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Your Reputation Is Talking – Are You Listening?
30 Plays5 days ago
I'm joined by writer and communications expert Charlotte Otter to unpack a topic that often gets misunderstood: reputation.
Before this conversation, I associated reputation management with spin and crisis control. Charlotte completely shifted my perspective. What if reputation is less about image and more about the stories people tell about you based on what you say and do?
We explore how to stay visible without being performative, what to do when things go wrong, and how to build trust - even if you're leading a small, growing business.
Key Takeaways:
- What if your reputation isn't what you say it is, but what others experience?
- Could the gap between your words and actions be quietly eroding trust?
- How can you show up authentically, without oversharing or performing?
- What should you say (and when) when something goes wrong?
- How do you keep your personal brand aligned with your business story?
- Can storytelling be your most overlooked leadership tool?
- What role does social media play in your reputation, especially if you hate self-promotion?
Resources:
- Find Charlotte at charlotteotter.com
- Charlotte's book We Need New Leaders is out on 2nd June - visit charlotteotter.com/leaders
Curious how high performing your team really is? Take the High Performing Team Scorecard and get a clear view in under 5 minutes, with a personalised report on how to improve things fast.
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Transcript
Introduction to Reputation and Leadership
00:00:00
Speaker
a
00:00:03
Speaker
For me, reputation is the stories that you tell about either yourself or your business or both in order to present your strategic position to the world.
00:00:17
Speaker
Stories that are repeatable, digestible and easy to tell. Reputation is a combination of what you say about yourself and what others say about you.
00:00:32
Speaker
Welcome to the show. I'm Corinne Hines and this is the Visible Leader Podcast.
00:00:40
Speaker
I've been coaching leaders and their teams and helping them transform their results, their relationships and their impact for over a decade now. And as you can imagine, in all that time, i have become obsessed with the art and science of leading effectively.
00:00:58
Speaker
So together with my guests, I get under the surface of a variety of topics like decision-making, performance, resilience, all with an eye on revealing tips and ideas you can implement straight away.
Charlotte Otter on Reputation Management and Personal Experience
00:01:13
Speaker
My guest today is Charlotte Otter. She's an author, a speaker, an advisor, specializing in reputation, leadership, and diversity. She's got a book that's coming out later this year called We Need New Leaders.
00:01:28
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And it's all about reputation management and how to thrive in leadership roles. She has global experience in many well-known organizations.
00:01:40
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And now Charlotte helps leaders and organizations craft messages that resonate and build reputations that last.
00:01:51
Speaker
Charlotte, welcome to the show. so Thank you so much for inviting me, Corinne. I'm really looking forward to this subject of reputation, what it means and what it doesn't mean in the context that we're interested in.
00:02:09
Speaker
So to kick us off... Have you ever had a time, Charlotte, where there's been a mismatch in your reputation and who you really are or what you were really trying to convey in your whole life?
00:02:25
Speaker
Yes, something does come to mind. When I was working as head of executive communications at a large tech company, I was in Beijing for a kickoff meeting and the executive's keynote hadn't gone terribly well.
00:02:42
Speaker
And it was very late at night and I was a little bit emotional. And I called my boss to tell her that things hadn't gone 100% to plan. and I ended up crying on the call. And I'm not i'm a crier in my personal life, but I'm not a crier at work.
00:02:59
Speaker
And when I reflected back on that years later, ah really felt as if that was the moment that shifted my reputation with my boss, because I'd always been the calm one. I'd always been the coper.
00:03:12
Speaker
I'd always been the person she could turn to. and suddenly, one, something had gone very slightly wrong. And two, I'd had an emotional reaction to that. And I always look back on that and I think,
00:03:24
Speaker
I don't actually have regrets about showing up as myself and being a true human, but I do wonder how it affected my reputation with her and how she thought about me after that.
00:03:37
Speaker
And I do actually believe that my reputation with her was a little bit tarnished after that moment. m Interesting. I didn't know where you were going then. I was thinking... Did you have a pre-that-moment reputation of being a little bit hard and actually it warmed you up and that really built your reputation or did you worry that it, yeah, it's interesting?
