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If you follow the advice so far in this series, you will definitely be the most credible person in the room, no matter where you are. And that is a huge asset. Like any asset, it needs to be protected, maintained, and cultivated.
- Cultivating your credibility starts with accurate self-knowledge. How credible do you find yourself, and how accurate is your assessment?
- Next, we discuss the importance of constantly increasing and refreshing your knowledge base and expertise.
- From that solid foundation, we proceed to taking stock of how others perceive us
- Then look at ways that we can manage the impressions others have.
CALIBRATION
I want to start this section with a strange question: how many possible answers are there to a yes/no question? Will it rain tomorrow? Will the Democrats win the House in the midterm election? Will that big deal you’re working on close by the end of the quarter? When you consider those questions, the obvious answer is that there are many ways to answer a yes/no question, when it deals with uncertainty. So, most people pick a number to estimate the probability.
What’s your track record in picking those numbers? In the long run, are you overconfident, underconfident, or right in the middle?
Calibration is a measure of how closely your level of certainty accords to the true facts. If you are generally accurate, you’re said to be well-calibrated. If you’re over- or under-confident in your certainty, you are poorly calibrated. The problem is—by definition—you almost always don’t know. If you’re overconfident, you’re going to overestimate how accurate you are. Most people are overconfident; one study that gave a quiz to over 2000 people found that fewer than 1% were not overconfident.[1]
In fact, studies have shown that the people with the least competence are the most likely to overestimate their actual knowledge. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect[2].
Overconfidence is not all bad – it encourages difficult efforts and can help you sell your ideas. It will tend to increase your credibility in a single situation, because listeners will take cues from your perceived confidence. Your level of certainty about what you’re saying will affect the confidence with which you express it, which will in turn affect how much listeners believe you.
But excessive overconfidence can definitely hurt your credibility by increasing the odds that you will be shown to be wrong. We all know people who are often wrong, but never in doubt – just watch any of the early stages of American Idol to see this overestimation displayed to a painful degree.
Some very few people are underconfident in their estimate of certainty.[3] They are less sure of their knowledge, which certainly lowers the risk of being proven wrong, but also limits their influence. Their uncertainty may show through in their expression, or they may be less apt to speak up on behalf of their position or interests.
If you’re well-calibrated, you are less likely to run ahead of your facts and get yourself into trouble, which is a good thing for long-term credibility.
But there’s also an external aspect, which is others’ perceptions of how well-calibrated you are. Some people are automatically discounted; does your sales manager automatically cut your forecast by 50%? That would be a sign that she doesn’t think you’re too well-calibrated. Others may develop a reputation for understatement, and their listeners may take what they say to the bank.
So, being well-calibrated will improve your credibility in two ways. First, it will help you avoid the extremes of over- and underconfidence. Second, by being perceived to be well-calibrated, or self-aware, you can be more credible to your listeners.
How to improve your calibration
Calibration can be improved through training and experience. It begins with awareness of the problem and acceptance of the fact that you are probably susceptible to it. Here are a half-dozen ways to get better.
Test your calibration. ProjectionPoint has a test on their website that allows you to test your calibration. Simply seeing the results, if they are bad, will make you aware of the need to improve your calibration.
Separate fact from opinion. As Richard Feynman said, “The most important thing is not to fool yourself. And you’re the easiest person to fool.” Make sure you tell people when it’s your opinion and not a settled fact.
Keep track. Experience tends to reduce overconfidence and improve calibration, as long as you learn from that experience. It’s no accident that two of the best-calibrated professions are bookies and meteorologists. This is because they get rapid feedback on their decisions, and are held accountable for being wrong.
Practice productive paranoia. When you’re very confident and it’s important, try extra hard to find holes in your idea. Individually, you can take the time to list reasons why you might be wrong.
If you follow these practices, I’m 90% confident that your calibration will improve, and 75% confident that your personal credibility will also.
LIFELONG LEARNING
If you’re perfectly calibrated and you’re the top expert in your field, you will probably have Max Cred—for a while.
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen well-educated people make is to coast on their learning. They’ve spent so much time at school that they think they’ve got it made—and they stay stuck…
That’s dangerous because knowledge advances so rapidly in so many domains, that you must continually update and refresh what you know if you want to maintain credibility.
According to a Deloitte study, “skills are becoming obsolete at an accelerating rate. Software engineers must now redevelop skills every 12–18 months.7 Professionals in marketing, sales, manufacturing, law, accounting, and finance report similar demands.”[4] And, not to scare you, but there is evidence from the medical field that patients of older physicians have a higher mortality rate than those of their younger colleagues.[5]
If even doctors, with all their years of schooling and their impressive credentials, can become obsolete, you must definitely keep learning throughout your life.
That’s why this quote from Michael Roberto is especially apt:
“You must have a restless mind, one that is never satisfied with its understanding of a topic—no matter how much expertise and experience you have accumulated on the subject.”[6]
Besides preserving your ability to constantly learn, you must also realize that the ability to unlearn is at least as important.
When things are stable, it is a virtue to learn something once and for all. A skill that becomes routine saves time and effort, freeing our mind for other things. And experts develop excellent intuition through the ability to unconsciously recognize patterns, which is why they can make swift, effective choices when needed.
