so well you operate. Reputations are spread to everyone, talked about, debated…….but in the 9 year career, it was never wrong. No SEAL I worked with was dramatically different of a person than his reputation that preceded him said it was.

Why is this? Why can you count on what one SEAL says about another SEAL’s ability to operate?

Of course there are a few reasons for this, but first and foremost, SEALs care about their reputations. They embrace this. They know that in an environment where other people’s opinions are important, you had better be on the positive end of those opinions if you want to succeed. I suggest that there should be no difference in the business community. Now more than ever, opinions of the people we touch in our work life matter!

At HicksPro, we hire people who care about their reputations. They want to grow their reputations, they want their teammates and clients and consultants to have a positive opinion of them, to confidently say, I have a good reputation. In the current business hiring environment we are seeing candidates going all the way through a hiring process with a client and get passed on at the end because one of the hiring managers emails a friend who worked with that candidate 3 years ago and it wasn't a glowing response. Does that hiring manager’s opinion represent who the candidate really is? Perhaps, perhaps not. But the fact remains your ability to get hired in this current environment depends largely on your reputation, whether you want it to or not. Everyone is accessible, and with the growth of social media, everyone wants their friends or colleagues opinion to make decisions, and they can get it easily.

Managing your reputation is difficult, and takes constant work. But the first step is to consciously care about your reputation. This seems very basic and general, but is it? Ask yourself, do you really care about your reputation, and have you done things recently or in the past that can hurt your reputation………………were they worth it? And, is there anything negative about starting to care about your reputation?

hickspro

Are you thinking about your reputation? Maybe you should be.