00:03:58
Speaker
And it is like you can't have that moment where you didn't do that thing to know what would have happened as a ah instead. Yeah, there's no way to going back and fixing either the mistake or the crying on the phone to my boss from Beijing.
00:04:14
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Neither of those are are fixable. so On one level, and this is what I say to leaders, yeah I've had to forgive myself. I've had to and i've had let it go.
00:04:26
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on reflection as well, I do realize that I was, and I didn't know at the time, I was going through perimenopause. And it does make me think about, know, the workplace is very much opened up now on the topic of of menopause and perimenopause.
00:04:39
Speaker
But at that stage, it was not a topic for discussion. And I have thought since, you know, imagine if my workplace had been such that I was aware that I was in perimenopause and was talking about it in a way where I could also say to my boss, hey, by the way, that thing that happened, you know, I was in hormonal hell.
00:04:58
Speaker
So sorry. Yeah, yeah. God, there's so many layers to this. is to It's really interesting. When I thought about this subject before we first chatted, when I thought about reputation management, the words that came up to my mind were Max Clifford, celebrities, and you've got something to hide, you've done something wrong.
00:05:22
Speaker
and you're trying to cover, you know, you're trying you're trying to sort of change the story to something that didn't really happen. So you've changed my mind about that because what you're looking at is from a different angle. So maybe the first place to start would be what your definition of reputation management is.
Understanding Reputation Management
00:05:46
Speaker
For me, reputation is the stories that you tell about either yourself or your business or both in order to present your strategic position to the world.
00:05:59
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So for example, if you're business and you're selling, I don't know, financial services, What are the stories that you tell that build into the narratives that people learn about you that are repeatable, digestible, and easy to tell so that your narrative and your reputation are built up in these kind of digestible chunks?
00:06:20
Speaker
It's not one big bang, but it's kind of a ah mosaic of stories that you build up over time that create set of narratives about you and then from there, a reputation.
00:06:34
Speaker
Excellent. So can you ever know what your reputation is? For very large companies, they're kind of tools like RepTrack where you can spend a lot of money and get feedback on your reputation.
00:06:48
Speaker
And reputation is a combination of what you say about yourself and what others say about you. So it's not completely ownable. it's not completely ownable and manageable, which is why some people are uncomfortable about it, going back to your initial thought about Max Clifford and celebrity's reputation, because it goes back to that idea of spin.
00:07:12
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And spin is the gap between when you try to explain the gap between your words and your behavior. So your words as a company might be, oh, we're extremely purpose-driven and we care about our employees.
00:07:24
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And then you do something terrible and fire half your workforce. That attempt to explain the gap between your words and your behavior is spin. a net And that is what makes people uncomfortable around the idea of reputation management.
00:07:39
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So really for your reputation to be strong, there should be no gap between words and behavior. Great. As soon as there's a gap, you have a trust problem. And trust is reputation's closest sibling.
00:07:52
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and But when you start to explain the gap, that's when you get it into spin territory. and So give give me some examples of spin territory for... SME type businesses?
00:08:06
Speaker
I've got a good one. In the US, there's a business called Kite Baby and they're very well known for parent-friendly, child-friendly baby equipment. So it's all about bamboo and kind to the skin and so very much of our love for parents and babies.
00:08:24
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And in January last year, CEO of Kite Baby fired an employee who asked for permission to work remotely from the ICU because she and her husband had adopted a baby that had been born at 22 weeks.
00:08:42
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The employee was fired. She was very sad, but she had a new baby. Her sister was angry about it, posted ah video on TikTok. So of course it then takes off and Kite Baby was very well known in a particular community of moms and parents.
00:09:00
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Then the CEO jumped onto TikTok herself and made a very highly scripted... that was amazing. I did see that....apology. So scripted. It was like, oh my God.
00:09:12
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So scripted and uncomfortable. And and i clearly she had a lawyer hovering just here and clearly had not had a conversation with her comms person on how to show up. That was then highly criticized on TikTok.
