Vitamins Not Aspirins – Build Your Reputation Equity Before Crisis Hits

Reputations are both easy and expensive to lose. Busy C-suite leaders—running mission-critical parts of the business from product to finance, strategy, and sales, as well as attracting, hiring, and rewarding talent—often forget to prioritise their own reputations, and that of their companies.

They only value them when they’re threatened—or gone.

If leaders start thinking about reputation when a crisis hits, that’s too late. Reputation is built steadily, drop by drop, story by story, over time.

Reputation is vitamins, not aspirin. You tend it daily to build your reputational health, so that when crisis hits—and it inevitably will—you have a protective ring of trust around you.

Reputation for Companies

Reputation is money. Reputation scholar Charles Fombrun was among the first to link corporate image to value—what he called intangible wealth or reputational capital. He wrote that companies “have become the modern icons of our mass society. Not only do we dance to the tune of their decisions, but we increasingly worship at the high altar of their fame.

When we think of modern icons of our time, names like Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Alphabet immediately come to mind.

But companies are highly vulnerable to reputational risk. As researchers Eccles, Schatz, and Newquist wrote in Harvard Business Review, “In an economy where 70% to 80% of market value comes from hard-to-assess intangible assets such as brand equity, intellectual capital, and goodwill, organizations are especially vulnerable to anything that damages their reputations.”

Until recently, Tesla may have featured on that list of icons. But in April 2024, Tesla lost out to Chinese EV maker BYD in Europe. Consumers have cooled on the US carmaker for several reasons—among them, the reputation of its CEO. Reputation loss is expensive, and Tesla’s sales are dwindling.

Reputation for CEOs

Tesla’s example shows how tightly linked company and CEO reputations can be. Another instance: in September 2023, when BP CEO Bernard Looney resigned over failing to disclose personal relationships with employees, BP’s share price dropped 2.8% that same day.

In their book The Reputation Game, David Waller and Rupert Younger argue that reputation is portable—CEOs can carry a good one from one role to the next. That’s why many CEOs lean on their chief communications officers to help them take the reputation “vitamins” that will sustain their leadership over time.

But for leaders from underrepresented backgrounds, building a strong reputation isn’t just strategic—it’s essential. A track record of trust and credibility becomes a career multiplier. It’s their reputation that may open the door to their next, more senior role.

Mary Ann Sieghart, author of The Authority Gap, puts it this way: a superb record of achievement can be a buffer against bias. That buffer is what I call reputation equity—a portable advantage for diverse leaders who may be less comfortable with self-promotion but still deserve to be seen, heard, and considered for bigger opportunities.

Reputation for Communicators

The same holds true for communicators.

In an unstable job market, it’s not enough to focus only on the CEO’s or the company’s reputation. We have to take our own supplements, too.

Too many communicators only update their LinkedIn profiles after they’ve left or lost a job. But reputation-building is a habit, not a crisis response. We need to step out from behind the curtain. Stop tending only to others. Learn to share our own voices, perspectives, and expertise—publicly.

The credibility you build now is what will help you land the next great comms role.

• Charlotte Otter's latest book, We Need New Leaders, is available now.