‘Every time I interviewed somebody, I said, is there anyone you think I should talk to? And so it had a network effect for me. My network grew with these generous, amazing, thoughtful people.’
Writing a novel can be lonely; writing a thesis can be demanding; writing a business book can be a team effort. Charlotte Otter’s done all of these, with a side of journalism, and in this week’s podcast we talk about the different approach to those genres, and what she learned about structure and community along the way.
In her new book ‘We Need New Leaders: Mastering reputation management to reshape the C-Suite’, Charlotte argues that reputation is a powerful tool of advancement too often overlooked by – or unavailable to – people from underrepresented backgrounds. Which means that communications professionals can play a key role as allies for more equitable business.
Listen in for a fresh take on how we can build better business leadership, and how you can write a better business book, too.
Charlotte’s site: https://www.charlotteotter.com/
Charlotte on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotteeliseotter/
Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: www.proposalchallenge.com
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
Practical Inspiration Publishing YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@piptalking
Write it Wild 2026: https://alisonjones.lpages.co/write-it-wild/
Alison Jones: I’m here today with Charlotte Otter, who is a career communicator, two time novelist and former journalist. I’m going to be asking you about that, Charlotte and her new book, We Need New Leaders: Mastering reputation management to reshape the C-Suite is grounded in her experience observing and working with global leadership at the closest quarters, as well as her original research for her MSc in Change Leadership from HEC Paris. It’s both a handbook and a manifesto for change at the leadership level.
So first of all, welcome, Charlotte. It’s great to have you here and tell us about the book.
Charlotte Otter: Oh, it’s lovely to be here. Yes, I’m very passionate about We Need New Leaders and the themes around it. And for me it really sits at the intersection of diversity, leadership, and reputation, which is an unusual combination of topics. But what I came to realize through my career, through the thesis, was that maybe there are tools in the reputation management tool set that can really help diverse leaders gain those leadership roles that they really dream to have.
Alison Jones: Well, let’s go back and just think about reputation management a bit more beause I think this is something that, if you’re not a career communicator, perhaps hasn’t been so on your radar as part of the leadership toolkit. So what is reputation management and why does it matter so much?
Charlotte Otter: Well, we all have reputations whether we like it or not, they’re attached to us almost like our shadows, but it’s incredibly important in corporate, particularly if you are looking to climb up a career ladder or you want to change jobs or even if you’ve lost a job, having a reputation is kind of a ticket to the next thing.
And it’s a combination of the stories that you tell about yourself, your behaviours and those two must match. It’s a reputational gap and a trust gap if your words and your behaviors don’t match. And then the networks that you use. And those networks can be social media, but they can also be, you know, your in-person networks and where you show up as a human being.
And the challenge with reputation and the difference from personal brand is that it’s not only what you say about yourself, it’s what other people say about you.
Alison Jones: And this has been tacit, under the waterline for so many people hasn’t it. And I think it’s also been an area that, I know certainly typically women tend not to focus so much on building those networks and that they just tend to get on with doing the job and think that they’ll be rewarded for that.
But it is, it’s a real blind spot, I think, isn’t it? If you haven’t been putting the work into that very deliberate, thoughtful reputation management that it is going to come back and bite you.
Charlotte Otter: Yes, it’s absolutely a blind spot. So, you know, doing the work is only half the job, particularly for women or candidates from diverse backgrounds or with diverse identities because no one’s going to be doing it for you. You know, the current networks tend to be self-referential, so they support and lift up, you know, those who are similar to them.
And so people who come from diverse backgrounds or from underrepresented minorities have to lean on themselves, and that’s why the tools of reputation management are really useful.
Alison Jones: And how did this show up in the research that you did for your MSc?
Charlotte Otter: Well the research that I did was, the thesis was how CEOs and Heads of Comms build trust to manage and mitigate reputational risk. So I was thinking a lot about reputational risk. I was thinking about CEO reputation. I was thinking about company reputation. I was thinking about the role of the Head of Comms as an ally to leaders who wish to build their reputation.
