The Email That Changed Everything

I received a meeting invite labeled “Check In” and it was to discuss news about the restructure. In a few months, my role would be gone. I was still processing it, sitting with that particular brand of numbness that comes when your career gets upended. In the following weeks, my inbox started filling up. LinkedIn messages. Texts. Emails from people I’d worked with years ago.

They weren’t condolences. They were stories.

“You probably don’t remember, but five years ago you sat with me for an hour and helped me understand why my pipeline kept failing. You didn’t have to do that—I wasn’t even on your team.”

“The way you ran those workshops on values and purpose changed how I lead. I still use it now.”

“You once told me I was ready for a promotion before I believed it myself. That conversation changed my career trajectory.”

Message after message. Hundreds of them. People I’d mentored, challenged, collaborated with, sometimes clashed with. And sitting there, reading through them, I realized something:

I’d been building a reputation without knowing it. Every small interaction, every moment I thought was insignificant—they’d all been compounding silently in the background.

This is what I’ve come to think of as invisible PR.



The Marble Jar of Trust

Brené Brown talks about trust as a marble jar. Every time someone shows up for you, follows through, or demonstrates integrity in a small way, they put a marble in your jar. Every time they let you down or act inconsistently, they take marbles out. Over time, the jar fills or empties based on these micro-transactions.

But here’s what Brené doesn’t emphasize enough: you can’t see the jar. You don’t know how many marbles you have until you need them. And you definitely don’t know which specific moments put marbles in or took them out.

That’s the invisible part.

We spend so much time thinking about the big moments—the presentations to executives, the crucial project deliveries, the performance reviews. But your reputation isn’t built there. It’s built in the margins. In the small interactions that feel inconsequential in the moment but echo for years.

Let me show you what I mean.



Jenny’s Birthday Cake

About four years ago, someone on one of the teams I worked with was leaving. Her name was Jenny (the name is fictional for this purpose), quiet, did solid work but never made a lot of noise. The team was busy, everyone had deadlines, and honestly, the person leaving wasn’t particularly senior or well-connected. It would have been easy to let them slip out with just a generic goodbye email.

Jenny organized a celebration lunch. She bought a cake, got people to sign stories in a card, and made sure the person felt genuinely appreciated on their last day. It took her maybe two hours of effort and fifty dollars of her own money.

I watched her do this and filed it away. I didn’t say anything at the time—it wasn’t about praise. It was just data about who Jenny was when nobody was watching.

Fast forward two years. A senior analyst position opened up, and I had two candidates who were roughly equal on technical skills. One was Jenny. The other had a slightly stronger resume on paper. But I kept thinking about that birthday cake. Not the cake itself, but what it revealed: Jenny showed up for people. She created culture. She understood that teams are built in the small moments, not just the big deliveries.

Jenny got the promotion. She has no idea that birthday cake was part of the decision. And that’s exactly the point—she didn’t do it for recognition. She did it because that’s who she is. That’s invisible PR at work.



When It Goes Wrong

But here’s the thing about invisible PR: it works both ways. And it compounds in both directions.

Jenny spent two hours and fifty dollars building trust. But you can destroy trust in thirty seconds. And the withdrawal compounds faster than the deposit ever did.

I’ve watched this play out dozens of times over the years. The person who consistently doesn’t respond to requests from other teams. The leader who’s sharp with people when they’re under pressure. The colleague who’s helpful to senior stakeholders but dismissive to juniors. The teammate who commits to something in a meeting and then goes silent.

None of these are career-ending moments. But they’re reputation-defining ones.

Because here’s what happens: someone has that negative experience, and they tell a story. Not maliciously—just factually. “Oh, that team? Yeah, I tried working with them once and…” or “Be careful with that person, they tend to…” And that story spreads. It compounds. Five people hear it. Then fifty. Then it becomes the thing people “know” about you before they’ve ever met you.

I’ve seen this up close with my own work. I do this exercise with new team members called personal maps. It’s simple: sit down with someone for 30-45 minutes and just understand their story. Where did they grow up? Where did they go to school? What did they study? What are their hobbies? What matters to them outside of work?

It’s not an interrogation—it’s an invitation to be seen. And it’s remarkably effective at building trust quickly with new teams. I’ve done personal maps with over 200 people at this point. Some have been surface-level, some have gone deep and emotional. But they’ve all been valuable.

Only one ever went badly.

The person became immediately defensive. They didn’t want to share anything personal. They questioned why I was asking. They made it clear they thought the whole exercise was invasive and pointless. I could feel the tension in the room, so I stopped. “No problem,” I said. “We don’t have to do this.”

I’ve told that story dozens of times—not to shame, but because people are curious if it has always worked. It taught me something important about consent and boundaries in team-building. Not everyone wants to connect the same way, and that’s okay.

But think about how that interaction cascades. People will hear the story and form an impression of someone who treats connection as invasion. That’s their invisible PR working against them.