But when that routine or that knowledge no longer fits the facts, predictions and choices can go awry. I saw a vivid and important demonstration of this in the late 80s, when I was studying for a graduate degree in Soviet Studies. When Mikhail Gorbachev came on the scene, with his ideas of glasnost and perestroika, the Soviet experts who were my professors were confused about how to interpret his words and actions. Drawing on their 40+ years of study, they interpreted Gorbachev through the lens of what they had seen before: it was another underhanded Soviet ploy to trick the West, or to make Reagan look bad.
Sometimes you learn things too well, making it nearly impossible to unlearn; military planners are famous for preparing for the last war. (Which reminds me of Mark Twain’s observation that, “the cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won’t sit upon a cold stove lid, either.”)
Lifelong learning – be more foxy
But it’s what you learn that also matters. If you want to develop maximum credibility, is it better to be a hedgehog or a fox?
According to parable the hedgehog knows one thing very well, and the fox knows a lot of things.
For developing credibility, there is a lot to be said for being a hedgehog. By concentrating on one area, you can focus your learning and develop deep expertise which can differentiate you from others and establish your reputation.
Hedgehogs tend to be more credible: they are listened to more and are more believable when they speak, because of their confidence and conviction.
But could there be a downside to single-minded concentration on one big thing? Philip Tetlock thinks so. Tetlock studied the track records of political commentators over 15 years, those folks you see on the Sunday talk shows who get paid to make predictions about what will happen during political crises and trends. He found that hedgehogs were not only wrong more often than foxes, but that they were less likely to recognize or admit that they were wrong when events did not match their predictions.
The advantage that foxes have is that they are more likely to seek out new information from a broader range of sources, and are comfortable with uncertainty and new information. They are also better calibrated, meaning that they have a clearer estimation of what they know and don’t know. When something happens that contradicts their view of the world, they treat it as new information, not as an aberration or an exception.
So, which is better?
In focusing on what to study and learn, there is no question that you should be a hedgehog early in your career, so that you can establish solid credentials and expertise in one particular area.
Yet, as you get promoted to positions of higher responsibility, you’re going to find yourself dealing with more and more situations that your expertise has not prepared you for. In order to avoid Peter Principle, you have to become more of a fox; get curious about the wider world, broaden your knowledge, and learn to blend in different perspectives. Make your knowledge more three-dimensional, as I covered in the podcast about content: deepen your anchor in your particular discipline, but also go broader and higher.
IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
Calibration and lifelong learning will take care of the internal aspect of your cred, but sometimes even that isn’t going to be enough. Credibility is an impression, and impressions can be fragile. You need to monitor, protect, and grow your cred over time.
How well do others know you?
It’s critical to have good sense, good character, and goodwill, but just having them is not enough unless others see those qualities in you. And according to Heidi Grant Halvorson’s book, No One Understands You and What to Do About It, the odds are that they don’t see you the way you see yourself.
She cites a study of 400 college roommates which found that it took an average of nine months living together for your roommate to begin to see you as you see yourself, and even then, the correlation was very low.[7]
So, what can you do about it? You first have to figure out how others see you, and then make changes as necessary to adjust their perceptions.
To figure out how others see you, there are several things you can do.
- Ask a trusted colleague or two
- Get 360° feedback
- Video yourself
- Get a coach
Protect and extend Your Credibility
I won’t spend too much time on company politics, but obviously it does exist, and sometimes people have bad intentions toward you, no matter, how honest, smart and likeable you are. People may whisper behind your back, misrepresent what you’ve said or done, or take credit for your ideas. You need to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on inside, cultivate allies, and actively and directly counter misinformation about you. As Plato said, One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
You also need to help your own cred along a bit. When it comes to your own reputation, you need to forget the better mousetrap myth: the one that says if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. Sometimes the smartest people get outshone by others who are more gifted at touting their own accomplishments and knowledge. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford professor who writes about power in organizations, cites one study that showed that people who worked on creating favorable impressions received higher performance ratings than those who performed better but weren’t as good at managing their impressions.
Network – Max Cred is a team sport
Know who knows
Tap into your existing knowledge network; associate with credible people. Financial advisers often advise to use OPM, or other peoples’ money. It also applies to Cred: use OPC. A lot of the knowledge and information you need in order to be credible resides in the minds of others, so it behooves you to know who knows, and to be very discriminating in your sources.
That’s why one side benefit of knowing the factors of Max Cred is that you can become more judicious in assessing the cred of others.
Nourish your network
Become a source for others. If you use your knowledge and credibility to help others succeed, you tap into the power of reciprocity. You also develop a reputation as an expert which can become self-reinforcing.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of the Max Cred series. Let me quickly recap the central message of this series:
Credibility is your most precious personal asset in an organization, and if you want to have Max Cred, you must build a solid base of credentials and expertise, express it confidently and candidly, win respect by connecting with others and committing to something important, and cultivate your asset over time.
[1] Russo and Schoemaker 1992.
[2] Kruger, Justin; David Dunning (1999). “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”.
[3] Russo and Schoemaker say that public accountants are slightly underconfident.
[4] https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2017/learning-in-the-digital-age.html
Accessed 7/27/18.
[5] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2017/05/18/nice-older-doctor-you-go-well-turns-out-you-might-live-longer-younger-one/101822418/
[6] Michael A. Roberto, Know What You Don’t Know, p. 186.
[7] No One Understand You and What to Do about It, p. 17.
