Reputation isn’t built in the moments when you’re speaking. It’s built in the moments when you’re absent. In meetings you’re not invited to, in conversations you’ll never hear, in decisions where your name comes up as a potential candidate, collaborator, or partner.
This is the silent stage of professional life, where your relationships and your reputation do the talking for you.
In marketing, brand, and creative industries, relationships are often spoken of as “networks.” But the reality is more nuanced. True professional relationships aren’t transactional. They’re built on mutual respect, shared values, and the quiet confidence that both sides want the other to succeed.
It’s easy to underestimate how much weight these connections carry. A single genuine advocate, who believes in you and your work, can open doors that years of self-promotion never could. Conversely, neglecting relationships, or treating them as stepping stones, erodes trust, which no amount of credentials can repair.
Reputation is not what you say about yourself. It’s what others consistently say about you. In practice, that means your professional standing is less about self-promotion and more about the experiences others have when working with you.
If the answer is yes, your reputation will quietly build itself in places you’ll never see. If the answer is no, the silence in those rooms will say more than words ever could.
You can’t control what people say about you, but you can influence it by the way you show up. Building a reputation that speaks for you comes down to consistent actions over time:
Show reliability. Meet deadlines, follow through, and reduce friction for others. Reliability is one of the most underappreciated professional strengths.
Be generous. Share credit, recommend others, and give without expectation of return. These small gestures are remembered far longer than self-promotion.
Practice empathy. Understand pressures, challenges, and ambitions beyond your own. When you support people in their context, they naturally advocate for you in yours.
When you build these habits, you don’t just gain colleagues. You gain advocates - people who carry your reputation into rooms you’re not in.
In brand and marketing, we know reputation is an asset that compounds. One campaign might build awareness, but trust comes from consistent delivery over time. The same is true on a personal level.
A career isn’t a series of isolated projects or jobs - it’s a long narrative in which others play a vital part. Each relationship adds to or detracts from the way your story is told. The strongest professionals understand that while they can’t control the entire narrative, they can shape it by the way they act, the way they treat others, and the standards they uphold.
The silent stage is where your reputation truly lives. It’s not built in your LinkedIn profile, your CV, or even in your portfolio. It’s built in the impressions you leave behind - the meetings after the meetings, the conversations you’re not present for, the quiet endorsements that determine whether opportunities find their way to you.
Surround yourself with people who speak well of you in those rooms, and more importantly, be the person who has earned that kind of advocacy.