What Reputation Really Means at Work (and Why It Matters for Leaders)

This is part 1 of a 4-part series on reputation management with Charlotte Otter, author of We Need New Leaders. Each episode explores a different theme—clarity, self-awareness, team dynamics, and workplace culture.

What is reputation in the workplace—and how should leaders define and manage it?
In this clarity-focused episode, Russel Lolacher speaks with Charlotte Otter, reputation strategist and author of We Need New Leaders, to uncover the fundamentals of reputation management. From the definition used by scholars to the realities of perception, this episode breaks down the importance of consistency, narrative, and trust for every leader.

✅ What reputation is (and isn’t)
 ✅ How perception drives opportunity
 ✅ Why leaders need clarity on their narrative
 ✅ The role of values and the “say-do” gap

And connect with me for more great content!

• Sign Up for R@W Notes
• Subscribe on Youtube
• Follow on Linkedin
• Follow on Instagram
• Follow me on Threads
• Follow on TikTok
• Email me anytime

Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show today we have Charlotte Otter, and here is why she is awesome. She's an author, speaker, podcast host and advisor specializing in reputation management, change communications, and building high performing communications teams. She's the host of her own podcast. Yes, she's dipping her own toe into this world called Speech Bubbles, helping us be seen and heard as the leaders we are, and she's got herself a new book. We Need New Leaders. Could not echo that more often. Mastering Reputation Management to Reshape the C-Suite, shows how reputation management is a critical but often overlooked tool for diverse leaders aiming for those C-suite roles. Hello, Charlotte.

Charlotte Otter: Hi. Thank you so much for having me on.

Russel Lolacher: Now if anybody's, you know, listening at home for their keyword search, I'm sure they heard the word reputation management more than a few times. So, you have an understanding of where we're gonna dig into today. I'm super curious about reputation management for the good and for the bad. But for Charlotte, you cannot get off the hook.

I have the same question I have to ask you that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience?

Charlotte Otter: So I'm gonna tweak it slightly and tell you an employee onboarding story and we can guess afterwards if it was good or bad. So, as a 25-year-old, I went into my first corporate role. I had first worked as a crime reporter on a daily newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa. And then I briefly worked as a fundraiser, first corporate role.

It was the biggest, most expensive, most fancy South African corporation. It was a mining house. Still famous to this day and on my very first day, my boss and my boss's boss took me out for lunch, which I thought was lovely. We went to a very fancy restaurant. We went at 12, one o'clock past the second bottle of wine was ordered. Two o'clock past, three o'clock past... and we staggered back to the office at four o'clock in the afternoon. When I got home, I said to my fiance, now, husband, if that's what lunches are gonna be like at this place, I am not going to survive.

So for some, maybe for some, maybe a good onboarding experience, for me it was terrifying because I'm a very... I mean, it just takes two glasses of wine and I'm feeling very tipsy.

Russel Lolacher: I dunno how to put this, but were you a special case? Like did they do this with everybody for onboarding? Is your first day you're gonna get smattered... smashed? Like is that, was that like tradition or was that just sort of how, well, this is a person we're gonna work with a lot, we wanna get to know them as a person, let's lubricate them with alcohol.

Like what was the approach for the organization?

Charlotte Otter: I think the two of them just really felt like a fancy lunch and a lot of wine.

Russel Lolacher: Okay. Okay. So it was just their idea of how to relationship build with the new hire.

Charlotte Otter: How to have a good time and have a good excuse, new hire.

Russel Lolacher: So what did that, what did you take away from that? Because I mean, you're looking at that going, these are supposed to be the people that are modeling the leadership behavior that I'm supposed to want to be successful in this organization. But then as you said, I can't do that if this is our, these are our lunches moving forward.

So what was the takeaway for you?

Charlotte Otter: You definitely need boundaries with your bosses, and I'm gonna be invisible to them at lunchtime, so I'm going to the gym.

Russel Lolacher: And how important those boundaries are to communicate right outta the gate. I mean, I'm guessing this didn't happen last week. This happened probably a while ago. At a point in your career where you probably don't feel confident enough to tell people with lofty titles that you're like, no, you know what? I can't do this because it might be career limiting move as I love or hate to hear. So, yeah, it's I that I think that really... good or bad, I think it's really important that to, how you've illustrated is you have to know yourself and communicate yourself. This is not talking about work, this is boundaries we're talking about, which go hand in hand.

Charlotte Otter: Yeah, for sure. And I don't think I was very good at expressing it. I was 25 at the time, but I just suddenly made myself very invisible at lunchtime.

Russel Lolacher: Which is also not good. You shouldn't have to do that. That is not the win we all want. But I totally understand it. I totally understand it. Yeah, and that kind of makes me think a bit about our topic today, which is what kind of a reputation may you have gotten from saying no versus saying yes?

And how could that have played into your relationships moving forward or your opportunities moving forward in that? I mean, that was a microcosm. That is a small, that is one moment, but it is amazing the ripples in a pond to your one's reputation based on saying no and yes to certain situations. So before we get into any of that though, I have to set the playing field, which is how would you define reputation in the workplace? And then jumping off that reputation management?

