The Difference Between Reputation and Integrity
The pursuit of the former, the loss of the latter.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch last week’s inauguration in full—though I, of course, saw the snippets that made the rounds on social media: Mark Zuckerberg looking down Lauren Sanchez’s bustier top, Elon Musk looking loaded on something (see: “Growing Up vs. Waking Up”), and Reverend Marion Budde calling in Trump on the grounds of mercy. (That was beautiful, and I was so pleased to see it drown out much of the other coverage of the day—interestingly, it also seemed to get under Trump’s skin, in part, I’m guessing, because Reverend Budde gestured to the potential of his humanity and the reality that he might fall short of his own ideals. He did not like this.)
As I look at pictures of people like Tim Cook and Priscilla Chan from the day, I have to wonder what they must have been thinking—and whether they felt like they had sold themselves out to be there.
“It’s my fidicuiary responsibility to shareholders to be conciliatory.”
“If I’m empowered, I can be a positive influence.”
“It’s better that it’s me than someone else.”
“I’m one of the good ones.”
I’m sure there have been plenty of mental gymnastics in the past few days, weeks, and months: Justifications, rationalizations, and the massaging of unsavory facts to ease guilty consciences. This is the difference between reputation—an externalized representation of our values that is highly curated, sanitized, and manipulated in order to appease and appeal—and integrity, which is our wholeness (it comes from integral), an internalized expression of our values. Theoretically, our integrity is our GPS—should we care to listen and take right action, even if it’s inconvenient, difficult, and potentially threatening to our own livelihoods.
In Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, he writes about Glaucon, Plato’s older brother, explaining: “As is often the case in moral philosophy, arguments about what we ought to do depend upon assumptions—often unstated—about human nature and human psychology. And for Plato, the assumed psychology is just plain wrong. […] I’ll show that reason is not fit to rule; it was designed to seek justification, not truth. I’ll show that Glaucon was right: people care a great deal more about appearance and reputation than about reality. In fact, I’ll praise Glaucon for the rest of the book as the guy who got it right—the guy who realized that the most important principle for designing an ethical society is to make sure that everyone’s reputation is on the line all the time, so that bad behavior will always bring bad consequences.”
Haidt’s main thesis in the book is that people are not motivated by rationality or reason or some higher moral order—we are guided by intuition, what we feel is right, and what we want to be true. We move off of those instincts, and then look for all the facts and supporting evidence to affirm our choices. And it used to be that we shared cultural values that kept us somewhat in line.
We are in uncharted territory right now, where norms are out the window and this idea—“everyone’s reputation is on the line all the time, so that bad behavior will always bring bad consequences”—no longer seems to be true.
Particularly if you’re a man.
In On Our Best Behavior, I write about how women are conditioned for goodness, meaning that reputational harm, i.e. saying a woman is a bad mother, a toxic co-worker, a selfish friend, can easily bring a woman to her knees. (Truly, watch the headlines to see notable women go down in flames off reports that they’re not nice, difficult, etc. Most recently: Blake Lively.) Meanwhile, we are getting quite a showcase in the ways the same standards don’t apply to men: Guys can do reprehensible things and we still affirm and confirm them. After all, men are conditioned for power—in this equation, suggesting that a man is weak is commensurate with suggesting that a woman is bad.
I had the chance to speak with a group of very powerful businesswomen earlier this week—and much of the conversation centered around the amount of energy expended in the office to manage their reputations, specifically the way in which their words and actions are received by other people. As women, it’s endlessly frustrating that we have to do this—the apologies, the insertion of the word “just,” the “you probably already thought of this,” and so forth: Not only does it require an incredible amount of energy to manage the way we’re received, but to think that we can legitimately control how people feel about us is also a type of insanity. People aren’t always going to find us likable, or nice, or the flavor that they so desire even if we try to color within the lines and please them all.
