Page 98 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

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You Can Be Trusted

■ Set your own ground rules and stick to them no matter what.
■ Surround yourself with like-minded people.
■ Repair a damaged reputation.

YOU DO THE SAME THINGS EVERYONE ELSE DOES IN LIFE: work and
play. What sets you apart is how you do things.
You only get one reputation in life. Without a good one, the rest is
insignificant in your leadership aspiration. Yes, you’ve heard of “seem-
ingly” successful people with questionable repute who make it big. If you
track them over an extended period of time, they don’t last (sometimes
because they are in prison).
Just as a bad rap lasts a long time, a good one does too. One newly
appointed CEO was selected from a pool of talent by his predecessor
becauseof thewayhe’dhandledthefuneralof anemployeemurderedover-
seas while on company business 23 years earlier. (Yes, over the years, he
developedasolidtrackrecordtoo,butthe“anecdotal”reasonisthefuneral.)
One CEO told me about a foreign assignment he’d had as a junior
executive. Businesses in that country gave a departure pension perk that

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