Reputation is accumulated expectation.
Before a meeting starts, people already have a prediction about you: precise or sloppy, generous or political, steady or reactive, useful or expensive. That prediction shapes how quickly they believe you.
You cannot fully control reputation, but you can audit the evidence feeding it. If people expect late work, where did they learn that? If they expect defensiveness, which conversations trained them? Reputation changes when the pattern changes long enough to be noticed.
Operator artifact: run a reputation audit. Ask three trusted people what others expect from you before a hard room. Do not argue with the answers. Sort them into accurate, outdated, and earned-but-fixable.
Field test: Choose one expectation you want to change and create a visible counter-pattern for a month.
This is part 5 of 10 in Trust That Actually Compounds.
