I visited Shenzhen in the third week of September this year and saw toys with on and off switches giving massages while robots pitched solar panels to traders. The city hums like a restless engine, alive with speed and invention.
You either keep pace or you get buried; that is the brutal honesty of leadership reputation: what people say about you when you are not in the room is the true measure of your leadership, not the slides you polish, not the speeches you rehearse, not the curated presence you attempt to control.
The common myth is that leadership is performance. That myth is fatal. Leadership is not what you present. Leadership is what lingers. The moment you step out of the boardroom, the conversations that continue about you are the real verdict on your tenure.
The chaos without clarity
Picture a convoy of taxis at Entebbe airport. Each driver is desperate for passengers, but there is no agreed queue, no traffic marshal, no discipline. Some drivers shout and fight; others sneakily jump the line. The result? Chaos, confusion, and lost business.
This is what happens in organisations where leaders do not establish clarity. When the leader steps away, the drivers, the employees default to instinct. And the real question becomes: whose instincts dominate? In the boardroom, the equivalent is governance drift. When the chair is absent, committee chairs whisper, alliances form, and execution stalls.
A strong leader is not the one who polices every taxi. A strong leader is the one who creates a culture so clear that even in their absence, the drivers police themselves.
A reputation is the shadow you cannot photoshop
The sacred cow in leadership is the obsession with personal branding. Too many executives mistake reputation for branding. They hire consultants to craft LinkedIn posts, choreograph town halls, and produce glossy annual reports. That is branding.
Reputation is different. Reputation is the whisper new employees hear on their first day. It is the unfiltered view competitors express over dinner about your seriousness. It is what regulators quietly say when your name surfaces in private.
Branding is controlled, reputation is earned, branding is curated, and reputation is lived. Reputation is the shadow you cannot photoshop.
After working with several leaders, I have observed that the empty chair at the head of the table speaks louder than the one who occupies it.
When the CEO leaves the room, what fills the space? In some firms, fear takes over. People whisper: “Do not question that decision, or you will pay.” In others, relief floods the room: “Now we can finally get some real work done.”
The rarest rooms are those where the absence of the leader makes no difference at all. Why? Because clarity has already been embedded, accountability has already been assigned, and the organisation does not run on charisma; it runs on structure.
The question every board must ask is simple: What does your empty chair say about you?
“What people say about you when you are absent is not gossip; it is governance. The echo you leave behind is your truest balance sheet.”
Performance is temporary. Reputation is compound.
It sounds odd, but performance is temporary while reputation is compound.
A bank may post record profits this quarter, but if the board is seen as asleep on cyber resilience, one breach will erase both profit and credibility. An insurance company may win awards for customer service, but if employees quietly say, “Our CEO never listens,” the rot is already in.
Performance is numbers. Reputation is memory. And memory outlives numbers.
This is why sophisticated investors, regulators, and stakeholders increasingly ask not only “What did you achieve?” but also “What do people say about you when you are not in the room?”
Leadership is like conducting an orchestra. If the conductor walks away mid-performance, what happens?
If the musicians know the score, understand the tempo, and have rehearsed discipline, the music continues. If the orchestra depends entirely on the waving stick of the conductor, the sound collapses into noise.
The true test of leadership is not how well the orchestra plays when you are waving. The true test is how well it plays when you are gone.
Most leaders destroy their reputations not by malice but by reaction. They lose composure in moments of pressure, blame others when things go wrong, or hoard information to preserve control.
These are what the Leadership Circle calls Reactive Tendencies. They are predictable but fatal. When you are not in the room, people will say: “She panics under pressure,” or “He never owns mistakes.” Those whispers travel faster than your achievements.
Every leader must therefore name their One Big Liability, the single habit that, if removed, would transform how people experience their leadership. To expose it publicly is not a weakness. To expose it is courage. And courage is the raw material of lasting reputation.
In financial services, leaders are like vault doors. A vault looks impregnable, shiny, and secure. But what really matters is the locking mechanism you cannot see.
Many leaders polish the vault door, titles, awards, and media interviews, but ignore the lock: decision-making clarity, accountability, and culture. When regulators test the vault, they care little for the shine.
They want to know if the lock holds. The lock is what people say about you when you are not in the room. Do you freeze in crisis? Do you punish dissent? Do you favour insiders? Those are the tumblers in the lock. If they do not align, the vault opens to everyone.
Boards that treat reputation as PR are already obsolete. Reputation is not a press release. Reputation is a balance-sheet item.
It is the multiplier of trust that lowers the cost of capital, attracts scarce talent, and buys forgiveness when mistakes happen.
But reputation is not managed by spin doctors. It is managed by governance design. Winning boards must therefore ask:
- When the CEO is absent, what do employees say in town halls?
- When the Chair steps away, do committees collaborate or compete?
- When regulators meet middle managers, do they hear confidence or excuses?
The answers to these questions are the earliest indicators of whether the company will survive the next disruption.
Five steps to shape the echo
- Anchor decisions. End every board or executive meeting with at least one non-negotiable decision. People remember decisiveness, not debate.
- Expose your liability. Tell your team where you are weak. It gives them permission to compensate rather than gossip.
- Build an Accountability Circle. Surround yourself with five to eight people who give unvarnished feedback on how your leadership feels.
- Institutionalise courage. Publicly reward those who speak the uncomfortable truth. If truth is punished, whispers replace candour.
- Audit the empty chair. Once a year, leave a strategy session early. Later, ask what happened after you left. That is your mirror.
The market rumour
In banking circles, rumours can kill faster than facts. A whisper that “Bank X is under stress” triggers a run long before insolvency. Leadership is the same. The rumour of your weakness spreads faster than the fact of your strength. The only antidote is relentless clarity. Clarity kills rumour. Ambiguity feeds it.
Most leaders believe leadership is about presence, what happens when they enter the room. That is ego. True leadership is about absence, what happens when they leave. Presence creates an impression. Absence reveals legacy.
The transformational leader does not obsess over the applause they receive when speaking. They obsess over the discipline that remains when they are silent.
Mr Strategy’s Reputation Echo Test tool
Ask three people outside your reporting line:
“What do you say about me when I am not in the room?”
If their answers shock you, you are finally hearing the truth. If their answers mirror your self-description, you are living in an echo chamber. And if their answers highlight clarity, courage, and accountability, you are building a legacy that compounds beyond your tenure.
Shenzhen taught me this: pace without clarity creates collapse. In the boardroom, charisma without legacy is the same. What people say about you when you are absent is not gossip; it is governance. The echo you leave behind is your truest balance sheet.
I remain, Mr Strategy. Need a board briefing? Contact us.
