Business leaders must build reputation on results, not titles – Lanre Olusola

Business leaders have been urged to rethink how they build and sustain professional reputations, as performance, credibility and measurable results increasingly become more valuable than titles, visibility or executive status in a demanding business environment.

Lanre Olusola, celebrated executive coach and leadership expert made the call at the 5th PENGASSAN Energy and Labour Summit (PEALS 2026) in Abuja, where senior stakeholders across government, regulation, organised labour and the energy industry gathered to examine critical issues shaping Nigeria’s workforce and energy sector.

The summit brought together prominent industry figures, including Festus Osifo, president of PENGASSAN; Bashir Bayo Ojulari, group chief executive officer of NNPC Ltd.; and Matthieu Bouyer, country chair/MD of TotalEnergies EP Nigeria Limited. Held under the theme, “Strengthening Regulatory Frameworks as a Catalyst for Stability and Growth in Nigeria’s Oil and Gas Industry,” the summit focused on the regulatory, investment and institutional challenges shaping the sector.

Against this backdrop, Olusola shifted the conversation to the leadership behind institutional performance, arguing that strong organisations require leaders who can translate vision into disciplined execution and measurable outcomes.

Read also: Why strong leaders can still build weak institutions – SAGE Centre executive director

Drawing on his VIBERS framework: Vision, Integrity, Belief, Execution, Results and Standards, he emphasised that leadership credibility is ultimately built through consistency.

“Your result is what determines your reputation,” Olusola told the gathering. “The reward for excellent work is more work. It is your reputation that will determine whether people will delegate to you, whether people will choose you for future strategic mandates.”

He also stressed that effective leadership begins with self-leadership. Before leaders can influence institutions, teams or markets, he said, they must establish clarity around their own values, direction and standards.

“There must be alignment between standards professionally and standards personally,” he said, linking personal discipline to institutional sustainability and legacy.

The message resonated with the wider concerns raised at the summit, where speakers repeatedly emphasised the need to translate regulatory reforms and Nigeria’s considerable energy potential into investment, production, jobs and measurable economic value.

For Olusola, leadership therefore extends beyond occupying a position of authority. It is about building a record of decisions, actions and outcomes that earns trust over time.

His proposition reinforced that reputation is not what a leader says about performance. It is what performance repeatedly says about the leader.

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