Reputation Management

‘Leadership and reputation management’ An interview with Matt Nixon

Dirk VerburgLeave a comment

‘The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology’.

With this quote from Edward O. Wilson 1929 Matt Nixon answered my question if our requirements about leadership have changed in the last decades. 

Matt Nixon has more than 30 years of experience as a management consultant and HR executive, working with CEOs and senior leaders around the world. An Oxford classics graduate, he was a partner in Towers Perrin in Chicago and London, and subsequently held the positions of Global Head of Organization Effectiveness for Royal Dutch Shell, and Managing Director, Group Head of Talent for Barclays, before returning to the consulting industry.

Nowadays Matt works as a partner in a specialized consulting boutique where he coaches and advises CEOs and other senior leaders during career transitions and other periods of change and transition.

Matt has written and taught extensively on hubris in executives.

If you are interested in this topic, you can watch our conversation on
YouTube.


You can also listen to it Apple Podcasts or Spotify

During our conversation, Matt and I discussed the following topics:

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Building an authentic personal brand starts with ‘why?

Dirk VerburgLeave a comment

Two weeks ago, I was asked to participate in an event about personal branding. The organizer asked me to focus specifically on the link between creating a personal brand and remaining authentic.

Because I have been irritated by the majority of the publications on this topic in the last 5+ years, I was excited to speak about it. Why? Because these articles often suggest people need a partial, or even full, make-over, in order to fit the mold of the specific environment they seek employment in. If that does not feel natural to them, the second piece of advice most publications give them is: ‘Fake it until you make it’.

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Book Review: Pariahs, Hubris, Reputation and Organizational crises

Dirk Verburg1 Comment

Tw Cover PariahsA ‘must read’ for the C-suite.

By Dirk Verburg

Ever since the industrial revolution, large corporations have played an important role in our society. Due to the globalization in the past decades, their influence is continuously increasing.

At the same time it seems that the number of scandals caused by these large organizations is growing as well. Established names, such as Barclays, Siemens, Wells Fargo, Ahold, VW, BP, Shell, Worldcomm, Tyco, Enron, Olympus, Arthur Anderson, E&Y, the BBC and many others, have all experienced scandals, and some no longer exist as a result.

What complicates this situation even is that governments and other institutions (e.g. regulators and ‘independent’ accounting firms) do not seem to be able to control, or at least monitor, the way companies in the private sector are operating. Continue reading →