00:09:25
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So she got back and did another video, this time unscripted and more from the heart, but by then had been picked up by CNN. you know And you you don't want to be on CNN for the wrong reasons if you're a parent to me business owner. You want to be on CNN for the right reasons.
00:09:43
Speaker
So that was spin. Firstly, her really uncomfortable scripted apology. And then her second, even though her second apology was a better one, the fact that she even did it, the fact that she had to was so embarrassing and awkward.
00:09:58
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And it makes us all squirm just thinking about it because of that trust gap between we're a family-friendly, parent-friendly company. Oh, but we fired this person for asking to work remotely from the ICU. Yeah.
00:10:11
Speaker
So it feels like reputation management, like you were saying that it has lots of layers to it. It's less about how to advise this woman about really that was a terrible scripted apology, but it's that layer above, isn't it? it's It's what your actions are that but are completely out of sync with what you're claiming.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yes, and that's why as comms people, we always say when there's a crisis, it comes in the room early because we will advise you and how to behave in a humane way so that your reputation isn't threatened. The bad things happen.
00:10:50
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We can't get away bad things happening in the world and at work. But it's how you respond to them. It's how you behave in the moment that can destroy your reputation.
00:11:01
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yeah And then what you do next. And what you do next, exactly. The next thing that you do and what you continue to do and how you continue to behave. Yeah, it was a good example. I watched that video. It's excruciating. Truly.
00:11:17
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Great. So it's nice to see some examples, but what's personal
Personal Branding vs. Reputation Management
00:11:21
Speaker
branding? What is that and how is that different from reputation management? It's a really good question. It comes up a lot for me because I tend to talk about reputation rather than personal branding.
00:11:32
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But I think really personal branding is like the the core of your entire reputation. So the personal branding part of it is how you think about yourself.
00:11:44
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how you would like to be seen. And then the reputation management aspect is all the parts around it. So Rupert Younger is the head of the Oxford Institute for Corporate Reputation. And he's written a fantastic book called The Reputation Game.
00:11:59
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And he says reputation is made up of your behavior, your networks, and your narratives. So I would say personal branding is core to your narratives, but reputation is all three.
00:12:11
Speaker
Can you just define narratives? narratives are the sets of stories that you tell about yourself or your business. And they generally have a strategic focus. You're not telling stories about the campfire. You're telling stories that shine a light on yourself as a business leader shine a light on your business in order to ah attract customers and followers and fans.
00:12:35
Speaker
I can understand, and I think my listeners but truly understand why this is so important for people that are in very large corporates where it it really matters and everybody's watching.
00:12:49
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But a lot of my listeners are going to be in SMEs where that pressure isn't the same. Why does it matter? It's true that there's not the same pressure.
00:13:03
Speaker
pressures in publicly listed companies for SMEs. But SMEs are still undergoing pressure. They're still undergoing change. They're still operating in the context that larger companies are operating in.
00:13:16
Speaker
They've been equally, if not more, affected by supply chain issues after COVID. They're equally, and if not more, affected by what's happening in politics and governments changing and regulations changing.
00:13:30
Speaker
So all companies, big or small, operate in the same cultural context where there are all kinds of external pressures. And I think the onus is on leaders and CEOs from SMEs is to show their audiences how they plan to manage through these pressures.
00:13:50
Speaker
And their audiences also include their employees. So CEOs of small companies have reputations with their own staff. They've got to make sure their words and their actions match. um And they've got to have narratives to tell that inspire their staff to keep going in the face of the pressures that they're experiencing, not only at work, but at home.
00:14:15
Speaker
Have you got any the examples where reputation management has been important to smaller businesses that doesn't hit the media, but it's happening frequently? What kind of things go on?
00:14:29
Speaker
So I had and ceo the of a startup phone me one weekend. And she said to me, i' going to be selling part of my business.
00:14:40
Speaker
I haven't told the employees yet. However, for some reason, the Zoom that I was on, where I was talking about fire, was broadcast to more people than it should have been.
