Max Cred Factor #4: Candor

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I have to be honest with you. I’ve struggled with this chapter more than any other—not because I don’t have strong ideas about candor, but because I had some of my concepts mixed up. In fact, if you’ve been listening along, you’ve probably already noticed that I never mentioned candor as one of the 7 Cs of Max Cred. What I have been talking about is clarity, which is all about ensuring that your meaning is completely visible to everyone. And while I still feel clarity is important, it’s actually a subset of candor. That’s because candor is a many-sided and versatile concept.

What is it?

Candor is first of all about honesty. The surest and fastest way to destroy your personal credibility is to be caught in a lie. (Unless you’re a politician, because then you lie about what you meant when you said it.) In politics we seem to be in a post-truth era, where lying is no longer a liability, but I don’t think you want to try it in the business world just yet. But I won’t waste much time urging you to be honest, because most of you won’t need to be reminded, and the rest won’t listen anyway.

Candor is also about completeness. It’s possible to be completely accurate in everything you say and still not be honest. You may leave out relevant information that would affect the other person’s evaluation of your message. Yes, that used car has low miles and a great sound system, but if you forget to mention it was flooded during Hurricane Harvey, you may not be completely candid. Candor is also about acknowledging your weaknesses as well as strengths of the other side.

Candor is also about courage. Sometimes you have to speak up about something even if it’s difficult or dangerous. Telling your friend that he’s being a jerk, or telling the boss you don’t agree, or delivering bad news, is risky.

Finally, candor is about clarity, both in meaning and intention.

How does candor add to credibility?

The most obvious way that candor affects credibility is in a negative sense: when others perceive you not to be candid, they notch down their evaluation of your cred. But it also has a lot of positive impacts as well.

Candor is a critical component of credibility because it impacts every one of Aristotle’s three tests of ethos. As you will recall, the three questions that an audience asks itself about a speaker are:

Does the speaker have good sense?

Does the speaker have good character?

Does the speaker have goodwill?

How candor shows good character

This one is the most immediately obvious. Different people have different viewpoints about the ingredients of good character, but it’s fair to say that honesty makes everyone’s list. The whole essence of credibility is that others believe what you’re saying is true, so telling the truth is definitely a good start.

In addition, candor generally correlates with directness. (There are definite exceptions which I will cover in just a bit.) Generally, the most credible way to say something is also the most direct. It shows honesty because there’s usually only one way to take it. For example, you could say, “mistakes were made”, or you could say, “I made a mistake”. Which sounds clearer to you? You could say, “that might not be such a good idea,” or you could say, “don’t do that.” Which makes you sound more honest?

Another character trait that makes most people’s lists is courage, and candor shows courage because there are times when it’s risky to speak up and tell the truth, especially when you’re speaking to higher-ranking people. When people see that you’re taking a risk to bring up something unpleasant or to disagree with them, they have to give you at least grudging respect. They sense that you must really believe it and think it’s important.

Finally, another important trait of character is fairness. You can be seen as a fair person when you’re candid about the weaknesses of your position of the strengths of the other side. Especially in today’s polarized environment, someone who acknowledges there is truth on both sides can stand out as a fair-minded person.

How candor shows goodwill

Clarity of intention and meaning are both important components of candor, and they both demonstrate your goodwill.

How do you feel when someone pitches an idea to you and tells you how good it will be for you, but doesn’t mention why they want it? You get suspicious of their motives and doubt their goodwill, don’t you? There’s nothing wrong with having your own motives, but being upfront about your motives can make you more credible. You don’t need to be explicit about it, but certainly be prepared to acknowledge it if asked. Also, an excellent way to dispel initial suspicion is to state your ask up front; it’s a great way to clear the air.

When you take special care to ensure that your meaning is clear to others, they appreciate your effort. I travel a lot internationally, and when I’m with at dinner with people from other countries, most of them take care to carry on their conversations in English so that I’m not left out—and I appreciate it. But occasionally they don’t and I can tell you it feels wrong—even a bit insulting.

Clarity shows goodwill when it becomes obvious to the other person that you are putting in the effort to make it easy for them to understand. I’ve worked with a lot of smart specialists who can come across to non-specialists as arrogant or uncaring because they don’t bother to translate their knowledge into terms others can understand.

Clarity is also natural and conversational, which sends a clear message that you’re a real person, not some jargon-spewing corporate hack spouting the company line. But when you speak naturally, directly and candidly, you exude goodwill.

But, now it’s time for a qualifier to the whole discussion on the clarity aspect of candor. Candor may come across as not demonstrating goodwill, depending on how you express yourself. It’s possible for candor to backfire on you if you’re too direct. What’s the difference? Candor and directness are close cousins but are not exactly the same thing. You can be direct without being candid, and candid without being direct. When Richard Nixon said “I am not a crook”, he was being direct but not candid. When you tell someone, “you might consider a different outfit”, you are candid but indirect.

The difference between candor and directness is the difference between if and how say something.

If candor is about “should I go there?”, directness is about the choice of route. Just like a physical journey, however, sometimes the straightest route is not the best route. Sometimes the shortest and most pleasant distance between two points can deviate from the straight line.

If you have decided to be candid, (and I believe it’s not really a choice) then you must decide how direct you can be. Directness is about the how; it’s a quality of communication style: when you decide to say something, you choose how to say it.

Sometimes saying something less directly can be better for your credibility. It’s called being tactful, and it’s OK for credibility as long as it doesn’t cross the line into insincerity. Besides, you can say something indirectly and if you don’t think they got your intent, you can make it more direct without losing much. But if you say something too directly, it may leave a mark that’s hard to erase by saying it more tactfully the second time.

How candor shows good sense

In my last podcast on confidence, I said that you have to sound like you believe it yourself, which is what confidence does. You also have to sound like you know it yourself, which is what being clear does for you.

I’ve done an entire podcast (#8) on clarity, so I’m not going to repeat the whole thing here, but let me take a few minutes to talk about how being clear makes you look like you have good sense.

We all equate good sense with “common sense”, but what does that really mean? Common sense is nothing more than something that sounds and feels right, and for that to happen it needs to be something that’s easy to understand.

As Daniel Kahneman says, simple = true. At least that’s how our minds see it.

That’s why old sayings and commonplaces can be powerful, because they have the ring of truth… In science, there’s an idea called Occam’s Razor, which says that when you have two explanations, you should choose the simpler one. Philosophers will debate that, but the simple fact is that we all believe it on a gut level We gravitate toward simple explanations.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because when you can see right through something and still not detect flaws, it’s a strong indication that it’s true. It’s when you can’t see through something that you may suspect there is something wrong with it.

The flip side of that is that when we don’t understand what the speaker is saying, we can either think he’s much smarter than I am, or he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

In summary:

Tell the truth even when it’s risky. Tell the whole relevant truth. Tell it as directly as you can without being hurtful.