Striving Towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

“You can not build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” -Henry Ford

I love this quote by Henry Ford. It speaks to me about one of the qualities I most admire in excellent leaders. The quality of walking the talk, of following through and being a person who does what they say they will do.

As a leader, other people watch us. They pay attention to what we do and who we are. They notice when we make mistakes, when we are having an off day and what we do when hard times come. They watch how we interact with others and they notice how others interact with us. And they especially pay attention to our follow-through. They will notice if we do what we say we will do. They will either trust us or not. Our reputation is built on doing what we say – not on what we say we will do.

Our word means something. If we say we are going to do something – we had better do it – our reputation depends on it. And so does our effectiveness as a leader. If our team members do not trust that we will do what we say we are going to do – we lose their trust, morale decrease and our reputation is damaged.

So how do we make this happen? What do excellent leaders know about building an excellent reputation and doing what we say we will do?

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it” Benjamin Franklin

“Repetition makes reputation and reputation makes customers.” Elizabeth Arden

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” Jeff Bezos