When Hiring, Keep Risk and Reputation Top of Mind

"Hiring For Your Firm? Keep Risk and Reputation at the Forefront."

I came across that headline recently and it made me think, in the hiring process or when promoting employees, how often are decision-makers following this wise thinking — keeping risk and reputation at the forefront?

I’m not convinced many decision-makers are considering and heeding the advice.

What I am convinced of is talented, skilled and competent people with serious character flaws are being hired and promoted.

Don’t believe me? Find that offensive? I respect that disbelief and respect that it comes across as offensive. I would say, also respectfully, to look around with an objective mind, if not in your own organization, then in other ones in which you interact.

I will suspect you can’t honestly say that you are always, as an absolute, convinced of the excellence of morals and ethics, and thus reputation, of the people in which you’ve crossed paths with and decided to — or had to — interact.

There’s a reason for those negative experiences. Strength of healthy character, risk and reputation are low priorities in many cases for too many organizations and their leaders, top down and for some decision-makers, and its a higher number than you might guess, it’s no priority. Ouch. Yes, ouch. It’s a choice though as to whether to choose healthy character, self control, morality and ethics.

Do so and you greatly lessen the likelihood of risk and are much more likely to prove resilient and mitigate risk when lesser shortcomings or failings happen in interactions internally with co-workers and external to the organization.

Michael Toebe is the founder and specialist at Reputation Quality, serving and helping successful individuals and organizations further build reputation as an asset and when needed, assisting with responsibly and ethically protecting, restoring and reconstructing its strength.