00:14:56
Speaker
I now want to get in lawyers to get that handful of people who should not have heard that discussion. ah want to get it under of control and I want to prevent them from talking about it. How should I manage it?
00:15:09
Speaker
And I said to her, don't need to bring in the lawyers. Just communicate to your staff as quickly as possible. Be a human.
00:15:20
Speaker
a mistake was made. You run a very small business. You've established trust. You're going to call them in to an un-videoed all-hands meeting. You're going to say, this happened.
00:15:31
Speaker
You're sorry that it happened. This is why it happened. And you trust all of them to contain it and not tell anybody. And they did. Nice. When you have that feeling of threat as a leader,
00:15:44
Speaker
Just like the kites here, there's that instinct to bring in the lawyers. I've got to protect myself. A mistake has been made. But actually, it's much more useful to be a human and admit mistakes and say to your trusted employees, I made a mistake. I'm a human. I trust you.
00:16:03
Speaker
We're going to go on from here. yeah And that brings me back to like the whole Max Clifford and recent things with the chef, Greg Wallace, where authenticity collides with, you know, reality and and then reputation. And how do you see those two where authenticity kicks in?
00:16:30
Speaker
Where does it feature? Authenticity is a really interesting one because there's this whole movement of, you know, show up as yourself at work. And if you think back to my example of crying in Beijing, now I was showing up as myself. um I don't think we want to show up as 100% at work as the person we are on the sofa watching Netflix with a hand in the bowl of chips. Yeah.
00:16:58
Speaker
But, and this is a challenge for leaders as well, organizations shouldn't be fear-based. You know, there's a very old school style of leadership, which is transactional.
The Evolution of Leadership
00:17:09
Speaker
You know, I order, you do, you get rewarded. We've moved away from transactional leadership to more transformational leadership, where the onus is on leaders to inspire and engage people so that they naturally follow them.
00:17:24
Speaker
And the shift that I'm seeing now, and it's extremely contested, as we'll see from what's happening at Meta and Amazon, is a shift to more inclusive leadership. And that's where Greg Wallace went wrong, because he was being authentically Greg, but he wasn't thinking about the inclusivity of all the people around him.
00:17:43
Speaker
It was very ego-driven. I'm comfortable being this person, but no thought to how the jokes or the banter made the people around him feel. And I think the shift that we're seeing now, and there is some backlash against it, but it's kind of inexorable, I believe, is towards this more inclusive style of leadership where you're not showing up in your sweats with your hand in the bag of chips as you do watching Netflix, but you can bring your diverse identities to work.
00:18:14
Speaker
If you're neurodivergent, there's going to be a certain level comfort about disclosing that at work. If, like me, you're perimenopausal and you're going through hormonal hell, it's going to become more space to say, I'm having a hormonal day. This is just who I am right now. And I think we're on a trajectory towards that.
00:18:34
Speaker
We're not there yet. No. I think the couple of words that was coming to my mind as I was listening to you is being intentional, something about not being you know chips and sweats, but actually being intentional about how you're showing up. And um one of my other podcast guests, Danny Wareham, talked a lot about culture. And when when I've read things he said about authenticity,
00:19:00
Speaker
There's many different sides to you. but but im not that thought that there's this one authentic version that you need to like project is just not true. And you think about a little bit deeper. You're not the same in an interview as you are with your friends at the pub. And they're you're still authentic. So I've always felt uncomfortable with that.
00:19:19
Speaker
take me as I am, you know, idea. So that, that kind of being intentional about sort so much what version is showing up, but you know, at least to some extent, but it sounds a little bit like manipulative, but, and then the other thing I was thinking is feedback.
00:19:34
Speaker
Like but we're not here to talk about Greg Wallace, but there's the power dynamic and all the other aspects of that example. But, I do notice some leaders that don't have the right things being said to them to show up that that joke is not okay.
