Three Bad Attitudes Damaging Your Reputation — And How To Fix Them

In a connected world, reputation is all important. Organisations cant afford to damagetheirs through poor stakeholder relationships

An organisation may lose the respect of its stakeholders for a range of reasons. It may have too little time for them, place too little value on their perspectives or have too little interest in their well-being. A growing number of organisations are using primary market research to find out how they are perceived by their stakeholders — essentially anyone who has dealings with or who is impacted by the actions of an organisation. Stakeholders in this context include customers, employees, investors, the community, suppliers, regulators and the media, among others. This research helps them to identify opportunities to work more closely with these stakeholders and to make informed decisions that help build trust and a better reputation.

Of course, every organisation has its own unique reputational issues. But dozens of major reputational research studies, drawing on the perspectives of hundreds of strategically minded stakeholders, have revealed some common themes and pinpointed some important lessons on the defining traits of organisations with strong stakeholder relationships and the weaknesses of those that fall short.

HOW POOR REPUTATIONS DEVELOP

Organisations with poorer reputations generally exhibit at least one of three common characteristics: they’re too busy, too bossy or too self-interested.

1. Too busy: These organisations don’t seem to have time for all that stakeholder stuff. They operate in a dynamic sector, face many competing demands and find themselves too busy to engage with stakeholders.

They display a strong preference for doing things their way, even in areas that require collaboration to make sure a solution meets the needs of all. When they are dealing with stakeholders, it is usually after an “event” that includes patching up differences with a hurt party, often not for the first time.