Stefanie M. Marrone

You can be great at your job and still have people see you differently than you see yourself. That can be hard to hear, especially when you work hard, care about what you do and have good intentions. But people at work experience us through how we communicate, how we react, how reliable we are, how we handle difficult situations and what it's like to work with us every day. All of those experiences become part of our professional reputation over time.

A former colleague is relocating. An attorney's client needs to sell a family home. A friend gets asked to recommend a real estate agent. These are the kinds of conversations that can lead to business, and the people having them may already be in your LinkedIn network.

When someone recommends you for an opportunity, what do they say? They probably don't recite your bio or list every position you've held. They explain why they thought of you. You understand a particular industry. You're good at helping people work through complicated decisions. You know how to get a project moving when several people have different priorities. That description tells you a lot about your personal brand, and it's worth paying attention to whether it matches how you describe yourself.

Dan Cotter is a member of Aronberg Goldgehn whose practice spans corporate transactions, governance, insurance regulation, privacy and cybersecurity. Over more than 30 years, he has worked in private practice and served as general counsel for a life insurance company. I spoke with him about building a practice across disciplines, earning a seat at the table when clients make decisions and staying curious as the law changes.

How to Make Your Clients Feel Special: 10 Thoughtful Ways to Build Stronger Relationships Think about the last time a business made you feel special.

You can spend several days at a conference, have good conversations and come home feeling that it was worthwhile. Then regular work takes over. The people you intended to contact get pushed down the list, your notes become harder to interpret and the article you planned to write never gets started. A few weeks later, you remember enjoying the event but have trouble identifying what developed from attending.

A client can have a great experience working with you and still forget to mention your name when someone asks for a real estate agent. Years may have passed since closing, and another agent may be more familiar to them simply because they've stayed in touch. Doing good work gives people a reason to recommend you. Maintaining the relationship helps them remember to do it.

We've all had someone at work make an assumption about us without knowing the full story. Maybe a colleague thinks you've intentionally left them out of a conversation.

A lot of the business development advice lawyers receive comes down to staying in touch. Reach out to former clients. Keep up with referral sources. Schedule more meetings. All of that matters, but it leaves out the part people often struggle with: what to actually say when they contact someone. If you haven't spoken in six months and don't have a particular reason to reconnect, it's easy to put it off until another six months have passed.

It's hard to hear that someone sees you differently than you see yourself. You may think you're being direct, trying to fix a problem, standing up for yourself or explaining why something matters to you. But someone else may experience that same interaction as defensive, intense, difficult or even dramatic.