Managing multiple reputations

Will the real Mr X stand up? One of the myths about reputation we often accept is that we only have one reputation and it’s this one reputation that we focus our attention on. The reality is every one of us has multiple reputations.

If five or six people know you in a particular role, for example as a competitive tennis player, you’ll have at least five or six reputations relating to this. This is because each person’s perception of you, based on personal experience or hearsay, is likely to be slightly different than someone else’s perception.

If asked to describe in one or two words what a particular person is like as a tennis player responses may include comments such as ‘aggressive’, ‘makes excuses’ or ‘unreliable’. Others may say ‘a good sport’, ‘a team player’, ‘naturally talented’ and so on. 

Each is referring to the same person in their role as a tennis player. Why the difference in perception? Because our reputation is based on a snapshot in time and determined largely by the personal experience of other people as they perceive it.

Having a reputation for being difficult to deal with or liable to ‘lose it’ and abuse the referee is unlikely to help a player’s chances of being selected for an upcoming team event. Whether the player believes these comments are justified or not is irrelevant. Based on both their own and often other people’s views, the selector will decide who they want for this particular occasion.

A further complication is that not only do we have multiple reputations based on single roles, we also have multiple reputations based on the multiple roles we have in life.

A person with a great reputation as a sportsman may also have a lousy reputation as a husband or brother. Someone thought of as a gossip at work may have a wonderful reputation as a supporter of charitable causes.

How many times have we heard comments such as ‘It’s so unlike him’, ‘I thought he was …’ or ‘he seemed to be …’? Context is crucial when describing someone’s reputation. Our perception of someone in one context may not automatically transfer to another context.  Therefore our reputation may not transfer either.

Regardless of the specific role we assume at any one time, behaving in a consistent way minimises the likelihood of having many different reputations. The greater the number of people who hold similar views of a person or entity, the stronger their reputation is likely to be.