Does this describe your communication approach?
Lean manufacturing is a production philosophy that seeks to deliver maximum value to customers with minimum waste. Companies using it have achieved huge increases in productivity and customer satisfaction.
I contend that you could achieve similar benefits by applying the lean approach to your communications. This article introduces the concept at a high level and subsequent articles will drill deeper into the specific detail.
What are the key concepts of lean and how do they apply to communication?
Value. In lean, value is defined as anything the customer is willing to pay for. By analogy, value in communications is defined as any information that your listener wants or needs to hear. Both approaches require a deep understanding of the end customer.
Waste. Any work or input that does not directly contribute to value. In communication, it may include unnecessary explanation or words, irrelevant details, unclear or ambiguous terminology, and inaccurate data.
Making work visible. Having a clear view of the work process and status helps to expose value creation and waste reduction opportunities. In communication, a clear structure for your message makes your logic easier to follow—for yourself as you think of it, and for your listeners as they hear it.
Pull. Production is driven by the customer’s specific need. For communication, this means two things. First, you prepare by anticipating the listener’s questions and their likely reaction to your message. Second, you don’t just get to the point quickly—you begin with the point and add detail as needed by the listener.
We will look at the specifics of each lean communication concept in individual articles next week
Although this is the ninth article of the max cred series, it probably should have been first. This one is less about technique than most of the others and more about a general approach to being credible in the estimation of others.
Motives are a huge factor in credibility. There are degrees of self-interest that can affect how much credibility others give you or your message.
- When you advise the other person to do something that will help them and clearly cost you, you have maximum credibility. If you tell they don’t need the more expensive option, or even on occasion that your competitor’s offer is better for them, it’s about as credible as you can get.
- Next is being disinterested. You advise the other person to do something that is good for them, but their decision carries no advantage or cost to you.
- When you stand to gain from their agreement, but it’s transparent. This is the most common case in a sales situation, where both parties know there’s a win-win.
- When you will gain from their agreement but you keep your ulterior motives from the other party.
Most cases in selling will fall into the third category. There is nothing wrong with having your own motives in a persuasion attempt; it’s a fact of life and it’s the foundation of our capitalist system. Most people know that when you’re trying to sell them something, there’s something in it for you if they agree. But even so, there are ways to handle the situation more or less effectively and professionally.
The most important point is to preserve your own personal integrity and professional behavior. Keep your focus on the client’s best interests and everything else is trivial.
If you lose the occasional sale by following this rule, remember Mark Twain’s advice: “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Besides, the occasional sale you will lose will be more than compensated for by the long term trusting relationships you will build.
But even if you sincerely put the other person’s best interests first, your credibility still rests on perception, and it’s possible to send messages that may be misinterpreted. You can send the wrong message by making the conversation mostly about yourself, your company or your solution. You can send the wrong message by “solving” the client’s problem immediately without spending some time probing the causes or exploring various alternatives. You can send the wrong message by leading with the “gold-plated” solution that is more than they need.
In any persuasion conversation, it’s wise to heed the words of Charlie Greene: “Don’t think less of yourself, but think about yourself less”, which I believe neatly sums up my own idea of outside-in thinking.
So remember, to preserve your personal credibility, always do the right thing, but also do it in the right way.
Other articles in this series:
Max Cred: How to Build and Preserve Personal Credibility
Max Cred Factor #1: Credentials
Max Cred Factor #2: Lighthouse Content
Max Cred Factor #4: Confidence
Max Cred Factor #5: The Strategic Approach
The self-inflicted ones are the worst.
So far in this series we’ve focused on the positive steps you can take to build credibility, but credibility can be a very fragile asset, which can blow up in an instant or lose power over time if you don’t guard it carefully. There are probably an unlimited number of ways to ruin your credibility, but here are some of the most common. Blow-outs are the instant credibility destroyers; leaks take a long time.
Credibility Blow-outs:
When you’re in a hole, keep digging. The conundrum of credibility is that you want to be known as the person who is always right and has all the answers, but that can also get you into trouble. You will be wrong sometimes. It’s inevitable but survivable. As Richard Nixon showed us, it’s often not the initial mistake that brings them down, it’s the cover-up attempt. You have to know when to fold ‘em. It’s OK to fake confidence but never to fake knowledge.
Pretend to be someone you’re not. Joseph Ellis is a respected historian who has written some fine books on American history—none of which I will buy since I found out that he lied for years, claiming in his classes that he had served as a platoon leader in Vietnam. Jonah Lehrer, who was one of my favorite writers, committed a related blow-out: making stuff up, by fabricating some Bob Dylan quotes to spice up his book, Imagine: How Creativity Works.
Get complacent. This happens a lot with people as they rise through the ranks and benefit from the Matthew Effect. Those who have earned a reputation for credibility get questioned less, and since we all have more important uses for our time, we may tend to cut corners on preparation and fact-checking. It’s also easy to stop learning…
Have more than two drinks at the office Christmas party. That’s just a representative example to make the point that everything you do can affect your credibility, even if it has no immediate relevance to the issue at hand. David Petraeus found out about that in 2012. Note: Eisenhower never had that problem, which shows that it’s just about impossible to keep a secret for very long nowadays.
