What Do You Want to Be Known for as a Leader?

When people talk about your leadership, what do you hope they say?

Perhaps you want to be known as calm under pressure, fair, decisive, approachable or someone who brings out the best in others.

Whatever your answer, one thing is certain: your reputation as a leader is being shaped every day. It’s built through the way you communicate, make decisions, respond to pressure, handle mistakes and support the people around you.

Read this article alongside ‘What do you want your team to be known for.’ 

Why does your leadership reputation matter?

Every leader has a reputation, whether they deliberately shape it or not. People notice whether you listen, whether you follow through, how you react when things go wrong and how you treat people when the pressure is on.

Over time, those experiences become the way people describe your leadership.

Being clear about what you want to be known for gives you something practical to lead towards. It helps turn broad ideas such as being a good leader into behaviours that people can actually see and experience.

It can also help you make better decisions.

If you want to be known as fair and consistent, for example, you can ask yourself whether your actions reflect that.

If you want to be known as someone who develops others, you can consider how much time you spend coaching, giving feedback and creating opportunities for people to grow.

Try this simple exercise by completing the sentence:

“As a leader, I want to be known as someone who is…”

Choose three or four words or short phrases.

For example:

• Calm and considered
• Clear about expectations
• Supportive but challenging
• Fair and consistent
• Decisive
• Approachable
• Someone who develops others

Then ask a second question:

“What would people need to see me doing for those words to be true?”

This is where values become behaviours.

If you want to be known as approachable, that might mean making time to listen, asking for different viewpoints and responding constructively when someone raises a concern.

If you want to be known as decisive, it could mean making timely decisions, explaining your reasoning and taking responsibility for the outcome.

Understand the gap

The next question can be harder:

Feedback can help you understand the difference between your intention and your impact.

Ask trusted colleagues or members of your team:

“What is one thing I do that positively affects the people around me?”

Then ask:

“What is one thing I could do differently to become a more effective leader?”

You may hear things you already know. You may also discover something you had not considered. Either way, the value is in being curious rather than defensive.

Build your reputation through consistency

Leadership reputation is rarely created by one big moment. It is built through hundreds of small ones.

• How you run meetings.
• How you react to bad news.
• Whether you keep your promises.
• How you give feedback.
• How you behave when things are difficult.

The question is not simply What kind of leader do I want to be?

It is:

What do I need to do consistently to be seen that way?

Your Leadership Reputation: What to Consider

What is leadership reputation?
Leadership reputation is how other people experience and describe the way you lead.

Can you change your reputation as a leader?
Yes. Start by becoming clear about how you want to be known, ask for feedback and consistently demonstrate the behaviours that support that reputation.

What is a useful leadership reflection question?
Ask: “If three people who work with me regularly described my leadership, what would I want them to say?”

Final takeaway:
Decide what you want to be known for, then make sure your everyday leadership behaviours reinforce it.

Explore our range of Leadership courses and programmes to shape the leader you want to be.