You already have a leadership reputation, whether you work on it or not: Your team and your colleagues use everything you say and do, and everything you leave undone, to decide what kind of leader you are. You can shape that judgement through your values, your behaviour and how consistent they are.
Reputation is the name you’ve made from past experiences, encounters and relationships. It builds over years and travels ahead of you, into meetings, promotion rounds and conversations with headhunters.
Three terms often get mixed up. Reputation looks back: What have others experienced with you? Your executive presence describes who you are now and how you come across in the room.
Visibility, in turn, is about whether your successes get noticed at all. More on that in Leadership visibility: How to make your success recognisable.
The three are connected. Strong presence without consistency fizzles out, and visibility without substance damages your reputation. Reputation is what remains after many encounters.
Standing as a leader is worth striving for, and it’s useful. It gives you self-worth and creates a basis for trust in communication and collaboration.
A clear leadership reputation affects how your decisions are received and how effective you are in your role. Your career prospects depend on it too, because it shows whether you can and want to carry more responsibility.
Building it takes time and a willingness to look honestly at strengths and weaknesses. It changes with every stage of your career.
Clarify your values and drivers. Do you know what you stand for and what you don’t? What motivates you, and what do you want to be known for? Teams follow leaders they respect and trust. Copying other people’s behaviour to win favour rarely lasts long. Check your leadership motives on four levels: Functional (your leadership methods), social (how you deal with others), personal (how you deal with yourself) and ethical (values and meaning in life).
Check the current picture. Ask superiors, colleagues and people from your private life for feedback on your communication and decision-making style. Note where their view differs from your own.
Define your own contribution. What impact do you have today, and what impact do you want to achieve in the next one to two years? Your reputation should make your contribution to the company clearly recognisable.
Write a personal mission statement. Answer for yourself: Who are you, what do you stand for, how do you work? A maxim helps, for example “I open up opportunities, for others and for myself.”
Your leadership reputation follows what you do repeatedly. So the mission statement is only the beginning.
Live the mission statement. Share it with colleagues and your team so everyone knows what they can expect from you. A public commitment makes it harder to give up at the first obstacle, and it wins you supporters.
Reputation usually suffers from patterns that add up, and the people around you notice them long before you do. A single mistake is seldom enough.
Commitments you don’t keep. A postponed deadline is forgivable. If it becomes the rule, your word counts for less.
Successes you claim for yourself alone. The team remembers who stood at the front during the presentation and who did the work.
Disappearing in a crisis. When things get difficult, everyone looks to leadership. Becoming invisible then shapes your reputation for years.
In my work, I see reputations wear down through small contradictions between what someone says and what they do, adding up over months. Big appearances are seldom the cause.
My position: Your leadership reputation speaks in rooms where you’re not sitting. That’s why the consistency of your behaviour counts for more than any single presentation.
Be careful with the extreme of staging your reputation like a brand. If all you do is polish your image, you soon come across as slick, and teams quickly notice the difference between show and substance.
Reputation is the judgement others have formed from your past behaviour. Presence describes how you come across and are perceived today. Good presence builds your reputation over time.
Usually years, because reputation rests on repeated experiences. You can lose it faster. That’s why consistency in small things is the most effective lever.
Stay visible and reachable, especially when you don’t have all the answers yet. Say what you know, what you’re still clarifying and by when. Reliability in uncertain weeks stays in people’s memory for a long time.
Yes, with patience. Name openly what went wrong, and show changed behaviour over months. Regular feedback helps you check whether the change is getting through.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: Leader as coach: How trust and standing grow · Top executive: Raising impact and standing in the leadership team · Leadership lives in the minds of those you lead
Note: This article was first published on 25.07.2019 and was revised and expanded in October 2026.
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more
