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Your engineers may be one of the greatest untapped sales assets you have, because they have access, credibility and knowledge. The big question is: will they and can they? Spoiler alert: the answer is yes, if they understand the essence of selling.
Related links:
Getting Engineers to Sell: Part 1
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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.
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In a completely rational world, facts and logic would always win. Your credibility would rest on the content of your argument. But the fact is that:
People don’t make decisions on logic and fact alone. That means that they have to take shortcuts and rely on your judgment. Their confidence in your judgment depends heavily on whether they perceive that you have confidence in your own judgment and competence. Since they can’t read your mind, the only way they have of perceiving your confidence is through the behaviors you exhibit.
Confidence is perceived as competence. Being social animals, humans are exquisitely sensitive to verbal and nonverbal cues that indicate relative levels of status within groups. Those who act more assertively and confidently tend to be accorded higher status, and in general are perceived to be more competent than they actually are.[1]
Others won’t believe if they don’t think you believe. Like it or not, a lack of confidence sends a message that you’re not even credible to yourself.
Where does confidence come from?
The confidence you display to others is like the tip of an iceberg. While others only see what’s above the surface, that visible portion is hugely influenced by three layers beneath: natural confidence, earned confidence and primed confidence.
Natural Confidence
Some people are simply born with more confidence than others, a fact which is obvious when you compare your friends and acquaintances. They blithely charge ahead in situations where others may hang back, seemingly sure that they will get what they want regardless of the situation.
It may seem unfair, but often that confidence becomes self-fulfilling and self-reinforcing, for two reasons. First, by daring more, naturally confident people tend to win more (as long as they avoid catastrophic misjudgments), which of course confirms and reinforces their confidence. Second, the positive feedback loop is also fueled by the increased confidence of those who surround them.
It’s also backed by science; a recent study involving twins determined that self-confidence is at least as heritable as IQ, so there is clearly a “nature” component to confidence.
But we’re not going to spend any more time on the natural sources of confidence here, because you don’t get a Mulligan on choosing your parents. We’ll focus instead on what you can do to create and build on whatever you have naturally.
Earned confidence
Earned confidence is absolutely the most important layer of all, because it is completely in your control and it is the hardest to shake, even in the most stress-filled or intimidating situation.
Earned confidence comprises two parts, general and specific. General confidence is that which you develop through your life experience and achievements, your status, and your learning. You can increase (or decrease) your general confidence by continuously learning, building up your general competence, and successfully facing your fears by exposing yourself to stressful situations.
Specific confidence is what you have in a given situation, earned by ensuring that you have sound content and competence for that topic, that audience, and that time. When you thoroughly know your topic and you’re pretty sure you can get the other person to agree with your point of view, how can you help but feel confident? Preparation can’t help but make you more confident.
Primed confidence
Even with a clearly-earned right to complete confidence, it’s still possible to be nervous despite yourself. Your conscious mind may know there’s nothing to fear, but your unconscious mind may not have gotten the memo. Besides, it’s completely natural to feel anxiety before a high-stakes meeting or big speech, and it’s just as natural to misinterpret that stress as a bad thing.
So, you may also need to get your head straight by priming your confidence level.
This is where the psychology gets interesting. Your state of mind can influence your bodily behaviors, including posture, movement, gestures and facial expressions. But it also works in the other direction: your bodily behaviors can also influence your state of mind. Your feelings affect your actions, but your actions also affect your feelings. In fact, at any given moment, you are subconsciously reading your own body language to infer how you feel! It’s called embodied cognition: your mind takes cues from your body to help it decide how you are feeling.
Acting confidently, such as taking up space and adopting “power poses”, can make you feel more confident. Doing this before your important talk boosts your confidence and actually carries over into the actual situation. Amy Cuddy and her colleagues found that the mere act of adopting a power pose for just two minutes raised testosterone levels and depressed cortisol in their test subjects.
A power pose is one in which you open up and take up space. Stand with feet spread and place your hands on your hips with elbows out, or place both hands on a desk, more than shoulder-width apart. You can even do it sitting down; if you can get away with it, place your feet on a desk and lean back with your arms behind your head.
Should you ever fake it? It may sound funny to use the term “fake it til you make it” in a podcast on credibility, but there are often times that faking confidence is not only acceptable, it’s the only right thing to do.
Does a coach tell his team during a halftime speech that he doesn’t think they can come from behind, because the other team is too good? Does a doctor tell a patient that she doesn’t have confidence that the procedure will work? In situations like this, faking confidence is not only acceptable, it’s the right thing to do for the other party. .
