‘How Will I Ever Rebuild My Reputation and Regain Others’ Trust?’
It’s painful when you care about how people perceive you and realize how much that you have damaged their trust, if not had them entirely end it.
Tom Shieh, the CEO at Crimcheck, remembers the harm people suffered, the shame he experienced and his own misery after his own errors of trusting the wrong people.
“Several years ago, I lost everything in a Ponzi-like scheme,” Shieh recalls, adding, “Even worse, my friends and family were also deceived into losing millions of dollars.”
That was a powerful, destructive storm going through their lives. It invoked intense emotions and feelings in Shieh.
“I carried tremendous guilt and felt angry and ashamed,” he says.
Yet Shieh showed strength by asking himself two necessary questions.
“How could I have been lied to like that? How will I ever rebuild my reputation and regain others’ trust again?” he lamented and wondered.
“But then I turned to the words of my heroes, which gave me strength in my despair. Zig Ziglar said, ‘If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.’ And Winston Churchill reminded me that ‘success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.’”
The knowledge, answers, courage and commitment to resilience and improvement started to develop in Shieh’s mind.
“Slowly, I faced the situation head-on,” he clearly remembers. “I apologized, took responsibility where I could and spent time with those who were hurting.”
Notice, Shieh didn’t hide from what wanted to need to be done. He could have chosen to protect his emotions and ego at all costs. He decided however that “making right” with people was more of what he wanted.
Shieh stuck his nose in there to get punched, usually a scary task after people have been hurt when involved with you.
He apologized. Not everyone does it. Shieh didn’t make excuses. No. He “took responsibility.” That’s a really difficult action to pursue when people are hurting and very angry, even furious at you. Shieh did it anyway.
He spent time, as acts of compassion, with people who were knocked off-balance emotionally. That’s humanity.
“Maintaining an excellent reputation doesn’t mean you’ll never make mistakes,” Shieh says now. “It’s how you respond to them that demonstrates the depth and strength of your character.”
Yes, exactly. We know this but either forget it in our stress, anxiety and fear or we decide, in the depths of oversized ego, that we aren’t responsible.
Yet if we respond in a manner worthy of notice, appreciation and respect, we can reveal a strength of character that people are not seeing and believing in their pain and anger.
The odds of bad things happening are higher than we like.
When they happen, too many of us check out of the duties called for in the situation when it comes to responding in a way that increases the odds of people seeing our better side and deciding that maybe we are worthy of some slack and in time, maybe, forgiveness and if not restoration of a positive reputation — then at least one that should no longer be repeatedly dragged through the mud.
Shieh cared enough about his future and the well-being of others to ask: “How will I ever rebuild my reputation and regain others’ trust again?”
And in doing so, illumination came to him. He now had a roadmap.
He traveled those tough, scary roads, slowly yet surely.
And helped his family and friends heal to some degree and in doing so, was able to rebuild his name and reputation.
Michael Toebe is specialist for trust, relationship, communications and reputation. He provides consulting, advisory, professional opinion and specialized communications at Reputation Intelligence — Reputation Quality, assisting individuals and organizations with further building trust, relationships and reputation as assets and ethically and responsibly protecting, restoring or reconstructing them.
Professional Opinion, Consulting (about a particular situation),
Ongoing Advisory, Public Speaking and Communications.
