Unless you’re a dictator, hermit or independently wealthy, a lot of what you need or want to do in life depends on your personal credibility, because of the simple fact that you have to get things done through other people. Especially if you work in a large organization, your most precious asset is your personal credibility.
Every speaker wants the audience to believe them: what they say and how they feel about the topic at hand. This can be easy to achieve for low-stakes, mundane topics, but it can be very difficult to achieve when asking someone to take a risk, expend a large cost, or change deeply-held beliefs. That’s when you need every advantage you can muster to compel belief.
Credibility is critical because:
- Most proposals aren’t “provable” based only on facts, so decision makers will rely to some extent on how credible you are in making your case.
- It allows you to punch above your weight class by giving you influence above and beyond your job title.
- It puts you in better control of your fate.
- It puts you in better control of the actions of others.
- It makes you worth listening to.
- It’s efficient, because you don’t need to spend as much time and effort to convince others. You get fewer questions and micromanagement.
What does max cred look and sound like?
Your credibility level can range from zero to max, and of course it depends on the situation or the topic at hand. What does max cred look like? When you open your mouth to speak in a meeting, everyone else stops to listen, like in the old E.F. Hutton commercial. What does max cred sound like? When you say “Because I said so”, or some more tactful variant of that phrase, it’s treated as hard data.
In my own work, credibility is critically important. A major part of my work is teaching professional salespeople and the rest usually involves teaching engineers, who can be deeply skeptical and data-driven. Salespeople can be a tough audience because they’ve been through tough challenges and generally need healthy egos to weather the constant storm of rejection they face. They want to know that whoever dares to teach them something new has carried the bag, has experienced the same difficulties, solved the same problems, and had the same or greater success.
My biggest fear with any audience is being unable to gain, or not being able to keep, credibility, and this was especially so in my early years of training. When I began my sales training career, I had two disadvantages to start: First, I came from a financial background, where although I did have to sell financial services, I did not have the same type of experience as the high-tech salespeople I was working with. Second, I was fairly young, and was training people with far more grey hair and more experience. I was perhaps overly conscious of my perceived lack of qualifications, so I had to figure out ways not only to quickly get up to speed but to survive until I got there.
While I made plenty of credibility mistakes in the early years, over time, both through learning from those mistakes and through my successes, plus a lot of reading what the top experts have to say about it, I’ve uncovered ways to develop and preserve max cred.
What is credibility?
Aristotle, the original and still unquestioned greatest teacher of persuasion, defined credibility as a positive answer to the following three questions:
Does the speaker have good sense? (Does he or she know what they’re talking about?)
Does the speaker have good character? (Is he or she honest?)
Does the speaker have goodwill? (Care about the interests of the listener?)
As you’ll see in upcoming articles, I agree with these three questions, but with all due respect to the master, credibility is not really about something you have, or a trait you’re born with. It’s something that’s given to you by your audience, in how they answer those questions. You can have all the goodwill in the world, but it won’t count for squat if the audience doesn’t perceive it that way. This is an important distinction because it makes you realize that every situation is different, and that you have to work to establish belief in the minds of your audience every single time. Just when you begin to take it for granted, it can be destroyed in an instant. It actually exists outside of yourself; it’s something that others give you or withhold because of credentials you’ve earned, what you say or do, and how you say or do it.
That allows us to break down the mystery of credibility into specific elements which can be improved or strengthened with preparation, practice, and skill. I will cover the elements of credibility in subsequent articles in this series, including:
- Credentials
- Content
- Clarity
- Confidence
- Strategic Credibility Strategies
- How to Instantly Lose Credibility
The algorithm missed this one
Lee Iacocca once remarked that he wished he had learned earlier in life how important the ability to communicate is. That’s a sentiment that I encounter frequently among my executive communications coaching clients, especially those who rose through the ranks on the strength of their strong technical skills but reach a level where they find that their effectiveness now rests on their ability to get things done through others.
But you don’t have to rub shoulders with top management to benefit from the ability to influence others, a fact brought home by a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. The article says, “Armed with reams of new data, companies including giants such as Procter and Gamble Co. and Cisco Systems Inc. are seeking out ‘influencers,’ or those who are particularly well-connected and trusted by their peers.”
When they find them, they use them to help spread information, deal with change, and drive important projects, and the influencers receive more formal recognition and reward as a result.
So far, so good. It certainly aligns with the theme of this blog that persuasive communication skills are critical to personal success. So why was I bothered by reading the article?
Because I know how easy it is for companies to get carried away with the latest and greatest trend, and to base decisions on bad data just because it’s easy to collect.
How do they measure informal influence? The new data includes mining email or Salesforce.com Chatter to map webs of communication and identify top influencers. Salesforce.com uses “algorithms”[1] to analyze who has the most followers and most posts and so arrive at individual influence ranks, and invites the top 20 to their global senior management meeting.
Maybe those algorithms are telling them something useful, and maybe not. As any regular user of Facebook knows, there are some people who post stuff constantly, but my own personal algorithm (i.e. SWAG) tells me there is no correlation between how often they post and how influential they are. In fact, if I were to guess at a correlation, I would say that the people who are actually getting things done have less time to spend on their Chatter score.
Second, when you start rewarding people for their influence scores, do you think some of them might just game the system? As the quarter end approaches, do you focus on getting your project done, or do you spend time generating posts to gin up your score?