Displayed Confidence
Eliminate Powerless Speech Patterns
Hedges: “I think that…” It seems to me…”
Hesitations: otherwise known as filler words—“um, er, well”
Uptalk: where your sentences end in rising intonation so that a declaration sounds like a question
Nonverbal confidence: Act confident
Your body language is usually automatic, but it can be controlled if you pay attention to it. You can affect your perceived confidence by focusing on eye contact, posture, and gestures.
Eye contact
Look people in the eye when you talk to them. Eye contact is probably the most important signal that others pay attention to when assessing your trustworthiness and confidence; on average, a listener’s attention is focused on the speaker’s eyes 43% of the time during a conversation.[i]
A direct—but non-threatening—gaze is perceived as more credible. The common wisdom that people don’t look you directly in the eyes when lying has been disproven by science, but it’s still common wisdom, so you violate it at your peril.
Posture
Gestures
Free your hands: You don’t have to try to incorporate forceful gestures, and trying to do so will probably backfire anyway. Just let your hands find their natural level. To do this, you need to keep your hands out of your pockets and stop clasping them together, especially with fingers intertwined.
[1] Cameron Anderson, Sebastien Brion, Don A. Moore, and Jessica A. Kennedy, A Status-Enhancement Account of Overconfidence, 2012.
[i] Janik, Wellens, Goldberg, DeLosse (1978), cited in Successful Nonverbal Communication, by Dale Leathers and Michael H. Eaves, p. 57.
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Valid credentials are like putting a deposit on your listeners’ belief, but you need solid content to complete the transaction.
Content is the most permanent element in credibility; it’s the solid core inside your outward image.
Let me make sure that I make this point loud and clear: I am not interested in teaching you how to create skin-deep credibility, which can fool or even dazzle others at first glance but which tears easily when poked with an insightful question. Ultimately, your personal credibility will rest upon the content of your communication, the quality of your ideas, your decisions and your judgment. If you want to sound like you know what you’re talking about, it kind of helps to actually know what you’re talking about.
Content is both practical and ethical. Content is supremely practical because it is based on reality and reality can be tested and verified. With truth as your ally, how can you lose?
Content is also ethical because it ensures that your credibility is put to good use. When your credibility grows, others will depend on what you tell them, and that obligates you not to lead them astray.
Demonstrating 3-Dimensional Expertise
Any time you present an idea, you choose the content that you feel is relevant, but it’s almost a guarantee that someone will ask for more. So, your credibility depends on being able to demonstrate what I call 3-D expertise.
Suppose you are speaking to a decision maker within your organization to get a favorable decision. Maybe you are suggesting a solution to a problem, or asking for resources for a project, or trying to change something. You will maximize your chances by being able to show that you have thought about the issue thoroughly, by showing depth, breadth and height.
Depth (“know-what” and “know-how”): Depth of knowledge is the essential starting point of personal credibility because it’s the reason you have a job. Organizations run on specialization because no one mind can comprehend the complexity and richness of detail it takes to run things effectively, so you ensure your value by knowing more about your patch of the world than anyone else. If knowledge is a secure base, deep knowledge is the foundation.
For example, if you’re recommending a solution to a problem, how deeply and completely do you understand both the problem and the suggested solution? How much data do you have? Is it first-hand or second-hand? Have you seen for yourself? Have you asked why at least five times to get to the root of the problem, or do you stop at a surface-level description? If they question you on details, can you provide them? Do you have specific examples to illustrate your points? What has been your experience with these types of problems before? How much do you know about the solution? Have you thoroughly researched it? How many times have you seen it before? Have you seen it before?
In his book So Smart, But…, Allen Weiner says: “Our research and experience reveals that listeners consider two types of information to be legitimate signs of depth: (1) an ease of manner with names, dates, and numbers; and (2) a memory for conversations with important players.”[1]
It’s great to have facts to back you up, and even better to know them from memory. Knowledge is impressive. We admire those who have a deep grasp of their topic, who can pull up concrete and specific facts to support their arguments. I’ve seen that if done correctly, rattling off a series of numbers from memory can have an enormous impact on the minds of your listeners. Paul, a member of a citizen activist group I belong to, is a master at this. When we met with the editorial board of our local paper to make our case on a controversial project, Paul began explaining the public safety impact that the project would have, citing numbers such as response times, traffic delays, number of incidents, etc. Halfway through his pitch the paper’s editor interrupted and said: “You have an amazing grasp of the numbers!”
As long as it’s not overdone, concrete details can make you more credible. It’s one thing to say that your product makes your customer’s business process more efficient; it’s far better to say, “We speed up the reconcilement process by 35%, which cuts an average of four days out of your accounts receivable.”
