Reputations get built in rooms you’re not in, from things you did in the rooms you were.

Your reputation gets assembled by other people, out of your past behaviour, in conversations you will never attend. Somebody is asked about you and reaches for whatever sits nearest in memory, which is usually how you handled one ordinary situation rather than anything you meant to present. You cannot attend that meeting or correct the record. All you can affect is what they have to work with.

Which makes the useful question not how you come across, but what you are leaving people able to say. Finish what you promised, admit mistakes early, be the same person with everybody. Those are the sentences that get repeated.