00:19:53
Speaker
You know, that that is leaving people feeling uncomfortable. They're laughing. That doesn't mean they think it's funny. I still see that not being done as much, but I think we're heading in that direction.
00:20:06
Speaker
We are. And I talk about intentionality um in my book that's going to be published soon and how emerging leaders are incredibly intentional about the language they use because they're aware of inclusivity.
00:20:20
Speaker
And I do think leaders are going to, end and people, you know, and employees are generally becoming more intentional about how they show up and the language that they use. We have something else to say, but like on a micro level for SME leaders, and it goes to intentionality, which when you're talking to your people, be highly aware if you're expressing an idea, closely held belief, or an instruction.
00:20:49
Speaker
Because what often happens with leaders, execs, CEOs, is they come into room and they talk widely and everything bubbles out of them. And people think they're being told what to do.
00:21:01
Speaker
And I had that with a boss who once said to me, I want a digital dashboard that shows me all the things that I can do in comms, internally, externally, global. And I took that as an instruction.
00:21:12
Speaker
And I picked it up and ran with it and I took it to my team ah and we built something. We also did our day job, but we did that and it wasn't an instruction. It was just an idea that she was bouncing around with me.
00:21:24
Speaker
So I think it's really important that leaders are very, very clear. Guys, I'm just spitballing. This is just an idea. This is just something worth thinking about. Or I'm extremely passionate about this a idea.
00:21:36
Speaker
The time for the business is not now. But know that this is something that's really meaningful to me and it's going to find its way into our business strategy next year. Or I want you to do this today and the deadline is next Friday.
00:21:51
Speaker
and I've seen the fallout from that miscommunication. You're moving really nicely to so what and the what can we do. So one of the things I really like to encourage on this podcast is that my lovely guests give some advice.
00:22:11
Speaker
tips, strategies, practical ideas, because it's inspiring to listen to you. And maybe there's people listening that think I've never really given it as much thought as this, or I've known there's something there, but I haven't really dug into it.
00:22:24
Speaker
Can you give us ideas of things they can be doing straight away? Well, I think if you're a leader and you haven't done any conscious work on your personal brand, knowing exactly what you stand for, then that's a big gap.
00:22:44
Speaker
I think leaders need to have a deep understanding of how their personal brand fits into and matches the brand of their business. How do the stories that I tell as a leader shine a light on the services and products that we're trying to sell?
00:23:00
Speaker
And if that's too hard for a leader, CEO, executive, someone who's running a business, get some comms help because communicators are really, really good at this stuff.
00:23:11
Speaker
That's what we train to do. We're not just there for the crisis and the press releases. We're there to dig out the stories that are meaningful to all your audiences, your employees, your investors, your customers, your partners, and the greater community.
00:23:25
Speaker
And if you can't afford to hire a communicator full-time, get some freelance help, get a consultant in to help you run some workshops with your leadership team. But get everybody on your leadership team to accept and cohere around ah set of stories that are meaningful for your business.
00:23:43
Speaker
Because if you have your head of sales going out and telling one set of stories, and you have your finance person going out and said telling another set of stories, and you have your HR person going out and telling a completely different set of stories, then you're just confusing your market. And no matter how small you are, you can't afford that.
00:23:58
Speaker
You can't afford to be confusing your potential customers. You need to be coherent, and you need to all agree on what the stories are.
Crafting Leadership Narratives
00:24:08
Speaker
So can you give us a first tiny step? So imagine we are not going to get anyone in yet. We're going to do some work ourselves as a first step.
00:24:19
Speaker
What specifically can you do to start addressing this personal brand and the stories? So the personal brand part of it is, who am i Ask yourself the journalism questions.
00:24:32
Speaker
Who am I? What do I stand for? What does this mean? How does my story fit into the business strategy overall? And then the stories that you're going to find are Customer success, where has your product or your service changed a customer's business for them?
00:24:50
Speaker
And when you've got the customer success story, then you have the, and how did our product fit into that that journey or that change or that shift for them? It's always about change.
