Reputational Crisis: Fear Takes Molehills for Mountains
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The most popular paranoia of today is a fear of losing reputation. It affects everyone – from public persons to common people whose circle of contacts even in the boundless social networks is no wider than several dozens of friends or imaginary friends.
In the majority of cases, the fear of losing reputation is absolutely groundless as occasional criticism from outside, even very harsh, does not always influence a person’s reputation assets. Moreover, it is not a symptom of what can be called a reputational crisis. So, if something seen or heard makes your own precious self anxious, you should stop and troubleshoot the situation.
According to the methodology of reputation management, a reputational risk is a combination of risks:
• connected with non-fulfillment of obligations, or non-achievement of goals, or as a result of external hostile influence;
• causing a loss of important audiences’ trust.
The key moments here are non-fulfillment of obligations and importance of audiences. That is, if your mother-in-law gossips about you and your husband cancels a trip to the Maldives, it is a reputational crisis. If the same information is passed on from one neighbor to another and neither your husband nor your mother-in-law hears it, it is mere buzzing of a virtual fly on the periphery of consciousness.
However, the situations when reputational risks lead to reputational crises are not so uncommon. So how to counteract a crisis? First of all, you should go into its causes and understand what it is about – fundamental things or just rings in the water. On the strategic level, it is possible to damage your reputation in the mentioned above humorous case of your husband and his mother by, let’s say, systematically not congratulating her on holidays she finds dear, by stepping on her favorite dog’s tail and by undertaking no preventive-cum-psychological activities with your husband aimed at treating his latent oedipism. Correspondingly, you can avert a danger to your well-being only by doing something practical, not merely wasting your breath on words.
If you fight not in word but in deed you can find potential for breakthrough even in a deep crisis, like they do in aikido even if it is going to be temporary.
Fighting in social networks with its gravest insults is like a sandspit where tides wash away all words and letters. The internet has eternal memory; but without a person’s intent motivated by malicious thoughts and without resources provision this boundless archive will not come to life. And even if it does, by strengthening your reputation (digging around important target audiences in order to gain, keep and develop their trust) this effect can be minimized to the level of a slight reputational risk that will not lead to a crisis due to antifragility of your good name – an ability of your reputation to restore and reproduce itself.
Moreover, if you fight not in word but in deed, you can find potential for breakthrough even in a deep crisis, like they do in aikido, even if it is going to be temporary. Do you remember a textbook case of the press reacting to Napoleon Bonaparte’s landing after he returned to France from his exile to the Isle of Elba? Judging by captions, the former emperor managed to restore his reputation completely during a fortnight: “Corsican Monster Lands in the Bay of Juan”, “Man-Eater Marches to Grasse”, “Usurper Enters Grenoble”, “Bonaparte Occupies Lyon”, “Napoleon Approaches Fontainebleau”, “His Imperial Majesty Is Expected in His Loyal Paris Today”.
That is why it makes sense for every reputationally-dependent person to treat the situation more realistically. First, let me remind you, there are very few people who really want to hurt your reputation. Because they will have to spare no energy (effort, time, money, nerves) so very few will agree to that unless there is a benefit looming ahead and you are a potentially pluckable money-bag or an easily blackmailed “celeb”. Second, as you can lose much more than resources tilting at windmills of imaginary reputation risks.
As Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (one of the brightest humanitarian leaders of today and a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi) once observed to the point, “Our whole life revolves around money, relationships and reputation – these three things. In trying to get these three things we lose our health, and then life starts to revolve around four things: money, relationships, reputation and health. We end up going round and round trying to get hold of these four things and finally become so miserable. And when you become miserable, you lose all these four things – what people consider to be life!”
So try not to be trapped by paranoia and pathological vanity and live your life to the full. And if a real reputational crisis erupts, respond to it with flying colors, learn life lessons, force your way onto a totally new level.
Tags: Psychology; Reputation; Reputational risks