Charlotte Otter: Yeah, so reputation, both for companies and for individuals is an intangible asset, which makes it hard to define on one level. But the reputation scholars have defined it as, and I'll summarize, the sum total of past actions and future expectations that all audiences who have ever met you or encountered of you have of you at any given time. So it's big.

Russel Lolacher: Yeah. I was just gonna say, I'm like, that encompasses a lot. So to throw management after that word, what are we, like, how can we'll get into how's and the why's, but what does that mean to try to take control of that?

Charlotte Otter: On one level you can't, but on another level, what you have to do is just be very conscious of your words and your behaviors matching. So something I say to my clients all the time is you can espouse beautiful values. You can talk about strategy and vision, but if your actions don't match those words, you have a trust gap. You have the say-do gap, and that is reputational.

Russel Lolacher: I love that you tied it to trust, because that is so, I often say the gap between what you do and what you say is where trust gets lost. Sort of, sort of the whole mind of the gap thing I stole from the UK is that you have to be very aware of what's in that space. But I think we both understand that reputation, everybody has it. Everybody has one. Huge, small, complicated, simple. But whether we know it or not, we do have a reputation within the organizations we work. What are critical elements of a reputation for us to better understand it?

Charlotte Otter: Yeah, there are three critical elements. And those are narratives, behaviors, and networks. So the narratives are the stories that you tell and the. The stories build up into narratives, and the narrative builds up into your reputation. So the things that you say about yourself, the things that you say about your organization.

The second are behaviors, which goes back to what we said just now about the say, do gap. And the third is your network. So where are you saying the things that you say, it's your social networks, but it's also your personal networks, your alumni groups, your industry organizations, your family and friends.

And those three things, cohere. Into this beautiful picture of your reputation, but you can also have reputations for different things. You can have a reputation for competence. Can have a reputation for character, so behaving well. You can have a reputation for both. It's not either or, and what I'm telling my clients now, it's absolutely crucial to have a reputation of being able to give context because the world is so wild, it's so confusing. Things are changing on a daily basis, and leaders are now expected to be able to give context. Contextualization is critical.

Russel Lolacher: To be fair, I think they always were. I just think they're being told they have to now.

Charlotte Otter: Yes, and the pressure is much more extreme in the last 20 years with the rise of social media, because before, as a leader, you could get things done inside the corporate boundaries and people would never know about it. Now your employees can leak something in five minutes. The whole world knows.

Russel Lolacher: I, that's exactly where I wanted to go, was the outside forces that might influence the reputation within an organization because 10, 20 years ago, you were in this walled environment where what happened at work stayed at work to some measure beyond going home and complaining to your partner to some level, but it wasn't for the masses to consume from LinkedIn to, you know, Open... Glassdoor, whatever websites that, where they talk about the workplace.

How has this reshaped how leaders, how prospective leaders need to behave in the workplace knowing that their work does not end from nine to five when it comes to reputation management?

Charlotte Otter: Yeah, on one level it's incredibly stressful. On another level, it can be very creative for people who have mastered their reputation. The stress is something you said wrong in a meeting can go around the world in a flash. I. And can really be incredibly uncomfortable for you. So leaders do have to mind their words.

And I had a lot of trouble with leaders of my generation. So I'm Gen X, and older, who had been so comfortable in that safe corporate boundaried world, suddenly having to people like me telling them they had to step out of the boundaried world into the social media networks and start having opinions and having something to say because they always felt that kind of fear of, I'm gonna say something stupid and everybody will know.

Leaders who've grown up digital have a lot more comfort. They just know what it's like. You know, our kids, they just know what it's like. They're used to, they're used to surviving in that kind of a world.

Russel Lolacher: So I push back a little bit on that as a fellow Gen Xer, because I get it from going to work and under, they're more risk adverse, like Gen X and Boomers, a little more risk adverse, little more hyper aware because we grew up having to be a particular way at work and then not maybe communicating that at all in the social space, even as we're learning it.

However, on the flip side, I think Millennials and Gen Zs are almost too comfortable with it, that they feel that there's no repercussions to what they say online and how their opinions, because the line between work and home life is gone for them and they feel comfortable. I hear you, that they feel comfortable in the space, but I don't know if they feel comfortable in the management part because it's, it's, they don't know where the boundaries are because how they talk to friends, they feel they can do the same. Now, of course, I'm painting very broad brushes here. But to your point, because they grew up in this, they're, they've been swimming in this water, we got thrown in this water. Right? So how do you approach generations that aren't like, to your point, you see it is they're more comfortable, but it also comes with its own challenges as well.

Charlotte Otter: Oh yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And something that, you know, we've tried to help our own kids with is just be aware that anything you do or say online. A future boss is gonna be able to look at that or a future prospective manager is going to be able to look at that. So just bear that in mind as you manage your own social media profile.

