I love a good BBQ, and my partner loves one even more.
There’s something about bringing people together around a fire; the meat, the conversations, the memories that seem to only happen in that setting. Everyone relaxed. Guards down. Talking about real life.
And it’s in those moments ….glass in hand, completely off the clock that one of the most revealing leadership questions gets asked.
“So, where do you work? What do you do?”
I’ve started paying attention to how people answer that question. Because it tells you everything about the culture they’re living in.
More often than not lately, the answer is hesitation. A slight wince.
That wince has a name: reputational inconsistency.
When the gap between who an organisation says it is and how it actually shows up becomes wide enough, people notice. Customers notice. The media notices. And the people inside start to feel it too. When your workplace has a reputation problem, it becomes personal. It attaches to you.
Reputation is built in the moments nobody’s watching.
It lives in the frontline interaction at 7 am when the manager isn’t there. The email response on a Friday afternoon. The tone of voice when a customer is frustrated. Whether the person at the counter looks up.
These are not marketing moments. They are cultural moments.
The C-suite leaders I work with aren’t just worried about what’s already in the media. They’re worried about what’s coming. The next audit. The next complaint that goes public. The next viral post from a customer who felt dismissed.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth most PR strategies miss: you cannot communicate your way out of a culture problem.
Because customers don’t experience your marketing. They experience your people. And your people experience their leaders.
Reputation is a leadership problem before it’s a brand problem.
And rebuilding it? It’s not a campaign. It’s not a training day. It’s not a values refresh on a Monday morning.
It’s the slow, deliberate, unglamorous work of building a service culture that is consistent at the human level.
That’s where reputation is won or lost. Not in the headlines. In the Service Habits.
If your frontline team went to a BBQ tonight, would they talk about where they work with pride?
The 5D Service Leadership whitepaper is linked here.