Third, good managers already know who the top influencers are. They know because they are walking around, talking, and listening—not because they are pulling up a score on their computers.
Certainly, influence is one of the most valuable personal assets you can cultivate within an organization, but don’t ever kid yourself that it can be developed and measured by social media algorithms. The best medium for influence is still an eye to eye conversation.
[1] “Algorithm” is becoming the new “studies show” term that can be used to shut down anyone who challenges your credibility.
The bottom line of good manners
At the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon[1], two events of the past week compelled me to add to my previous post on personal professionalism.
I work out of a home office, and usually let the home phone go to voice mail when it rings. But when it rang at 8am yesterday, I picked it up immediately, thinking it could be an emergency. After all, no one calls before 9am unless it’s really important, right? Wrong. It was a telemarketer. Setting aside the fact that this particular one was violating my do-not-call registration, it was just plain bad manners.
The second event was a funeral I attended for the father of a friend, who was 92. One of the key qualities that everyone who spoke made certain to mention was his unfailing courtesy and consideration for everyone he met.
Do manners count for much anymore?
Who cares if I carry on a loud, one-sided cell-phone conversation in a public space? I have a right to self-expression, and I want to be productive every single minute we can.
Who cares if I use a little profanity now and then in my presentation or my blog? If it makes me edgy and genuine and emphasizes my point, you should not be offended.
So what if I don’t send thank you notes? Didn’t I say thanks when I got the gift?
So what if I show up at work looking like I just rolled out of bed? I’m more productive when I’m dressed this way.
So what if I act impatient when you ask me if you can change your seat? Surely you realize that 17 other people have already asked than in the past five minutes.
You can always find a reason for bad manners, but there is no real excuse.
When I refer to good manners, I’m not referring to arcane rules governing the direction of your spoon while eating soup. The use of rules like these by snobs to filter out the unworthy is bad manners in itself. What I am referring to are the written and unwritten rules of personal interactions which show a respect for the other party.
Good manners are right because they’re right, but they’re also good business. When I switched to ATT U-verse, the installer put on plastic covers over his shoes every time he came in and out of the house. It was probably unnecessary from a practical point of view, but it certainly made a good impression on me.
Good manners are a guide to behavior even in uncertain situations. Ritz Carlton’s motto is “We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen”, and that credo replaces a thick handbook of rules for all situations.
So next time a telemarketer intrudes on your privacy in the early morning hours, make sure you tell them, “Please do not call me again.”
Where were the slides?
Today being Martin Luther King day, I’ve been thinking about the incredible power of visuals in speeches—but not the pre-packaged kind you get with slides. King’s Dream speech worked so well for many reasons, but one of the most important was his ability to seize the audience’s imagination through mental imagery. He didn’t need a big screen set up on the white marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial to get us to picture scenes of black and white children playing together “on the red hills of Georgia”, or to imagine freedom ringing from “every hill and molehill of Mississippi”.
All he had was words, and words were more than enough.
Technology adds so much to our capabilities that we sometimes forget what we give up in return. I wonder if PowerPoint has sapped our power to evoke mental images through words, and if so, does it matter?
I do believe it matters, because mental images can be more persuasive than actual visuals. Actual visuals are good because they are processed instantaneously, and because everyone sees the same image[1], but these advantages may actually be disadvantages in terms of the persuasiveness of the image. Mental images can be more persuasive because they enhance memory, intention and emotion.
Memory: When someone is getting ready to decide or to act on your presentation, you want them to remember how they felt when they heard the presentation and the arguments for taking the recommended course of action. Because creating the image actually takes work, the effort of creating the image will get the listener more involved and engaged, and they are more likely to remember the image or have it pop up in their minds when they are getting ready to act on the information. That’s why all memory systems are based on mental images.
Intention: People are more likely to perform the actual behavior if they envision themselves doing it. One study that tested actual consumers’ sign-up rates for cable service found that those who were asked to imagine having cable service were more than twice as likely to sign up than those who just got a description of product features.[2] The impact of imagination on actual performance is well-known by athletes who use routinely use mental imagery to gain an edge.
Emotion: When you use words to evoke an image in the listener’s mind, each listener sees their own personal version. Because it’s theirs, it can be more real and more meaningful—hence more persuasive. Even better, when you can get them to picture themselves in the image, it tends to increase the likelihood of the behavioral change.[3]
How to create mental pictures
Make it a priority. You’re already spending a lot of time trying to find the right visual for your slide presentation. Why not spend some of that time figuring out how to generate the virtual image in their minds? You don’t have to give up slides, but try a little harder to use them less.
Use concrete words, vivid details, and analogies. Familiar objects are easier to picture and remember, especially when they’re vivid and dramatic vivid they are.
Make them the hero of their stories. Stories are powerful image creators, and they are even more powerful when you make the listener the hero.
Give them time. If you take the time and trouble to get your listeners to create a mental picture, don’t erase it immediately by immediately launching into facts and figures. Pause long enough to let it sink in and work its magic.
Imagine
Imagine this scene: Dr. King sets up on the National Mall—and delivers a PowerPoint presentation! Would we remember his words today?
[1] Which is why mental images are NOT recommended when clarity or precise understanding is called for.