I also think it's interesting 'cause I think there are country and world differences. So, you know, I think the US is very social media savvy, but I think in Europe and even in Germany, there's a lot more shyness around using social media. I'd say Europe is a couple of years behind the US in terms of that.

Incredible comfort. So my kids and their friends will have watched everything on TikTok, but they haven't necessarily made their own TikTok videos or maybe only one or two. So there's a, there's kind of an interesting caution in Europe around using social media.

Russel Lolacher: That's not a bad thing. That's certainly, well, you have a lot less to, you have a lot less landmines to manage when you're cautious, when you're taking it... You know? I mean, there is, it depends on who the audience is. I think as a prospective leader, as someone growing the organization, you have to understand that it's not just about you.

Like we're both communication nerds. So it's not just about what you say, it's how it's interpreted. Communication is two ways. We always talk like it's broadcasting, which is not what it is. It is always about the audience as much as, and I think if from a culture standpoint, you're taking that more seriously

I think that can only benefit. And I think that's, as a Canadian, I think we're more in line with the American perspective. Just not to the volume considering our population. What is a bad reputation? And I'm also curious, is it a scale? Because we talk very, it's good reputation, bad reputation.

There's no mild reputation. There's no, like, it is it gray or is it good, bad, binary.

Charlotte Otter: Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I mean, I think a bad reputation is first of all, brutal. It usually comes behaviorally. So a reputation for being good at your job is more sticky than a bad character reputation. So you can be competent and a bit of a jerk and still have a decent reputation. But if you have bad, if you're incompetent and a jerk, terrible reputation.

So that's pretty, that is kind of interesting. But generally what we see with CEOs, I mean, it's the CEOs who do something absolutely terrible that make the headlines and they usually make the headlines for, you know, for the wrong reasons. I mean, I'm sure you remember in January last year in 24, the Kyte Baby scandal that made CNN so that she was the CEO of a kind of organic baby clothes, wonderful parent friendly organization. And she fired an employee who had asked to work from the ICU while she looked after her new adoptive baby. The CEO fired her. Then the woman's sister made a TikTok video saying, this has happened to my sister.

That went wild. Then the CEO apologized in sort of lawyer language. She'd obviously got advice from her lawyer, not from her communicator. TikTok went even more crazy. She then apologized and then she made CNN. She made CNN for trying to spin several bad decisions. Now, by the time CNN is making a story about you for your bad reputation, your reputation's devastated and there's no coming back.

Russel Lolacher: No, you can't spin yourself outta that one. Sorry.

Charlotte Otter: No. No chance.

Russel Lolacher: Especially when it contradicts the vision and the mission you're perpetuating on your website, you know that is the brand. I'm like, but you're not the face of that brand if this is what you're actually like behind closed doors.

Charlotte Otter: Yeah, absolutely. And that takes you right back to what we said at the beginning. Say, do you, if there's a gap between what your vision and your mission is, and then how you behave, people will tear you apart.

Russel Lolacher: That, and of course, that's the most like public version of reputation management and not managing reputation, how does it impact this? A bad reputation to your point? Like you can get things done, but you're a jerk to work for, so nobody wants to work with that person. So I hear you that they're still manageable, but it almost normalizes it as well.

Is that, oh, that's just who they are as opposed to, No, they should have some ramifications for them being the ass at work and so forth. So I'm kind of curious, from your opinion, how do you think slightly bad, horrific, what kind of ripples in the pond does that have within the workplace and the workplace culture, having a bad reputation?

Charlotte Otter: I think it has terrible ripples. I think that people, it you, that brings about a fear-based culture. People are scared to work with you. People are scared to speak up. People are scared to be honest with you. And once your people. Will feel silenced. Silence. Innovation goes out the window. Creativity goes out the window 'cause people are just too scared to speak up. And it's part of the motivation for my book, We Need New Leaders in that I think we recognize a certain loud kind of confidence as leadership and forget to look at competence. And I think we over index on confidence over competence.

Russel Lolacher: Completely agree. Completely agree. So I guess that leads the question of how do we know what our reputation is? How do we audit our own behaviors to understand what this persona or this true or not true, is when it comes to the workplace.

Charlotte Otter: Yeah, I mean, self audit, it would take a very self-aware person to do that probably. I mean, when I work with my clients, I do a kind of reputation 360. So I, I do very in-depth interviews with them, and then I do in-depth interviews with at least 10 of their work allies. And if there's not a match, then I say to them, we've got a reputation gap here and we've got some work to do.

Russel Lolacher: Now, three sixties are generally above, who on your team and a few colleagues as well. Do you go further? And I ask this because reputation can go to quite a few other business areas that may not barely work with you, but they don't work with you because of reputation. Right? Three sixty I can get, but it might, is it sometimes maybe too close to home?

Charlotte Otter: It is sometimes close and I generally ask the leaders to give me the names, but it's amazing how brave people are. So people have given me their customers, they've given me, their board members. You know, a couple of people have given me their wives and husbands, and boy do you get truth from them. So I love the vulnerability that's already inherent in that.