There is one thing that we must all come to grips with. This is regardless if you are a business owner or an employee. This one thing is that you are the face of the business that you represent and, like it or not, the persona that you put out into the public eye directly affects your business.
The more successful you are, the greater the external pressure to know more about you grows. When everyone now possesses the power to be a reporter via cell phones, then what you say and do is instantly broadcasted to a wide variety of people. Some of these may not be your clientele; however, some may be. That is why as a business owner/employee, you must take great care on how you want that persona to be perceived.
People want to know not only about what makes you unique but also, they want to know what you are passionate about and quite frankly, what makes you, you. This is a very fine line. You must make sure that what you put out as your personality does not reflect badly on the company. For example, if you work in a meat processing plant, being a member of PETA and posting about a vegan lifestyle as well as cruelty to animal pictures may be a bad reflection on the company. Be careful with the words and pictures that you post.
Your personal persona as far as transparency goes must be the same as your businesses’ code of ethics and mission statement. Every business wants to be looked at as being honest and proactive. However, if your personal profile shows you partaking in some behavior that may be questionable, the repercussions to your business will be immediate. If you are a life coach and exude confidence and teach clients on owning their lives, but all you can do is complain and ‘play the victim’, there is a problem with the congruency. This is better known as: ‘Walking Your Talk.’ In other words, before you ‘preach it’, live it first.
On the ‘Walking Your Talk’ scope, there is currently a company that does business training that now has had a massive social media backlash in that someone has accused them of not performing the ‘Walk The Talk’ ideal. There are statistics that if there is one dissatisfied customer, they will tell 10 people which will share the story at least 5 more times. A satisfied customer, however, will tell only 1 person about their great experience and that experience is rarely shared. Sad, but true. The comments on the original post about this company are ALL regarding people that were also dissatisfied with the ‘Walk Your Talk’ part of the business. As I look today, there are even more posts coming out giving negative feedback on this company. Can they recover? Partly, but never fully and now the people in the program will start to question their decision which in part impacts them as they are looking for fault and not for knowledge. Walking Your Talk would have solved it.
Who is at fault? Obviously, the company for not being transparent; even though they teach others on transparency. However, are you ‘Walking Your Talk’ both professionally and personally? Transparency is of the utmost importance as it builds trust and without trust, there can never be longstanding relationships which leads to reduced revenue and we all know what reduced revenue leads to.
There used to be an old saying that went: “There is your personal life and your public life and the two shall never meet.” Unfortunately, it was an OLD saying and it no longer applies.
The old man, the boy and the donkey–know who want to be and work towards that goal always. As always an insightful article. Thanks Joe.
Thanks so much Steve. Happy that you enjoyed it. Appreciate the support.