“Loved, Hated. Never Ignored.”
Since high school, I have been a people pleaser. I learned how to breakdance, play the guitar, and solve a Rubik’s cube to feel included in different friend circles. As I grew up, I found my own hobbies but I still often found myself censoring my thoughts, feelings, and opinions if I was concerned that they would stir the pot, cause conflict, or even just create distance between me and the people around me.
I’m trying to embrace my own voice more, so I’m devoting a lot of my time at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) to do this. One of the classes I’m taking while on this journey is “Reputation Management”; this class involves a Personal Reputation Survey that we send to peers and examining real-world case studies through guest speakers in industry and a final project where students deep-dive into a reputation management case in the news. Megyn Kelly came into our class earlier this week to talk about reputation as it relates to the media and her life in the public spotlight.
There is a constant trade-off between being liked and being respected. Focus on being respected.
In their pursuit of upward mobility, many young professionals try to please everyone they encounter in their careers. While this results in people liking you, that comes at the expense of their respect for you. Moreover, some young professionals are in work environments that don’t fit them, yet still choose to hide their personality, opinions, and values to preserve their reputation with the company and other potential employers. This, as Megyn alluded to, is counterproductive; if the fit isn’t there, there will eventually be a breaking point where either one isn’t happy or their higher-ups realize that the fit was never there to begin with. One of Megyn’s quotes that stuck with me: “If your boss dislikes you, you need to find a new job.”
People brand you in a way that fits their agenda, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Organizations have goals — making profits, maintaining a brand, turning over some percentage of their employees, satisfying irrational clients, etc. In pursuit of these broader goals, people in leadership positions may conscious or unconsciously brand you in a way that suits these goals. In our earlier careers, this branding may happen without us even knowing, but as we get deeper into our careers, this branding will become more and more prominent. Eventually, if our professional lives become news-worthy, the whole world may develop a perception of you based on the media’s slant. Megyn experienced this first hand, and talked about many other case studies. Interestingly, Megyn’s talk was a devil’s advocate to the rest of the class, where we learn tactics to manage our professional brands as much as possible.
A corollary to above: Focus on doing what you think is right, not what is “on-brand.”
Megyn’s broader takeaway for us was to focus on doing what we think is right. If it means changing your opinion, making a public apology, or feeling a bit uncomfortable, do it if it feels right. This point really resonated with me; I do think if people work hard and do what they think is right, things will eventually work out as they should. Additionally, the reputation we build this way is more authentic and can be cultivated and managed more easily.
Expose yourself to as many different news outlets as possible.
As sensationalized as his social commentary is, Donald Trump is onto something about “Fake News” and the media having an agenda: most media in the US is biased due to their requirement to focus on profit-seeking activities. While the bias is a bit more visible in news outlets like FOX and MSNBC, organizations like CNN have also become very partisan, despite not owning their slants as much as their counterparts. This is also true of print media, as evidenced by the Kavanaugh hearing, where liberal news outlets emphasized weak evidence against him to build a powerful narrative that would resonate with their audience. Megyn demonstrated her bipartisanship when she asked the class to reflect on how the liberal media would have treated similar evidence against a liberal voice. This reminded me of Aziz Ansari, who was a vocal feminist before his #MeToo moment; while he has been affected, it’s reasonable to say that he wasn’t criticized to the same extent that Kavanaugh was.
If most media outlets are partisan, readers can get an unbiased perspective on an issue by fusing different partisan perspectives.
Needless to say, Megyn Kelly’s talk was one of the most powerful learnings experiences I’ve had on Reputation Management at the GSB, and I’m excited to implement some of her advice into my life at and after the GSB.