00:25:01
Speaker
No leader gets up on stage and says, guys, I'm here to tell you everything's staying the same. always about change. It's always about shift. It's always about from state A to state B and how you're helping whoever you're trying to sell to get from A to B. So start to map out those different A to B state changes that you've seen at your customers and build those into customer stories and put them on your website.
00:25:29
Speaker
Lovely. So the next bit of tips is something's gone wrong. As you say, it's inevitable. Employee, there's a mismatch.
00:25:43
Speaker
Something's happened, like you said. Now, partly, I think you've answered it with your lovely story of the over-communicated business thing. What can people do?
00:25:56
Speaker
What can leaders do if A mistake has happened that's a reputational risk. What would be your top tips? It's about acknowledging the problem as quickly as possible.
00:26:09
Speaker
So the longer you wait, the wider the gap gets, the more chance there is for people to make up their own story. So the quicker you get to acknowledging the problem,
00:26:21
Speaker
The more chance you have of owning the narrative. But in that speed, don't rush to saying what it was or saying what your solutions are.
00:26:32
Speaker
So you can acknowledge, you can apologize, and you can say we're working on it. And we'll come back to you in two weeks' time or a month's time when we know what the solution is and how we're going to address it.
00:26:45
Speaker
Nice. think people would, employees would massively appreciate that. I think that's the thing I notice when I've been working with big businesses,
00:26:57
Speaker
They've got a lot to communicate. The gaps just create their own stories. And I hear the different stories all over the place. And you think, wow, that's interesting because it's a vacuum and it's just been filled.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah. There's a concept that I've come across recently from m David Pullen, who wrote The DNA of Engagement, and it's called boss watching. People watch you when you're the boss.
00:27:20
Speaker
And if you don't own the narratives, they make up stories about you. and You know, and it's a real risk. If you're not talking to your employees and your staff all the time and explaining why things happened, they they're going to make stuff up in the gaps.
00:27:35
Speaker
Would you say that the things that get made up tend not to be in their favor? There can be reputational risks for sure. So I know we're not having the whole podcast about the subject of communication, but since I've got communication expert here,
00:27:52
Speaker
The thing that I see so frequently is over communication of information in the form of emails and ah flood of that kind of stuff. But it's just information. Like there seems to be a lot of information for people to digest.
00:28:13
Speaker
And so they don't. And it's a bit of a mess. And so people tend to communicate more because they feel like things are being missed. I just wanted your take on that phenomena and how to overcome it.
00:28:27
Speaker
It's definitely a phenomena. And if you think about and an individual employee who is or customer who's getting this wave of information from you,
00:28:39
Speaker
That's not the only wave. They're being overwhelmed in their private life, online. We are all flooded with information.
Engaging through Genuine Conversations
00:28:48
Speaker
So while we do say in change, you need to communicate a lot.
00:28:54
Speaker
It's more about communicating the same thing over and over again, not providing new information. So it's about consistency. But I'm starting to see a move away from campaigns and more towards having conversations.
00:29:08
Speaker
This really hard for leaders. Because a campaign, you can hand over to your comms person and you can say, run it. And you just give a nice tick and you get the lovely warm feeling that it's done. But a conversation, you have to hold it yourself as a leader.
00:29:22
Speaker
And that's actually where you really help your employees to shift and to accept change and to see what their role in change is if you're sitting down with them and actually listening to what they have to say.
00:29:35
Speaker
I love that that's your message, Charlotte. I think that's so clear, but not being done so often. Being a visible leader something I'm passionate about. So you've just ah reiterated that, which is lovely.
00:29:51
Speaker
Last point, one aspect of modern life, which we cannot ignore and we cannot put back in the box, is social media.
The Role of Social Media in Leadership
00:30:01
Speaker
And I feel that social media and reputation management are very closely aligned and need a conversation about, how should leaders manage their social media?
00:30:15
Speaker
Look, social media is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's where where you can very sharply see reputation and relief when there's a problem, but it can also be incredibly positive.
00:30:29
Speaker
So I've seen stats that the most active CEOs on LinkedIn are getting 10% more funding than those who are inactive. So there's a financial value to being socially active.
