Now that I’ve shared On Building a Sterling Reputation, and How One Goes About Building a Sterling Reputation, I’m ready to share the ways you can destroy that reputation. Here are four:
1. Lie
Nothing destroys a reputation like dishonesty.
It really only takes one incident to wreck you for a long time with your colleagues and patients. If you can’t deal fairly and honestly with patients and staff, they’ll naturally question your clinical competence as well.
No matter the consequences, honesty is an absolute requirement.
Besides being the right thing to do, there’s a financial upside to it that you may not have considered. In his book The Millionaire Mind, Thomas Stanley studied the habits, careers, and character traits of individuals with a net worth over $10M.
One of the most consistent traits encountered among the super-wealthy was “a fanatical level of integrity.” That’s not an accident.
Honesty leads to successful relationships which tend to bring more personal fulfillment as well as economic success.
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2. Cheat
One of the easiest ways to cheat people is not giving them your best efforts. This can manifest in even subtle ways such as slacking off at work, deliberately manipulating call schedules to benefit you at the expense of your partners, and preventing your staff from taking needed and earned vacation time because it’s inconvenient for you.
Basically, if you can think of a way to create a benefit for you at the expense of someone else, they’ll feel cheated. That breeds resentment, lack of trust, and ultimately a breakdown in your relationship.
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3. Don’t take care of your family
As a man, I believe strongly in my responsibility to take care of my family. My wife and I are partners in managing our family’s needs and parenting our kids, but I feel a deep sense of responsibility to lead my family well.
Very few things will irreparably damage my view of someone, especially a man, more than failing to care for their family.
When a man speaks poorly of his wife, it makes me question him as a person and a professional. If he won’t speak well of his own family, how will he speak of his staff, patients, and business partners?
If I learn of someone having an affair, I consider that to be the ultimate grounds for breaking trust with me in a permanent way. I have utterly no patience or tolerance for someone betraying the trust of their spouse and children by having affairs. That permanently destroys any hope of trust-building I have with that person. I know some business owners who see that as grounds for termination from their job.
So, take care of your spouse, take care of your kids, and take care of your family.
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You will not have any credibility as a physician if you can’t take care of your own household.
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4. Be bad at your job
Being a poor physician will kill your reputation. No one will take you seriously if you aren’t even good at your craft.
I remember moving to a new city one time and taking over as a solo gastroenterologist for the GI physician who had been there for the preceding 3 years.
For the first three months I worked there, every clinic encounter took an extra 15-30 minutes to untangle the clinical snarls he had created by being a genuinely terrible physician. It was surprising too, as he was a veteran physician, but his clinical judgment was just exceptionally poor.
The more people I talked to in the hospital, the more consistent the feedback regarding his reputation was. He was generally disliked and dismissed as an obnoxious, tyrannical jerk who wasn’t very good at his job.
In over a year of working there, I never found a single person who had anything positive to say about him. It was remarkably consistent.
One of the easiest ways to cheat people is not giving them your best efforts.
