[Music] hello i'm matt abrahams i teach strategic communication at stanford's graduate school of business welcome to think fast talk smart the podcast for many of us thinking about how others see us preoccupies a lot of our time and these thoughts certainly can increase our anxiety but exactly what is our reputation and how do we manage it i'm thrilled to have my colleague and fellow gsb lecturer alison kluger here with me to help better explain what actions we can take to communicate the reputation we want others to see us having alison has an amazing background she served as a producer for many tv and radio shows including good morning america and the view and she is an expert on digital media at the gsb she teaches strategic communication as well as reputation management strategies for successful communicators alison i can't tell you how thrilled i am to have you here today we worked hard to make this happen and i'm excited to have our conversation i'd like to start by asking uh three background questions for you first how do you define reputation why should we worry about it and how do others come to learn about our reputations matt i'm thrilled to be here thank you so much those are great questions to start with i always define a reputation as the echo that precedes you into a room and the echo that remains after you leave and a great reputation is really like currency so if it can do the work for you before you even enter the room you're on the winning side so if someone says oh my god you have to meet matt he is so thorough he is so good at scheduling interviews he always nobody is saying but right he always makes you feel so good about yourself by the time you show up people are already predisposed to one like you and to listen to you the other end of the echo when you leave is kind of the murmurs right oh my god that was a really great presentation or he was so funny or she was so intense whatever it is it's what are they going to murmur when you leave the room now you might say well how do you know it comes back to you someone might say my friend saw you at this at the speech that you gave and i really want to get together to talk about business or um oh your reputation proceeds you i heard that you really know how to deliver a great presentation it does come back and then right in the moment someone might say can i have your business card can we have lunch can we have coffee can i introduce you to someone so that's the first part about your question right i'm curious to know really how do we work to actually build up that echo what are some of the specific things we can do when it comes to managing our reputation is there something around mindset that we need to think about i really believe it's about awareness and the good news is you can change your reputation it's a very fluid process and there are times in our career in our life where we have to reevaluate who we are and what we're delivering to the world you know when you introduced me you you really hit the nail on the head because the question about reputation is is what we're putting out there being perceived the way we intend if there's not a match up then you're kind of in trouble but what you can do is to be very conscious it's kind of like what i say for my online digital class which is be a conscientious content creator well you have to be conscious of how you enter a room you have to be conscious of first impressions you have to be conscious of how present you are when you're discussing things with somebody do they feel that you're distracted and looking over their shoulders see if someone better is coming in the room and you also have to be consistent and show up as who you are time and time again so that way even on your online reputation like if you're posting very kind of wacky things that aren't consistent people won't really get a sense of you and people are so quick to judge or create a fixed bias or a negative bias the way you can avoid that is to let people know what you stand for continuously kind of curate your your values so it sounds like people need to be very mindful and thoughtful about what they want others to think and perceive of them and and really sit down and think about in a detailed way here's how i want people to see me or here's what i stand for and then once that's done what do you recommend people do how do you how do you then articulate that do you create some kind of catch phrase do you find certain causes to support how does one demonstrate those values and themes that they've identified it's a great question matt i always worry about saying like what do you really do because you want to be as authentically you as possible sure and i do find that your reputation is defined by others so i know how i want to be but if i'm not realizing that people are getting it that way i want to be someone who's kind and open-minded and not judgmental and a really hard worker and so the you know the way i will know that i'm doing that is if i'm at work and i get a review and they say you know you're doing this right or if friends say you're like such a great friend because i can tell you anything so it's kind of like how do you live your life and again that word consistency is really important if you need to create a new reputation then i think you need to be more mindful like let's say you're someone who's always late you know why did you look at me when you said i did not okay you know it's it's a small thing but then you really have to you know the buzz is like oh my god you know we have to call the meeting 10 minutes earlier every time because she's always late you know how do you change that kind of reputation you set your alarm and you get there 10 minutes early every time so you do have to be very strategic sometimes but for the really natural qualities that you have i think you'll be hearing it through work and friends and responses to whatever you're putting out there right i know that two key concepts that you focus on in your class and we've talked about this in lots of situations or this notion of trust in the balance between warmth and competence can you tell us more about these ideas you've mentioned consistency i'm really curious about trust and warmth and competence yes trust is a really big area in in reputation and we use a book called reputation rules by dearmeyer and he has something that's called the trust radar and i love to use this in fact it's impossible for me to read the news and not bring in the trust radar when something is happening some sort of reputation crisis so what this trust radar says is that there are four elements that are really important to create trust with people and to either repair your reputation or make sure your reputation stays positive and the four axes are really expertise empathy commitment and transparency i'm sure you've heard of this i'm sure a lot of business students have heard of the tylenol episode way back in the 1980s i think when tainted oh i love the alliteration the tampered tainted tylenol so that's terrific someone was putting you