Don’t eat your own dog food. That’s just a colloquial way of saying you should practice what you preach. I’ve had competitors of mine who sell training related to sales call planning but haven’t been able to produce their own call plan when challenged by the prospect.
Credibility leaks:
Passion. A lot of people will disagree with me on this one. It’s all the rage to talk about passion as being the most important factor in persuasion and success in general. The problem is that in a business environment, passion is viewed with suspicion. They will automatically question you to make sure your passion is based on more than emotion. Passion is also one-sided, so it can make it easy for you to ignore others’ points of view, and business audiences appreciate speakers who show they have seen both sides of a question.
Get the minor things wrong. Small mistakes are easy to make because when we’re pressed for time we might only fact-check the important bits. But getting a small item wrong is like leaving a loose thread on a sweater—it can unravel your entire credibility. I just read a book which has good sense and excellent stories, but early in the book it had one glaring error in a very minor story about Churchill, and that unfortunately tainted my perception of all the others. Even typos can sap your credibility, if you have enough of them.
Verbal leaks. It seems unfair that you have to worry about all these threats to your credibility and also have to ensure that you don’t have too many “ums”, “likes” and “you knows”, but that’s an unfortunate fact. Don’t obsess about zero tolerance, because that’s not realistic or even desirable in normal conversation, but be aware if it gets to be too much.
Related articles:
Max Cred: How to Build and Preserve Personal Credibility
Max Cred Factor #1: Credentials
Max Cred Factor #2: Lighthouse Content
It’s not that complicated
So far in this series we’ve examined the factors that make you credible during the moment of communication. This article is about all the things you can do over time to strategically build and preserve your credibility over time.
As an organizing principle let’s revisit Aristotle’s definition of credibility as a positive answer to these three questions:
- Does the speaker have good sense?
- Does the speaker have good character?
- Does the speaker have goodwill?
Good sense
Aristotle’s good sense is measured by listeners’ perceptions of your knowledge (know what) and competence (know how). They’ll believe you when they know you have knowledge that they don’t, or a successful track record of accomplishment. An established record of competence is especially valuable when you face a situation no one has seen before; in this case people will rely heavily on established leaders.
Specialize. Better not to try to be a generalist at least at first. If you’re just starting out, develop a core strength or expertise, and build from there. While it certainly helps to have specialized training or academic credentials, you can also develop expertise in an area that might be specific to your own company, such as an in-house computer application, or a specific project.
Continuous learning. You get credibility by knowing more about the topic at hand than anyone else in the room, but the world isn’t standing still. Every day generates new information, new research, and people working at least as hard as you are. Stay up to date on your industry and your organization. Think one or two levels above your job.
Maintain a winning record. When you develop a reputation for getting your ideas and projects approved, it builds on itself to the point it can become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Develop the habit of preparing carefully and pressure-testing your ideas before you present them. Ask and answer all possible questions and objections, and then ask and answer the follow-up questions. Prepare in plenty of time so that if you discover holes in your idea you might have time to do something about them. Also, pick your battles—best not to lose if you can help it.
Good character
Listeners want to know that you are honest—not only that you’re telling the truth but that you practice what you preach.
Promise and deliver. The best way to develop a reputation for reliability is to be reliable. The standard advice in this area is to “underpromise and overdeliver”, but there are some problems with this approach. First, it’s very easy to overpromise and bite off more than you can chew, either through an eagerness to please, overestimating of your own capabilities, or the planning fallacy. Second, once others catch on to the practice, they will expect more than you promise. It’s best in the long run to make honest, realistic promises and then deliver exactly what you say you will.
Walk the talk. Set the example. It’s all about integrity: don’t preach about thrift and then take a helicopter to the company party (that’s not a made-up example, by the way). There should be no air between your statements and your actions.
Be professional. Character is not only judged by integrity but also by your demeanor and behavior. Keep your temper and composure: remember Howard Dean? He was a credible front-runner for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination who harpooned his own campaign with one overly emotional moment in Iowa.
Goodwill
This goes back to the old saw that “people don’t care how much you now until they know how much you care”. The deepest expertise and solid character won’t help if they don’t trust your motives.
Have motives that go beyond pure self-interest. Be seen as a team player, someone who supports the organization, who is willing to give up personal advantage for the good of the group. One study showed that the top skill shared by strong business leaders such as Welch and Gates was the ability to convince others that corporate interests came ahead of all others’ including their own.[1] One of the best ways to be seen as credible is to support something that goes against your own interests.
Outside-in thinking. Cultivate the habit of understanding and connecting your messages to the needs of the audience. Make it about them, not you.
Build goodwill. People tend to believe people they like, so rapport is very useful. In addition, the familiar is more credible than the unfamiliar, so the more people know you, the likelier they are to trust you. Network; make friends; help others; listen.
Finally, be vigilant. Never forget that it takes a long time to build a reputation and a short time to destroy one, which is the topic of the next article in this series.
Related articles:
Max Cred: How to Build and Preserve Personal Credibility
Max Cred Factor #1: Credentials
Max Cred Factor #2: Lighthouse Content
Max Cred Factor #4: Confidence
[1] The study was cited in The Art of Woo, by G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa. I didn’t read the study, but if you want to: Harrison and Clough, “Characteristics of ‘State of the Art’ Leaders: Productive Narcissism versus Emotional Intelligence and Level 5 Capabilities.