And the two are so intertwined, CEO leadership reputation, and company reputation, as we’ve seen recently with Elon Musk. You know, whatever has happened in the US within politics has completely tanked Tesla sales in Europe. So, it may be different for him in the USA, but certainly in Europe. So it’s such a clear connection.
So communicators are invested in helping leaders build their reputations. I did it for 12 years as an Executive Communicator. And so when I finished the thesis, I was thinking to myself, my passion is diversity. My passion is getting the right leaders in the room. Is there something in this thesis that, or is there something from what I’ve learned, that can really help leaders from diverse backgrounds?
And that’s where you came in Alison.
Alison Jones: And yes, just a full disclosure, Charlotte won the 10 Day Business Book Proposal Challenge because I looked at that thesis. I just thought, that is fascinating. I’ve never seen that connection made explicit before. And this is a real, as you say, blind spot. It’s a real kind of missing piece in leadership but particularly in diversity, equality, and inclusion and just getting the sort of the right people… And I’d never seen that gap before.
So that for me was a no brainer. Yes, so you entered the proposal challenge and here you are.
Charlotte Otter: A year later with a book ready to sell.
Alison Jones: But how did that process change how you thought about the book? Because you had that very clear idea, the vision for naming the gap and, you know, providing resources so people could fill it. But when you came in with that idea, just talk us through, you know, what changed for you as you went through that challenge.
Charlotte Otter: Yes, I mean, the challenge was incredibly useful in terms of helping me to build a structure. Also to think about the marketing, which is the process that I’m in now. And thinking about the marketing made me think about the audiences and thinking about the audiences made me think, okay, who do I need to be interviewing?
So I realized that I didn’t want to write a book that only focused on gender and racial diversity. I wanted as broad a spectrum of diversities as I could find, so I interviewed leaders who are neurodiverse. I interviewed one leader who had been running a PR agency for 20 years and had just got an ADHD diagnosis. I interviewed a non-binary leader, interviewed somebody, a trans woman who’d been a CEO of multiple companies as a man who is now a board member as a woman. People with you know, physical diversities. I just wanted to keep it as broad as possible and not tie myself to one specific form of diversity.
And so that was such a beautiful process for me because I got to meet such amazing people who were so generous with their time and every time I interviewed somebody, I said, is there anyone you think I should talk to? And so it had a network effect for me.
My network grew with these generous, amazing, thoughtful people.
Alison Jones: It is such a golden question, isn’t it? Who should I talk to about this? I was, I think I may have said it to you, but it’s one of the things that I always talk to people in the bootcamp about. It’s a golden question because you don’t know what you don’t know, and you don’t know the people that you don’t know that you should be speaking to, but there’s a good chance that the person you’re speaking to can connect you to somebody who’s is going to unlock a whole new area of insight for you.
Oh, that’s really good to hear.
Charlotte Otter: It was magical. And you know, those people are kind of showing up for me now. You know, I’ve started a podcast. They’re coming on as podcast guests, and so the relationships are deepening, which is truly lovely.
Alison Jones: That is wonderful and it’s one of the great reasons for writing a book, isn’t it? It’s not just about the book, it’s about the relationships, the conversations you have, the network around it, all the activity. That’s so exciting.
And when I was looking at your proposal and evaluating it against what was a very, very strong cohort, one of the things that really stood out to me was that you have delivered as a writer before, you’ve written fiction and you’ve also been a journalist.
So, there’s something that was reassuring to me about the fact that you knew the craft of writing and that you could deliver it. I’m really interested now, looking back, in what you found similar, what you found different. Was it a benefit? Was it actually a disbenefit? You know, how does it relate writing a business book to those other forms of writing?
Charlotte Otter: Yes, so I’ve thought about this a lot and writing novels is quite a lonely process. You’re alone in your head with some characters you made up. You’ve really got no idea, for quite a long time, if it’s going to fly, because with a novel, you don’t show anybody your first draft. You know, you’ve really got to refine it.