know cyanide and some tylenol caplets and there were deaths and the company tylenol's company they could have just said it's up to it's a serial killer it's not our fault but they did the absolute opposite they took every bottle off the shelves they said your safety is the most important thing return anything you have will pay it will pay you back your money and then they made it instead of like a moment of disaster they made it a moment of triumph where they develop new tamper-free packaging so what they showed was first of all they were very transparent they said you know we don't know what's going on but we're going to protect you they were very committed they put their top ceo to come and give the message out the expertise was in developing new packaging and they were committed to solving this problem so on the trust rater they're hitting everything right sometimes you see someone who doesn't respond as well to an emergency they're kind of like no comment no comment right that's already breaking the number one rule of trust just frustrates people right so trust is a really big issue because if i come to you and i'm expecting something to and you don't deliver it i'm going to just reevaluate you in the moment right right and then the warmth and competence that plays into reputation but also plays into executive presence which i believe that if you're all data and you're all kind of knowledge but without any warmth to balance it you can come off as arrogant or know it all or a little poindexter as we used to say that when we were younger right and um and that's not a really great way to be and also very dry if you're all warmth then people think oh that person's really fluffy they don't have no they have no substance so i really believe the superpower is to match warmth and competence um because people want to like you and people want to trust you and the more likeable you are the more amiable the more you're kind of aware of how you're coming off to people the more people will respond to you in a positive way so as we now more and more are struggling with managing reputations not just in the physical world but in the virtual world as well with our presence and all these social media tools i look at my teenage children and and i see how many different instances of themselves there are we were so lucky growing up we only had to be who we were in front of people we really were and that was hard enough it was hard and so i'm curious do you have any last bits of advice or guidance that you provide i do you know i try to teach this to my kids we have kids similar ages um the first thing i say is it's not what happens it's how you choose to deal with it because things are going to happen but it's it's kind of like it can be the worst moment of your life or it can be a moment where you triumph like i said or you turn it around or you accept it or you do something of value so don't let what happens define you let how you choose to deal with it define you so i end each one of these with three questions and i'd love for you i'm i've been dying to hear your answers to these three questions so before we end let me ask the first here if you were to capture the best communication advice you've ever received as a five to seven word presentation slide title what would that be i would say be comfortable with being uncomfortable there's no way we're all going to be happy and comfortable 24 hours a day and to have that expectation is really selling yourself short so my second question and this i'm also really fascinated to hear your answer and who is a communicator that you admire and why you have had such a variety of people you've interacted with i'm curious to know who do you admire and why well i can i give two for you allison ii nobody else but for you so much well my first choice is tyra banks who i teach a course with because she is someone who is very underestimated she's started as a supermodel she's a brilliant businesswoman she's a marketing genius but what i really love about her and what i've learned about her in the last kind of three and a half years of working with her is that she's very real and she really has values that she stands up for and it kind of covers everything whatever she's talking to you she's not afraid to be vulnerable she's not afraid to uncover the warts that are beneath someone who has a standard of beauty and she's also very free in sharing her struggles and how you storytell is really important as a communicator so that's the real life thing and then the other person who i just admire so much is michelle obama when i heard her speech when she was campaigning for hillary i think i think i got chills i don't think i've ever seen a better communicated presentation in my entire life that's saying something is she's warm she's real she's strong she's funny she's uncompromising and she's inclusive and she's not at all fabricated like it comes from her heart and her soul and you don't you really feel her spirit and to me a great communicator someone who's authentically themselves and not afraid to show it and aware of their audience and aware of you know how they want to change the world both of those women are phenomenal communicators and and i think they represent very well the the concepts you've talked about in terms of building trust being authentic warm and also competent so my final question for you is what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe well you're going to laugh because this is something you teach but i truly believe it it's aim it's audience intent and message i don't care what whether you're going to be in a one-on-one meeting or a presentation or a job interview or wooing somebody you need to know your audience you have to understand where they're coming from and it's really putting yourself in someone else's shoes initially and then what is the intent of this communication you're having with them do you want to entertain do you want to inform do you want to convince persuade fundraise whatever it is if you're not certain on your intent your message will be confusing and then finally how do you message messaging clearly and succinctly and repeating your message and having it as a strong opening and a strong closing so that's the last thing they remember so aim audience intent and message your aim has clearly hit the target today allison i i've thoroughly enjoyed uh speaking with you your reputation preceded you and you've only confirmed it and and i love this notion of reputation being the echo that comes before and after and i i hope our conversation today will echo for everybody who's listened it certainly will echo for me thank you so much so much matt and i look forward to future collaborations and learning uh as always from you thank you thanks for joining us for another episode of think fast talk smart the podcast produced by stanford university's graduate school of business for more information and episodes visit gsb.stanford.edu or subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts find us on social media at stanford.gsb