When we are told, “I have a really bad reputation”, our inevitable first question is, “Well…how bad is it?”
The responses we get will obviously vary, but it’s surprising by how much they can cover the full range of what you could possibly imagine. The next questions we ask will try to clarify whether it is a personal issue or a professional issue if that hasn’t been defined by the first answer.
Either scenario can certainly affect the other, but it’s important to identify the nature of the problem as soon as possible. Situational clarity in reputation repair is crucial.
In this post the focus is on individuals with “personal” reputation issues. If you are an individual, but have more pressing “professional” reputation issues, you options are probably a bit more involved and beyond the scope of what we cover here.
We have an upcoming post that will help you with that in more detail as professional reputation issues are usually more complex and can include personal issues, too.
The sensitivities of personal reputation issues
As an example, a person extremely sensitive to how they are seen by others might consider a bad reputation to include getting criticized for one or more flaming forum, Twitter or Facebook posts. If surrounded by valued peers in such a scenario, the opinion of others could be defining factors in how bad the situation is for them.
In another case, the father of a son accused of rape who contacted us had a totally different situation to deal with. Various aspects of his son’s future were clearly held in the balance of what could be done – including whether his son was actually guilty of not.
With personal reputation issues (and most others) it is important to be able to step outside the situation and see it from different angles. If you are truly wanting to resolve a problem, you must be willing to see it from the viewpoint(s) of the others involved.
Being sympathetic is not always productive. Sympathy seldom does more than help a person justify continuing feeling sorry for themselves. Wallowing in sympathy is not a good place for anyone to be.
Alternatively, being empathetic shows that you understand the situation and are open to right the wrong or make things better. And if you feel you were the victim, empathy might be the most you can expect from your offender.
If you think you have reputation issues and want to try to remedy the situation on your own, here are a few links to suggestions from other sites – some of which are better than others depending on what you are up against:
- Get rid of your bad reputation
- Bounce back from a long-time bad reputation
- How to make a comeback after you’ve let people down.
- How to rebuild a bad reputation
Again, the above are more useful for personal issues than professional or business issues. But even then we’ve found that many of the more complex professional and business reputation situations are often caused by issues we have as individuals – not always by corporate rules, regulations, policies or procedures alone.
Having a bad personal reputation often centers around bad choices, your self worth, your personal ethics, morals and integrity. Taking responsibility for your decisions is a huge part of both avoiding bad choices to begin with and fixing mistakes.
One lesson we learned long ago is so simple, yet powerfully effective:
If you have to ask yourself if it’s right or wrong – it’s wrong.
Don’t justify it. Don’t waste time trying to convince yourself otherwise and don’t let other people’s opinions, needs or manipulations sway you because they can’t make the right decisions for themselves.
If you want to help others, set the example. But don’t compromise your integrity to be a friend of those who compromise their own. Just realize the undeniable truth in what you know is right, choose to do that and move on.
Then take pride in the fact that you are a good person and can make the right decisions. You have this in you right now. It’s at the center of each of us.
People can change and do. Some for better, some for worse – we’ve all seen examples. You and only you make the decision to be who you are no matter what your influences may be.
Ok…that might have been a different approach than what you were expecting, but our conversations with people on reputation issues of all kinds always involve the concepts of “change” and “responsibility”. And individuals ultimately make those type of decisions.
How do you feel about your alternatives now? Hopefully some of the above ideas help with your personal reputation problems because most anything can be made better with the right effort applied. If after trying some of those ideas you continue thinking, “I still have a bad reputation” and you want some help, contact us. We have solutions for most any situation.