I think the first time I had a beta reader for my novel was draft four.
Alison Jones: Wow.
Charlotte Otter: And that person said to me, this book should not be in the first person. It should be in the third person.
Alison Jones: That’s a lot of rewriting.
Charlotte Otter: That was, it was a completely rewrite. So, I think with fiction, I got to a sense of comfort with my drafts quite quickly, but also just that sense of this is a community effort.
I didn’t feel alone. All those interviewees, you know, the group of writers that you’ve built at Practical Inspiration Publishing, my various beta readers, my endorsers, my community, my family and friends. It just felt much more of a team effort and far less lonely.
Alison Jones: Oh, that’s really nice to hear. And I think that’s not the way that every business book writer goes about it. I think some do lock themselves away in a room and write and think that’s the important thing. I think it makes for a richer book and a richer experience and probably more accountability and more energy in the process as well, doesn’t it, when you’re, it’s a team sport.
Charlotte Otter: Yes, yes. Absolutely. And you know, I didn’t have a thesis when I started. I think I said to you, I’m interviewing towards an outcome, and so every interview helped me build. It was another break in the foundation of what the book would end up looking like.
Alison Jones: Yes, I can’t imagine doing it without that. And the journalism piece, beause obviously journalism is, it’s more reactive, it’s more in the moment. How’s writing a book different from that kind of writing?
Charlotte Otter: I mean, journalism is shorter, faster, more immediate. But I think it does help in terms of getting to the point quite quickly. I think it helps in terms of quite a, perhaps a relaxed and audience-friendly style of writing. You know, with novels you’re trying to create a world, so it’s all about the metaphors and the way you sort of produce a sensory experience for readers and both, I think journalism and business book writing is probably less sensory, but more immediate.
Alison Jones: It is quite hard though, isn’t it, just to transmit facts to people, you know, we are quite, as humans, quite intolerant of that. We work better when there’s stories or anecdotes or energy in the thing. Did you notice that when you’re making decisions about how to communicate, were you sort of reaching for those skillset?
Charlotte Otter: Yes, I think so. I mean, what was interesting is that I interviewed a full 40 people, but not all of their stories made it into the book, and so it’s quite a… at that point, it’s quite an instinctive decision making process. You know, I had that lovely skeleton that I built with you in the bootcamp.
And so I knew that I had to kind of attach stories to the skeleton and build it out that way. But it, and I think that’s probably where the similarity to novel writing does come in, is that when I went into my writing cave, which was about a three month process, it was magical and chemistry and instinctive.
Alison Jones: We want to come in the writing cave, Charlotte, tell us more about that. What does writing actually look like for you?
Charlotte Otter: It’s a very happy place for me, so I always make sure I do my sport in the morning. So I live in Heidelberg in Germany, near the forest, and I walk every morning in the forest. So the sport is done, the coffee’s in, and then it’s just a process of flow. It comes quite naturally to me.
And I think that’s what happened to me with the thesis as well, and why I realized I wanted to carry on with that feeling of, it’s that combination of left brain and right brain. You’re being logical, but you’re also being intuitive.
And it was just, for me, three months of flow state, it was kind of heavenly.
Alison Jones: And I know that there’s going to be people listening to this wanting to chuck things at you at the moment. No, well, I mean, it’s great. It shouldn’t, it doesn’t have to be miserable, you know, I think writing’s a wonderful thing. It has its highs and it has its lows and its frustrating and it has its days when you just feel like you’ve gone backwards rather than forwards, and, you know, all of that. But actually it is a real privilege, isn’t it?
It’s a real privilege to have these conversations to be able to devote time to this kind of original thinking and to communicate. What’s your hope now that it’s out in the world? Well, it’s not quite published yet, but by the time this goes out, it will be just published.
What’s your hope for it?
Charlotte Otter: So it’s so interesting beause there’s this kind of meta conversation about the book because I delivered the first draft to you on the 1st of November. So I was writing it during the American election not knowing what the outcome would be and had the outcome been different the book would’ve had a softer landing. But with the outcome that has happened in the world, it’s more needed. It’s more needed.
