Reputation & Perception 🚧
Here’s something that’s hard for neurodivergent people to accept: Being good at your job isn’t enough.
This isn’t fair. It isn’t right, but it’s real.
How others perceive your work matters as much as the work itself. Your reputation is built on what you actually do plus how you present it plus what people hear about you from others.
Why This Matters
In many workplaces, advancement is constrained not by competence but by subtle patterns of how you interact with others: what you say, how you say it, who hears about your contributions, how you respond to feedback.
Marshall Goldsmith calls this “relational impact”. Your technical output is one thing (Goldsmith and Reiter 2007). Your relational impact, how people experience working with you and how productive others think you are, shapes your reputation, job security, whether you get picked on or used, and your opportunities.
For neurodivergent people, this gap is often huge. You might be brilliant at your actual work and simultaneously seen as “difficult” or “hard to work with” because of how you communicate or respond to things.
Level I: Intent vs. Impact
You might:
- Ask a direct question and have it perceived as confrontational
- Point out a logical flaw and have it perceived as criticism of the person
- Express frustration at a system and have it perceived as blaming your colleagues
- Ask for clarity and have it perceived as not trusting them
Your intent is clear to you (you just want information). Their impact perception is different. And in politics, perception often wins.
Level II: Power & The Performance of Competence
Have you ever noticed how high performers in your industry often exhibit the same strange behaviours in public? This is called professional posturing. Unlike Level I, which deals with general neurotypical perception and effective conflict resolution, level II deals with what signals competence in the unique environment you’re in and has zero impact on output.
What counts as posturing changes with the sector, industry, and culture. It is entirely constructed and cosmetic. Because professional posturing relies entirely on reading the social context, it is rarely offered as an official course.
Performing for Others
- Asking questions you already know the answer to so they get to explain
- Light deference “I’d love your perspective” and “you’d know better than me”
- Framing your own ideas as questions, letting others complete them
- Compliments on their work positioned to invite elaboration
- Slightly nervous energy that flatters their composure
- Slower, softer responses; letting him set pace
- Visible appreciation that registers as “You are valued”
Performing Against Them
- Subtle credentialing: dropping your own range to establish the floor
- Correcting small things to demonstrate you’re not impressed
- Withholding warmth they’re used to receiving from subordinates
- Testing them with questions designed to expose gaps
- Treating their expertise as conditional on demonstration
- Faster responses that imply you’re not waiting on them
- Visible non-reaction to status markers
How Reputation Gets Built
1. What You Actually Do
Your work quality, reliability, delivery, and results. This is table stakes: you need to do decent work. But it’s not sufficient by itself. No one tells you when you leave school that execution isn’t just about getting somewhere, it’s how you get there.
2. How You Communicate About It
Do people know what you’ve accomplished?
- Do you mention your contributions in meetings?
- Do you send updates on your work?
- Do you follow up in writing so there’s a record?
Neurodivergent people often assume good work speaks for itself. It doesn’t. Other people need to hear about it.
3. What People Hear About You From Others
Your reputation travels through social networks.
People talk:
- “She’s great at her job but hard to work with”
- “He’s quiet but super reliable”
- “They ask a lot of questions”
- “That person always delivers”
What narrative is circulating about you?
5. Who Advocates for You
Do you have people who speak up about your contributions when you’re not in the room? Or are you only known by your own promotion of yourself?
Building genuine relationships (from The Basics) creates advocates. These are people who will give you credit, defend you, or recommend you for opportunities.
Practical Tools for Managing Reputation
1. Document Your Contributions
Keep a running list:
- What projects you led or contributed to
- What problems you solved
- What metrics improved
- What feedback you received (positive)
This is for you, so when you need to update your resume, talk about promotions, or defend your work, you have data.
2. Make Your Work Visible (Without Bragging)
Ways to do this:
- Send regular updates to your manager or team (“Here’s what I worked on this week…”)
- Mention your contributions naturally in meetings (“When I was working on the X project, we found…”)
- Share learnings (“I figured out how to solve Y problem, thought others might find this useful…”)
- Contribute to all-hands meetings or team showcases
You’re not bragging. You’re just… letting people know what you do.
Frame it strategically:
- Instead of: “I fixed the bug” → “I identified the root cause of the bug and worked with the team to implement a fix”
- Instead of: “I did the report” → “I pulled together data from three systems to create a comprehensive report that identified cost savings”
The second version gives context and shows impact.
3. Manage How You Respond to Feedback
When someone gives you feedback:
Do:
- Thank them (even if you disagree)
- Ask clarifying questions (“Can you give me an example?”)
- Say you’ll think about it (and actually do)
- Implement if it makes sense
Don’t:
- Immediately defend yourself
- Explain why they’re wrong
- Get visibly upset
- Argue in the moment
You can address problems later in private. In public, just… acknowledge. Listen. You can disagree later.