Now, here’s the critical distinction: if this was a one-off, if other people had completely different experiences, the story would fade. But if people hear it and think, “Oh yeah, I had a similar experience with them…"—if the pattern repeats—then you’ve got a reputation problem.

That’s the asymmetry of invisible PR. Positive interactions need repetition and consistency to build trust. Negative interactions? They only need a pattern. Two or three similar stories, and suddenly that’s who you are in other people’s minds.

You can’t control whether someone tells your story. But you can control whether the stories align or contradict each other.



The Hard Truth About Micro-Transactions

Here’s what I’ve come to understand: every single interaction you have is either a deposit or a withdrawal in someone’s invisible ledger of you. You don’t get to choose which interactions matter. You don’t get to designate some as “important” and others as “throwaway.”

The junior person you’re curt with in the hallway might be the hiring manager in three years. The colleague whose email you ignore might be your only advocate when you’re facing redundancy. The person whose birthday cake you buy might become your strongest reference when you’re job hunting.

Or flip it around: the person you snap at under stress might tell that story for a decade. The email you send when you’re annoyed might define how an entire team sees you. The meeting where you’re dismissive might be the only interaction someone has with you before making a judgment about your character.

You can’t control how people remember you. But you can control how you show up.

This connects directly to the research on trust and psychological safety. Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety shows that teams perform better when people feel safe to take interpersonal risks—to speak up, to ask questions, to admit mistakes. But that safety isn’t created through policy or pronouncements. It’s created through thousands of small interactions where people experience acceptance rather than judgment.

Your invisible PR is the sum of how you show up in these moments when you think nobody’s keeping score.

Plot twist: everyone’s keeping score. They just don’t tell you.



The Offer I Make Every New Team

Whenever I inherit a new team or start leading a new group, I do something that makes some people uncomfortable. In our first team meeting, I tell them this:

“I know you don’t know me yet. I know you’re taking a risk trusting me as your leader. So here’s what I’m going to offer: if you want to talk to anyone I’ve worked with in the past—anyone—I will personally help you get in touch with them. I will give you names, email addresses, LinkedIn profiles. You can ask them anything you want about what it’s like to work with me.”

Some people think this is weird. Some think it’s a power move. But it’s neither. It’s confidence born from consistency.

I can make this offer because I trust my invisible PR. I know that if you talk to people I’ve led, you’ll hear stories about me being demanding, about me challenging people, about me pushing them outside their comfort zones. Not everyone loved working with me—I’m not trying to be everyone’s friend. But you’ll also hear about me showing up, following through, investing in their growth, and treating them with respect even when we disagreed.

That’s the invisible PR I’ve built. And it’s portable. It travels with me from team to team, role to role. It’s why, when I got the redundancy news, my first thought wasn’t panic—it was curiosity about what would come next. Because I knew the reputation I’d built would carry me through.



Inconvenience vs. Problem

This is where we get to the distinction I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: the difference between an inconvenience and a problem.

Losing your job is objectively bad news. But whether it’s an inconvenience or an existential problem depends entirely on the invisible PR you’ve built. If you’ve spent years burning bridges, ignoring relationships, and treating people as transactional resources, that job loss becomes a crisis. Your network is thin. Your references are weak. Your reputation precedes you in the wrong way.

But if you’ve been making deposits—showing up for people, building trust, creating value even when it didn’t directly benefit you—that same job loss becomes navigable. Your network activates. People reach out. Opportunities surface. The transition becomes an inconvenience you’re managing rather than a catastrophe you’re surviving.

I’m living this right now. Yes, it’s disruptive and stressful. But I’m also flooded with support, with referrals, with people wanting to help. Not because I asked for it, but because I’ve been building invisible PR for years without realizing it. Even to the extent of people wanting to know where I go, as they want to work with me wherever I am.

The variations in work and life won’t always go your way. You’ll face setbacks, restructures, health issues, relationship challenges. Whether these remain inconveniences or escalate into existential problems often depends less on the event itself and more on the reservoir of trust you’ve built.

Connection is the buffer. Community is the shock absorber. And both are built through invisible PR—one small interaction at a time.



The Work That Matters Most

Your reputation is being built right now. Not in the big presentation next week or the annual review in three months. Right now. In how you respond to the next email. In whether you remember to thank someone. In your tone on the next Teams message. In whether you show up for the small things when nobody’s watching.

You’re making deposits or withdrawals with every single interaction. The jar is filling or emptying. And you won’t know which moments mattered most until much later—maybe years later, maybe when you’re sitting at your desk reading messages from people whose marbles you earned without knowing it.

Jenny didn’t know the birthday cake would matter. The person who attacked me over email didn’t know that interaction would define how I see their entire team. We never know in the moment. That’s why the only rational strategy is to treat every moment as if it matters.

Because it does.

Your invisible PR is working right now, compounding in ways you can’t see. The only question is: which direction is it compounding?

When the moment comes that you need to draw on your reputation—and that moment always comes eventually—will you find a full marble jar or an empty one?

Start filling it now. One small interaction at a time.