So I guess in some ways I want to say that reputation is B.S., even when our efforts to shape it are well intentioned. Reputation is a form of marketing—of trying to manipulate and create an image that might be quite far from who you actually are. I would argue that operating far from the reality of who you are creates a lot of vulnerability and also a vacuum—when there’s dissonance between how you show up in the world and who you are in reality, people can sense it. And project into it. This is why so many celebrities, in particular, struggle—standing up an alter ego and maintaining it sure is a lot of work.
Later in The Righteous Mind, Haidt writes: “So far in this book I’ve painted a portrait of human nature that is somewhat cynical. I’ve argued that Glaucon was right and that we care more about looking good than about truly being good. Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. We lie, cheat, and cut ethical corners quite often when we think we can get away with it, and then we use our moral thinking to manage our reputations and justify ourselves to others. We believe our own post hoc reasoning so thoroughly that we end up self-righteously convinced of our own virtue.”
This feels true, and it’s also why I’d like to make a big pitch here for integrity, for staying as close to our own inner G.P.S. as possible, for cultivating a feedback loop with ourselves for when we have stepped out of the bounds of our own values.
I believe that people are largely good and I think if we could routinely get quiet and still enough we would remember that—and abide by it, or use the force of goodness to guide our actions. If enough people are shepherded by their own highest values, we will get through this next rocky patch of history. We must key back in to our integrity.
And when I say integrity, I really do mean wholeness—the good and the bad parts of you, the kindest and most loving facets of your personality as well as the parts of you that are less savory, or occasionally grumpy, or maybe even sometimes mean. We have to stop repressing those parts of ourselves, resist projecting them onto other people, and start therapizing them instead. And giving ourselves grace. We need to engage in less reputation management and more integrity development.
This is a bit of a tangent, but a reader forwarded a Substack newsletter about mega-successful personal development podcaster Mel Robbins and her #1 New York Times bestselling book, Let Them. This Substack newsletter is damningly titled, “Mel Robbins and Plagiarism.” There’s a follow-up post entitled, “Can Mel Robbins Trademark Your Words.” As it turns out, a single mom bartender and poet named Cassie Phillips wrote a viral poem called Let Them in 2022, followed by a viral poem called Let You a few months later, which looks awfully similar to Robbins’ framework. Robbins “discovered” Phillips’ work in 2023, tried to trademark “Let Them” in 2024, and published a book of the same name a few weeks ago—without giving Phillips any credit as the originator of the phrase and theory. The stories are worth a read. It’s a terrible look. After all, it’s really not hard to give people credit for their ideas and to share the spotlight. (I’ll have more to say about originality in another newsletter.) I’m bringing it up here because I’m very curious to see what emerges from this, if anything. Will Robbins “manage her reputation” by following in the footsteps of the men of her ilk and do nothing? Or will she tune into her own integrity as a leader in the human development and coaching space and make amends? Will she be able to sidestep a reckoning if it catches enough attention (a rarity for women)? Or will she take herself out like so many women do when they’re accused of harm? I hope she practices what she preaches and models integrity—an acknowledgment of the trespass and that she’s stepped outside of her values, with actions to make it right. She can do this and lose nothing; I’d like to see her try.
We need examples at this moment in time (and always) of people who persist in doing the right thing—even when it’s inconvenient, difficult, and potentially threatening to their own livelihoods. Our capacity to re-create an ethical culture relies on it.
Living in alignment with our values and in integrity are such hot buttons for me. It's a gut check when I'm considering doing something as to whether or not it feels in alignment. That's the reason I left Meta and Amazon - despite the inconveniences that came with that. (Especially missing my dog and cat reels.) I find that after a while, my values not only become an integral part of my decision making process, they sound the alarms if I even consider doing otherwise. A great way to keep myself in check.
I have been wondering how the Mel Robbin’s situation would play out. I know many writers have been in similar situations, but this one is on a pretty big stage. I do think it would offer a great lesson on how to give credit, take and riff off inspiration, and build a community of trust among creatives, especially in this quickly evolving landscape. As always, your words were smooth and sharp as an arrow. Thank you for sharing such beautiful insight.