4. Build Your Advocate Network
Who in your organization could speak up for you? Start with:
- Your manager (ideally)
- A peer you work well with
- Someone from another department who knows your work
- A mentor or senior person
These don’t have to be your close friends. They just need to respect your work and be willing to mention you when relevant.
How do you build these relationships? See The Basics: genuine interest, showing up, remembering what matters to them.
5. Clarify Your Value Proposition
What are you really good at? What do people need you for?
This is your niche. Maybe you’re the person who catches edge cases. Maybe you’re great under pressure. Maybe you translate between technical and non-technical people. Maybe you’re reliable when things are chaotic.
Once you found your anchor, you can:
- Emphasize it in how you talk about your work
- Seek out projects that use this strength
- Build your reputation around it
The Tricky Part: Authenticity vs. Strategy
You might think: “This all feels fake. I’m just being myself at work.”
You’re right that authenticity matters. But “being yourself” at work isn’t more important than having a place to live, and it’s not more important than making sure you have food on the table or the ability to pay for your meds. Being authentic at work isn’t worth the vulnerability to harassment, having your ideas stolen, or having your work undervalued.
Having a good reputation means:
- People need you and won’t mess with you
- You can understand what’s going on and why
- You choose how authentic you want to be and you’re not surprised
The question is whether your work self is strategically aligned with how you want to be perceived.
Example: You’re naturally quiet and detailed. That’s authentic.
But people might perceive it as:
- Lack of confidence
- Lack of interest
- Difficulty with collaboration
None of those are true.
So you might work on:
- Speaking up in meetings even briefly
- Following up your quiet contributions in writing
- Explicitly saying “I’m interested in working on X”
You’re not being fake. You’re just making your actual interests and competence visible.
Watch Out For Traps
The Competence Trap
“If I just do really good work, people will notice.”
They might. But they might not. And other people who do mediocre work and self-promote will get ahead of you.
You don’t have to choose. You can do good work and make sure people know about it.
The Niceness Trap (The Doormat)
Being the person who always says yes to non-promotable tasks, who helps everyone, and who never complains. Non-promotable tasks help the team run smoothly but don’t meaningfully contribute to your career advancement. They’re often necessary, but they don’t build the kind of visibility, authority, or impact that promotions are based on.
How to spot them:
- They’re usually low-skill, repeatable, or administrative (organizing events, taking notes, coordinating logistics, “helping out”).
- They don’t showcase your core expertise, aren’t tied to key outcomes/KPIs, and rarely get recognized in performance reviews.
Developing a reputation as someone who accepts these tasks teaches others that:
- You are a doormat (you aren’t)
- You have unlimited capacity (you don’t)
- Your work isn’t important (it is)
- You can be asked to do extra things (yes, and you’ll resent it)
It’s fine to be nice, but set boundaries. Say no sometimes. Protect your time, executive functioning, and your reputation.
Why They Matter:
Saying yes to too many of these can quietly sideline your career. They take time and energy away from high-impact work, and over time can shape how others see you—not as a leader or specialist, but as the reliable “helper.” Research also shows these tasks are unevenly distributed, with women often asked to take them on more frequently.
What To Do About Them:
You don’t have to refuse everything, but be selective. Prioritize work that builds visibility, ownership, authority, and decisionmaking power. When these tasks come up, you can:
- Rotate them (“I handled it last time—can someone else take this one?”)
- Tie your “no” to priorities (“I need to focus on X deliverable right now”)
- Or reshape them (e.g., turn note-taking into leading the meeting or presenting outcomes)
The goal isn’t to stop being helpful, it’s to make sure your effort is aligned with how your role is actually evaluated.
The Perfectionism Trap
You can’t share work until it’s perfect. You can’t speak up until you’re 100% sure. You can’t ask for help because you should already know.
This keeps you invisible and isolated. Perfection is the enemy of progress.
The Invisibility Trap
You’re so in your head—focused on your work—that nobody knows you exist.
You don’t need to be an extrovert. But you do need some visibility. This can be:
- Showing up to social events (doesn’t have to be long)
- Speaking up once per meeting
- Sending regular updates
- Having your work in shared spaces
What Gets Built Over Time
If you’re strategic about these things:
- People know what you do
- People perceive you as competent and reliable
- When opportunities come up, you’re in people’s minds
- When you ask for something, people are more inclined to help
- If something goes wrong, people give you the benefit of the doubt
This is what “good reputation” is. It’s not magic. It’s earned through visible, consistent competence and genuine relationships.
Next: Explore the Strategic Reading List for deeper frameworks on power, negotiation, and game theory, or jump to Tools & Resources for practical supports.