All that said, keep two caveats in mind. First, sometimes when you know so much you’re tempted to show your depth by providing too much detail or too much context to your audience. I’ll cover the antidote to that in my next podcast. Second, don’t get out in front of your facts. If you claim to know more than you do, someone is bound to pop your balloon with a well-timed question.
Breadth (“Know-who”): While depth is an essential starting point for credibility, it’s usually not enough, especially as you rise in an organization. As Peter Drucker said, “By itself…a specialty is a fragment and sterile. Its output has to be put together with the output of other specialists before it can produce results.”[2] Breadth is about knowing the wider impact of your idea on other stakeholders and other things going on.
Breadth also helps if your conversation takes an unexpected turn, especially with more diverse audiences. Let’s say that you can think of half a dozen good reasons to approve your idea. In most cases, it’s good practice to choose the top two or three strongest reasons and focus on those. But if someone asks about one of the other reasons, are you able to talk about those also?
Breadth is also about seeing both (or more) sides of the issue. There are several good reasons for presenting a one-sided argument. The first reason is focus; it’s hard enough to keep listeners’ attention, so you want to make your point quickly and then offer only the information you need to bring the point home. Why confuse matters by bringing in contradictory information, or make the other side’s case for them?
Yet, if you can talk about both sides it shows a tremendous amount of confidence when you’re not afraid to discuss alternatives. Besides, if your listeners are smart and truly care about the decision they are going to make, they will seek out every possible alternative they can anyway.
But the best reason to use a two-sided argument is that it has been shown—if done right—to be the most effective for an educated and involved audience. A 1991 paper by Mike Allen analyzed the results of 26 studies that compared the effects on attitude change of three different approaches:
They found that the least persuasive messages were two-sided with no refutations. Second were one-sided arguments. The most persuasive were those in which the speaker first listed counterarguments and then refuted them. As the authors say, “Empirically, the order of the most effective messages should be two-sided with refutation, one-sided, and two-sided with no refutation.”[3]
Height (“know-why”): You can develop and maintain a lot of credibility at your level by sticking to depth and breadth, but without height the best you’ll be just a bright pixel in the big picture. Height will confer credibility above your current position and signal your readiness for even higher levels.
Height of knowledge means knowing why your idea makes sense within the context of the higher and longer term goals of the organization. It entails rising above your own pay grade and showing that you understand how your proposal fits in to the big picture and the longer term. Height also tempers depth by helping you filter out unnecessary detail.
One way to look at an internal presentation is that it is partly an interview for a higher position, and being able to talk about the big picture shows your maturity and readiness to step up to higher levels of responsibility. You can show height by reminding your listeners up front how your idea fits into the big picture, but be tactful: try not to sound as if you’re telling them how to do their jobs. At the very least, you can leave it unsaid, but be prepared to address their big-picture questions if they do arise.
Like the medieval bricklayer who is inspired by the vision of a cathedral he will never see completed in his lifetime, the added meaning will lift up the importance and hence the credibility of your idea, and add gravitas to your message—one way to be seen as more serious is to speak of more serious things. These more serious things include the longer term goals of your company, its values, strategy and identity.
One sure way not to show height is to so passionate about your idea that you fight for it even when higher level people might have their own good reasons not to give you what you want. Sometimes being seen as a team player requires that you surrender your interests to the bigger picture.
Pressure-test your depth, breadth and height
There is a lot of work involved in ensuring that you have the right depth, breadth and height of knowledge to present your idea, but that’s only a start. It’s difficult enough to prepare written remarks to demonstrate all three, but where your credibility will be tested is in answering questions from the audience, and you will be tested. To ensure that you’re ready, you need to anticipate the different ways that people will test you. I call this pressure testing your ideas.
First, try to find out as much as you can about your audience. How much do they know about your topic? What is their attitude toward your idea?
If you’re anticipating hostile questions, think about preempting by bringing up the issue yourself and answering it in your presentation.
Think several steps ahead. If you anticipate questions and plan your responses, don’t stop at your first answer. If you do answer, what might be their follow-up question?
Triangulate. If you can cross-check it against other sources, observers, or methods of collection, you will be that much secure against challenge; who knows, you might even learn something!
Use peer review. Following these steps is an excellent start, but you also need to seek outside help because you may be too close to the issue to see what someone further removed from the situation might see as an obvious weaknesses.
[1] Allen N. Weiner, So Smart, But… p. 21.
[2] The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker, p. 61.
[3] Meta-Analysis Comparing the Persuasiveness of One-Sided and Two-Sided Messages, Western Journal of Speech Communication, Fall 1991. Accessed May 3, 2018.
