A title feels permanent right up until the moment it isn’t.
One restructuring. One new org chart. One decision made a level above you, and the thing that defined you yesterday simply is not yours anymore. I have watched it happen to good people, and I have felt versions of it myself. Titles are borrowed. We hold them for a while, and then, sooner or later, we hand them back.
What we never hand back is how we treated people while we held them.
That is the part that stays. People remember how you spoke when you had the power in the room. They remember how you reacted when someone pushed back, whether you actually listened or just waited for them to stop talking. Most of all, they remember how you treated the people who could do nothing for you: the ones with no leverage and no reason to expect your kindness except that it was the right thing to give.
Reputation is not built in the big, visible moments. It is built in the small ones nobody is tracking. In the conversation with no witnesses. In the decision you made when being fair cost you something, and no one would have known if you had chosen otherwise.
I try to keep that in front of me. When I hold the upper hand in a negotiation, when I am frustrated with someone who works for me, when I could quietly cut a corner in how I treat a person, those are the moments that actually write the record. Not the wins. Not the announcements. The quiet stuff, when no one is applauding, and no one would blame me for taking the easy road.
A title tells people what you do. Your character tells them who you are. Only one of those follows you from room to room, job to job, year to year.
So here is the question I keep coming back to, and I would offer it to you as well: when the title is gon, and one day it will be, what will the people who worked with you remember? Make sure the answer is one you would be proud of. That is the only record that is truly permanent.