Season 13: Career Leverage
The Truth About Workplace Reputation and Career Advancement
Podcast Audio Only:
Workplace reputation plays a direct role in career advancement, promotions, and the opportunities you’re considered for long before any formal conversation happens. If you’re doing strong work but not getting promoted or recognized, your reputation at work may not reflect the level you’re actually operating at.
In this episode of Control Your Career, career coach and strategic career consultant Julia Toothacre breaks down how workplace reputation actually forms, why it often doesn’t match your intention, and what you can do to change it.
Why am I not getting promoted even though I do good work?
Most professionals assume their career growth is tied directly to performance and that would make things much more straightforward. In reality, performance is only part of the equation. People are constantly forming an understanding of how you operate based on repeated exposure over time, not just the outcomes you produce.
They’re paying attention to how you communicate, how you respond under pressure, and whether they trust you to operate at a higher level. Those observations turn into patterns, and those patterns become your reputation.
That reputation is what gets discussed when you’re not in the room. It’s also what influences whether you’re considered for promotions, projects, and leadership opportunities.
How is your reputation actually built at work?
Your reputation develops through repeated behavior. The meetings you attend, the decisions you make, how you follow through, and how consistently you show up all shape how people see you. Even small interactions can add up over time.
There are moments that can accelerate your reputation, especially when something goes wrong or needs to be handled quickly, but those moments don’t replace the patterns people see day to day. If you want to change how you’re seen, you need to understand what patterns you’re currently reinforcing.
Why do people see me differently than I see myself?
One of the biggest challenges is the gap between how you think you’re showing up and how others actually experience you.
You may believe you’re being thoughtful, efficient, or independent, but someone else may experience that same behavior as disengaged, overly direct, or difficult to work with.
Your intention doesn’t define your reputation, but the way people experience you does, which is where most people have a bit of a gap. If your career feels stuck, this is often the place to look first.
Does company culture affect your reputation at work?
Reputation is shaped by the environment you’re in. Different organizations reward different behaviors and leadership preferences, team dynamics, and bias all influence how your behavior is interpreted.
The same communication style can be seen as confident in one environment and aggressive in another. The same level of independence can be valued in one team and seen as a lack of collaboration in another.
Understanding what’s rewarded in your current environment matters and without that awareness, you may be operating in a way that works against you without realizing it.
Do you need both an internal and external reputation?
Your internal reputation affects promotions, project opportunities, and your level of influence within your organization.
Your external reputation affects recruiter outreach, industry credibility, and your ability to create opportunities outside your current role.
If you only build your internal reputation, you may grow within one organization but struggle to create options elsewhere. If you only focus externally, you may attract attention but struggle to advance where you are.
Realistically, you need both internal and external reputations to advance in your career. You never know if your organization is going to let you go, so you need the external reputation as a back-up.
How do you know what’s actually holding you back?
If your career isn’t advancing, it usually comes down to one of three issues.
[1] You may have a skill issue, where you need to develop your capabilities further.
[2] You may have a perception issue, where you’re doing the work but it’s not being recognized or interpreted the way you expect.
[3] Or you may have an environment issue, where what you do well isn’t what your organization rewards.
Each of these requires a different approach. If you focus on improving your skills when the issue is perception, you’ll keep working harder without seeing results.If the issue is your environment, no amount of adjustment will fully resolve it.
How can you improve your reputation at work?
You don’t need to completely change who you are to improve your reputation, but you do need to be more intentional.
Start by identifying what you want to be known for and then compare that to how others currently experience you.
From there, look at the patterns in your behavior and decide what you want to reinforce or adjust.
At the same time, take an honest look at your environment. If it consistently misinterprets or undervalues what you bring, it may not be the right place for you long term.
HELPFUL CAREER RESOURCES:
Episode on Bias: https://ridethetidecollective.com/2025/08/13/season11episode12/
Get clear on what you want to be known for:
https://ridethetidecollective.com/coaching/clarityofself/
Start with free career resources
https://ridethetidecollective.com/free/
Not sure where to begin?
Start here: https://www.ridethetidecollective.com/strategies
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