According to a Forbes article…
A people-management tip a day, every weekday, in 2019.
As I’ve said before in this space, I love Twitter because you never know what you’ll find there. But it’s a good bet if you spend even a little time on it you’ll find something of interest and value.
At the click of a mouse you can find people who know about 100 times more than you do on almost anything. You can find people who are smart and people who are wise, and sometimes both. One of my favorites in this latter category is a gentleman named Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) who tends to tweet on a combination of technological innovation and homespun wisdom… from a global perspective. The other day I noticed a tweet from him that neatly encapsulated my feelings on a topic I’ve thought a lot about over the years.
“You can spend a lifetime to build a good reputation,” Mr. Afshar tweeted, “and then ruin your efforts with less than 280 characters.”
Risks now magnified
Yep, couldn’t have said it better myself. Actually, it’s true, I couldn’t have. Because as I mentioned, I’ve thought about this issue a lot but never articulated it so tightly and concisely.
Good reputations are hard to build, but (as we might have said when I was growing up in the Boston area) wicked easy to lose.
Having worked decades in the corporate world, and having headed PR and Corporate Communications functions for a Fortune 500 company during a crisis, I’ve witnessed more reputational damage than one person probably should in a lifetime. I’ve seen reputations harmed for CEOs, senior execs and mid-level managers. I’ve seen reputations harmed from doing really bad things and from doing really silly things.