The Say-Do Gap: What Reputation Reveals About Your Culture

This is part 4 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.

Culture is shaped by what leaders do—not what’s written on the walls. In this culture-focused conversation, Charlotte Otter joins Russel Lolacher to explore how reputation exposes the health of workplace culture. From social media transparency to unwritten norms and cross-functional relationships, they discuss the reputational risks leaders face when they don’t match their messaging with their behavior.

✅ How culture and reputation are interconnected
 ✅ Why unwritten norms influence perception
 ✅ Managing reputation during change and missteps
 ✅ The role of consistency and communication in culture-building

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: How does the unwritten culture of an organization like norms, values, expectations that are not written down on a website? How does that shape a leader's reputation beyond what they directly can control? I'm getting macro here.

Charlotte Otter: Yeah. Yeah. I think it certainly can. But I think it goes, always goes back to behavior. So those unwritten norms can be, I've worked in organizations where one of the unwritten norms was the leader needs to get to version 32.A/1 before they've signed anything off. That wasn't written down anywhere. That was a shock to discover. I mean, as a leader, that's a reputation that's gonna stick with you. You're a perfectionist, you're a micromanager. That's kind of a hard one to shake off. I do think it's difficult.

Russel Lolacher: Especially if these things to your un to the unwritten part of that, especially if your organization, your... leaders need leaders. And if you as a leader are trying to manage your reputation and you don't know the playbook, you're not given the guard guardrails to understand, you are gonna be wildly throwing darts at it... i'm using way too many metaphors here. Two darts at a dartboard, and it will hurt your reputation through no fault of your own.

Charlotte Otter: Yeah, but it does go back to having those transparent conversations at the beginning and maybe also saying to your team, look folks, what do I need to know? What don't I know? I'm making these assumptions as I come into this organization. What do I need to know? What I what, What do I need to look out for?

Russel Lolacher: How does values play into this? Because we each have our own personal values, the organization has their values. We like to think they're mostly in alignment, but sometimes they're misaligned. So how does that play in reinforcing or even maybe damaging reputation?

Charlotte Otter: Values are absolutely critical. Going back to the say, do gap, you know, if you say My values are integrity, honesty, and trust, and then you behave in it, the opposite of that, nobody's gonna believe a word you say. I do think that organizations over index on finding five nice values, slapping them on a wall, and ignoring them.

But I recently came across a French company that does such a brilliant job so that everybody knows what the values are, and at the start of every meeting, whoever is hosting that meeting says, this meeting will be held in the spirit of transparency or whatever value they choose. This meeting will be held in the spirit of healthy debate.

And by voicing it at the start of every meeting, you set the tone. I think it's, I think it's an amazing, it's an amazing and useful strategy that a lot more organizations could make the most of.

Russel Lolacher: I love that you jumped into communication because that's obviously a huge piece of this. So you are a leader. You are happy with the reputation, or at least you're comfortable with the reputation you have, how does communication play into this when it comes to the larger organization? Because your team can understand your reputation, but if you're trying to move up in your career, you're trying to build a network, you're trying to build relationships that will foster and help your career growth. What do you do with that reputation? I'm holding it like it's a ball. Like what am I doing with this? What am I doing with this thing I've created?

Charlotte Otter: Yeah, I think it's really important for those leaders with ambition to get comfortable with power. So build relationships with power you know, build relationships with those step leaders. So leaders who are two levels above you in the organization. Also build relationships parallel to you. So it's about the relationships above, the relationships parallel and the relationships below.

And people generally tend to forget one of them. So you can be super indexed on your own team, super indexed on your step leaders, and forget your peers. Forget your peers at your peril, because you, those peers can destroy you. So you have to think about all three.

Russel Lolacher: And in thinking in that, in reaching out to people and if you don't have a fully grasped understanding of your reputation, because you may have a reputation you're not aware of to other business areas, They could be geographically dispersed, like we have an, we're in United States, we have an agency in Germany, and I don't know what my reputation is there.

Are there things we can do as we go into other pieces of culture, the many subcultures, to put our best foot forward in that?

Charlotte Otter: I think it's behavioral at this stage, so show them that you understand the business. Offer help say to them, maybe you need, you know, if you need a, a door opening in the us let me know. I'll see what I can do to help you. I think it's behavioral at that point.

Russel Lolacher: What do you mean? You say when we need new leaders. When you say that we need new leaders and it is tied to reputation management, what are you trying to tell us, Charlotte?

Charlotte Otter: I am trying to say that the leaders we have right now are not the leaders we need in this moment. That we have returned to... We briefly opened the door in a new school of leadership style of leadership, and then we closed the door. We've returned to an old school, extremely masculine command and control, top down style of leadership.