00:30:43
Speaker
Obviously, there's a danger if you say something silly. There's a danger that your reputation could be threatened. And that goes back to the intentionality that we're talking about. You take that intentionality with you through every part of your leadership life, including how you show up on social media.
00:31:00
Speaker
I personally think it's critical. The issue is is that not everyone's a natural. So there are about 10% of leaders who are complete naturals, don't need any help. They can go it alone.
00:31:11
Speaker
And then the rest need some learning, some skills. They need some help. how to do it in a way that's authentic and natural to them. And then there's maybe 10 or 20% who literally can't, who only see it as self-promotion, who feel totally uncomfortable, who generationally wrong.
00:31:31
Speaker
To those folks, I would say pick two to three people in your organization who are the naturals and let them be the speakers for your company. Yeah, great sound advice. and And I love that you're very balanced with it because I suppose having a teenage daughter, I feel so very sad about the effects of it in some ways, but I quite like LinkedIn really. i think it's a great way to have conversations with leaders and everyone.
00:32:01
Speaker
So yeah I wouldn't want to isolate us from it, but yeah, being intentional. That's the sort of theme of the whole show, I think. And it wraps us back to what I said about Rupert Younger's definition of reputation. Your networks are important too, where you show up.
00:32:20
Speaker
And for those sort of boomer generation leaders who may be uncomfortable with social media, they're going to be good at conferences. They're going to be good at in-person events. So they can still be networking together.
00:32:33
Speaker
in a different form and sending people on their leadership team who are more comfortable with social out onto the socials to represent the company. Great conversation, Charlotte. My last question is, what have I missed? you've got your I'm going to ask you about your book in a minute, but thinking about everything in your your fabulous book, what question should I have asked that I haven't?
00:32:55
Speaker
With the book in mind, the question that I asked myself as I was writing it was, does our identity have any effect or resonance or impact on our reputation?
Emerging Leaders and Identity
00:33:08
Speaker
And it was interesting because the emerging leaders who i interviewed see their identity as very closely tied to their leadership reputation and older generations of leaders less so.
00:33:24
Speaker
But I think what's happening is we're seeing this workplace shift generationally, but also more and more people from diverse backgrounds. You know, they're already in the workplace, but they're shifting into leadership roles.
00:33:37
Speaker
And so their identity that is a natural part of them will be become part of their leadership journey. So, for example, I interviewed a leader who is non-binary,
00:33:48
Speaker
Their name is David and their identity is a very critical part of how they lead their teams. And as the workplace shifts generationally, but also with these much more interesting and rich different identities and backgrounds in the workplace, we're going to see more of that.
00:34:06
Speaker
And we know impacts diversity of identity and diversity of thinking. can bring us. So bring it on. We know it brings innovation.
00:34:17
Speaker
It's also a question of social justice. It's also unavoidable. And I think that's what we're seeing with the kind of performative clapback from Meta at the moment. so It's unavoidable.
00:34:29
Speaker
It's happening whether we like it or not. And we mind it and you know I love it. I think it's great, but certain leaders are going to have to get used to it. Lovely. Thank you As I mentioned, you have a book that's going to be coming out later this year. So could you just say what it is and where and when they're going to be able to find it?
00:34:49
Speaker
Yeah, so my book is called We Need New Leaders. It's about the intersection of reputation, leadership and diversity. And it's published on the 3rd of June and available in all good bookshops and online wherever you love to buy books.
00:35:04
Speaker
You can find me on charlotteotter.com and I'm also quite active on LinkedIn. Brilliant. Well, I will put all of that in the show notes. And it was an absolute pleasure having you on and having this conversation.
00:35:19
Speaker
Thank you so much, Corinne.
00:35:25
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Visible Leader podcast. To stay up to date with the latest episode, hit the subscribe button. And I'd love to hear what you think, so please leave me a review.
00:35:36
Speaker
If you have any questions or comments, reach out to me, Corinne Hines on LinkedIn.