simplerich

Who are you?

I recently ordered the free google business cards they were giving away. I’m out and my company is getting me some new ones sent soon but I hate being out. When I got the free Google cards they looked like I worked for Google, but that didn’t bother me. The people I would be giving them to knew for whom I worked, and I could select which contact methods to give them by writing it on the bottom of the card. I liked them more than I thought I would and will get more use out of them than I thought as well. I expected to cease using them as soon as my new ones arrived, but these aren’t bad at all.

I posted about blogging about work and I think a lot about the internet and how it is turning into some sort of outer representation of who we are. If you look at all my sites, flickr, twitter, my blog, my tumblr site, my LastFM online radio station, and my SparkPeople page you can get a pretty good idea of where I am, what I’m doing, what music I listen to, what food I eat, and what my likes and dislikes are. It’s a lot of information. It’s the kind of thing I’d love to know about potential employees and it’s something I’m very aware of in real life as well as on the internet. I’m my own brand in here and I’m mostly careful about what I do and say. I’ve been with the same company for almost fifteen years and people who see me know me and know of my association with the company with which I’ve spent so much time.

I think it’s about reputation and character. Reputation is what other people think of you, who they think you are. Reputation is somewhat beyond our control in that we can’t control how what we do is perceived, but we can control what we do and how we do it. Reputation is what Google can show us. Character, our character, that’s what we are inside, when nobody’s looking. Character is the bones on which the flesh of reputation hangs. Google can’t show character.

All over our town I see signs and posters that say “Character Counts in Fort Dodge.” Character is something I think we’re taught early on. I think it’s something we learn on our parents’ laps when they read to us, or don’t. It’s something we see in them. What do we model for our kids or our employees? What character do we exhibit? What character-bones support our reputation? I’m often nervous of people more concerned with reputation than character. Managers who care more about what other people think than about what they do and who they are make me nervous.

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
– John Wooden