And I am saying we need a change. We need to accept that leaders come from all kinds of backgrounds and identities. That being loud and shouty doesn't make necessarily make you an excellent leader. That you can be quiet and empathetic and be a good leader. And the reputation aspect of that is I am saying to those leaders from diverse identities, diverse backgrounds, underrepresented minorities, you can't argue with an excellent record of success, and a record of success is not only doing the job well, that is only half of doing the job well. The other half of it is talking about doing the job well and even better getting other people to talk about how well you do the job. So that record of success is not, attended this course, managed a team of five was incredibly productive. The record is the speaking, so that's why I say you need to be seen and heard as the leader that you are. And I'm saying to le leaders from diverse backgrounds and identities, use the tools of reputation management. Lean on your communicators if they exist on the, in the organization, lean on the social networks. They're there. LinkedIn is an wonderful internal communications tool. If you've got a success, put it on LinkedIn. Don't be shy. Much harder to argue with when you've got that shiny record of success.

Russel Lolacher: I'm putting on my comms hat here as well because you said something in there that I don't think it's hammered home a lot is that you might not be the right messenger sometimes, and that it is extremely important to have other people tell your story, not just yourself, because they have different relationships, they have different reputations.

I remember trying to do a lot of change management and knowing that I had a new reputation. I was new to the organization, so I wasn't trying to get executive on board. I was trying to get the people that they, their champions on board because I knew they listened to them. They didn't have any reputation.

They didn't know me, but they knew this Person A. So for that, I had champions of reputation. I had champions that would be in the rooms that I couldn't be in to tell my story. I just had to make sure I communicated to them in a particular way. So interesting.

Charlotte Otter: Yeah, and that goes to the back to the network. So we told, talked about the stories. We've talked a lot about behaviors. The networks are crucial. Without the networks, your reputation dies with you.

Russel Lolacher: I kind of feel like I know the answer to this, but I have to ask it. Does it matter around perception versus reality? Because as reputation, sometimes it's not true that people think about us, know about us, whether it's in this organization or another. Reputation management can be as much about perception as it is about reality. Do we approach it any differently or does it matter at all?

Charlotte Otter: It does matter, and I've noticed that leaders who cover from underrepresented minorities and diverse backgrounds and identities think about perception a lot because Mary Ann Sieghart, the author of the Authority Gap, says bias is the flip side of perception. So if you are a leader from the Dominant Power Group, you don't have to worry about perception at all. You just walk through doors. But if you look different from the norm, perception is really important to you.

Russel Lolacher: Yeah, I mean, the old saying perception is reality for a lot of people. So that's what I was sort of getting at is the idea that even though perception is very important for us to get in, we can't just dismiss it because it's a perception. It is astronomically important that we take that in.

And your white, CIS males do not have the same challenges, to your point, as people coming from other geographies, cultures, you know, socioeconomic everything else. And if we're gonna talk about diversity, if we're gonna actually make this part of our conversation, this has to be part of it.

Charlotte Otter: It absolutely does, and I can tell you that the emerging and established leaders I've interviewed... hyper-aware of how they're perceived. They think about it all the time, don't stop thinking about it. But they also try to enhance it with speaking their truth, acting according to their values, building good networks, getting comfortable with power in the organization, and building that record of success.

Russel Lolacher: So we've never thought of reputation management. I'm speaking for somebody that might be listening. Never thought of it. What, who, where I, I made it 20 years into my career, i've never even thought of this before. But I'm, but maybe I should be. Where do they put their efforts starting tomorrow? Where do they dip their toe in the pond?

Man, it's metaphor heavy today. Where do we start tomorrow if we're needing to really understand this better?

Charlotte Otter: Yeah. Yeah. I just want to first say it usually comes out of inflection point.

People waking up are like, Ooh, I need to think about my reputation right now. So for example, I had a customer who was CFO of his organization, the CEO and Founder had a big argument with the board, disappeared. Suddenly the CFO had been a backroom guy and was suddenly front of house in his organization.

Suddenly had to think about his, suddenly had to think about his reputation. And I took him through the process that I do with leaders. But it's usually that point of inflection that change where leaders start to think. What are my stories very deeply hidden in reputation is personal brand. It's something I don't talk about a lot, but it's who am I? What do I stand for? What do I want to stand for? What are my stories? How do those stories support the business strategy going forward? So there's a kind of some quiet work around personal brand and then where do I go with them? Where are the networks I'm taking them to? What are the channels? Where am I trying to be seen?

Russel Lolacher: We talked about gaps a lot when it comes to what you do versus what you say, and I think that's so important to understand what is your reputation and what do you want your reputation to be? And that is an absolutely a gap that may be very far away, but it might actually be a lot close in your think.

And as you said, unless you understand and get real vulnerable and real honest with yourself, that gap will never get closed.

Charlotte Otter: No. And I think that the people who generally come to me, there's a certain level of self-awareness already. You know, I think that there are some leaders who probably will aren't going to ever bother with working on it, Excuse me. But people with self-awareness want to understand more.

Russel Lolacher: Until their PR firm tells them that they need to start maybe working on their reputation. 'cause they said something stupid on LinkedIn.

Charlotte Otter: That's also an inflection point. Ouch.

Russel Lolacher: Thank you so much. That is Charlotte Otter. She's an author, speaker, podcast host and she has a podcast you definitely should check out, which is called Speech Bubbles. And she's got a brand new book that you even more should really check out called We Need New Leaders, Mastering Reputation Management to Reshape the C-Suites.

Thank you so much for being here, Charlotte.

Charlotte Otter: Thanks for having me. It's been fun.