And what I’m seeing is that with companies reneging on DEI and what DEI really is, is an attempt to systemically fix problems. By removing the systemic attempt to fix, it’s not incumbent on individuals to kind of hack the system themselves.
Which… i’d prefer it was not that way. You know, I would prefer that we were fixing problems systemically and offering more people opportunities. But with that removed, there’s a lot of pressure on leaders.
Alison Jones: Yes…
Charlotte Otter: …and I hope that the book serves a purpose for individuals who think, the DEI program in my company has gone, I’m an individual from a diverse background. What next? And perhaps it’s a companion for them on their journey.
Alison Jones: Yes, you are not powerless. There are things that you can do and here’s some, a tool set. Yes, well, absolutely. And we’re proud to have published it for all of those reasons.
If there’s somebody listening about to start on this journey, Charlotte, what advice would you give them?
What’s your sort of one best tip for somebody at the start of their business book journey?
Charlotte Otter: Well, do the bootcamp if you can,.
Alison Jones: Well, the proposal challenge.
Charlotte Otter: The proposal challenge, if you can. But if you can’t, do not underestimate the value of writing that proposal, because that, for me, was an anchor the entire time I was writing the book. And that’s the difference also between fiction and nonfiction.
Alison Jones: Don’t need a proposal for your fiction, yes, you retrofit that, don’t you? Mm-hmm.
Charlotte Otter: Fiction, you just write and then you start to chop it around.
So, it was an anchor, a bible, a place to come when I was feeling confused. So I think I would really advise people to focus very, very much on getting that, their proposal, as crystal clear as possible.
Alison Jones: So Charlotte, I always ask my guests, as you know, for a recommendation for a business book or, well, any book really that you feel anybody listening should make their acquaintance of, if they haven’t already, what would you recommend?
Charlotte Otter: So the book that I leant on quite a lot while writing the book and I love it so much and it’s very valuable for people who are diverse, is The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Sieghart: Why women are still taken less seriously than men and what we can do about it. You know, she says female US Supreme Court Justices are interrupted four times more often than their male colleagues, or British parents when asked to estimate their children’s IQ will place their son at 115 and their daughter at 107.
And this just shows the extent of what we are dealing with and also points to why reputation is so important, because the system’s not going to do it for us, so we have to do it for ourselves.
Alison Jones: Yes, and it’s such a good book. Thank you for that recommendation. You know, I don’t think they’ve had that recommended before and I don’t know why, because it really is astonishing.
Charlotte, if people want to find out more about you, more about We Need New Leaders, where should they go?
Charlotte Otter: Well slightly obnoxiously active on LinkedIn at the moment, so find me there. Otherwise on charlotteotter.com, I have a We Need New Leaders page. I also have a page where people can find links to my podcast, which is called Speech Bubbles, or they can follow me on Substack. And my Substack newsletter is also called Speech Bubbles.
And the Speech Bubbles was inspired by the cover of my book, which has the very beautiful, the reputation management speech bubble. So that’s sort of, I pulled that into my branding, which I really like.
Alison Jones: Oh good. Oh, that’s nice to hear. That’s brilliant.
And it’s interesting that you say obnoxiously active on LinkedIn because this is what we’re fighting, isn’t it? It isn’t just us broadcasting our values to other people. It’s us getting over ourselves to do that.
Charlotte Otter: Yes.
Alison Jones: It’s not obnoxious at all. It’s really, really helpful and valuable information, just saying.
Charlotte Otter: And needs to be done.
Alison Jones: Absolutely. Yes. Great. And yes, no, thanks for doing it so brilliantly and graciously.
So thank you for your time today. It’s been wonderful to sort of look back on the journey of the book and how it evolved, and also just to dig a little bit more into your own writing process, and I really, really enjoyed the conversation.
Thank you.
Charlotte Otter: Thank you so much, Alison. It’s been lovely.
