Description :
“The persuasive role of character was seriously devalued during the Enlightenment. The rise of experimental science emphasised the goal of neutrality, which was thought to be guaranteed only through radical detachment: subject and object were thus torn asunder.”
(Darwin Smith)
We don’t have to be in the hot seat of some multinational corporation such as Google or Apple to worry about how others, especially analysts and shareholders, see us and whether or not they have confidence in us. All of us, irrespective of our seniority, have, at times, the same worry. Establishing credibility is something as pressing for young executives as maintaining it is for senior ones. Younger executives and managers have to build their credibility on entering a firm or, in some cases for older managers, to rebuild it when lost. This article is in two parts and offers a simple paradigm to build credibility based on the concepts of ‘expertise’ and ‘relationship’ and ‘character’. We shall look at Expertise and Relationship in Part 1 and Character and Gravitas later in Part 2.
Expertise and Relationships
Jay Conger, writing in his Harvard Business Review article, “The Necessary Art of Persuasion”1, looked at credibility in a very practical way and wrote “in the workplace credibility grows out of two sources: expertise and relationships”. These two concepts of ‘expertise in subject matter’ and the creation of ‘good personal relationships’ provide others with some good reasons to believe in our credibility.
i) Displaying Expertise
In keeping with Jay Conger, ‘Expertise’ is simply based on the speaker’s being known as being knowledgeable about his or her business and having a reputation of making sound judgements. A manager who knows his products, his markets, and customers and staff well will have little difficulty in asking his colleagues, subordinates, or bosses, for that matter, to accept a new product line. We simply have no alternative but to be well informed about our business and to communicate this level of expertise to others.
If we should find ourselves weak in this area, whether we are trying to build our credibility from scratch or to re-establish ourselves, the following ideas may be of some help:
- speak to knowledgeable functional managers on a one-to-one basis in order to learn from them what their particular views are, and, more especially, what they think is feasible and not feasible inside the industry.
- associate yourself with a known, respected, and knowledgeable person.
- support your arguments with examples from respected authors and associate your proposals with known success in other companies.
- associate your proposals with scientific evidence (even if they are only pilot studies).
However, expertise alone is only feasible in situations where a high degree of certainty exists. When something is clear and accepted, the character of the communicator can be quite irrelevant. Conventional knowledge, for example, is information that has been accepted by most people as certain, or at least with a high level of probability of not being challenged. This is often true in routine type projects or where an established code of action has been agreed. However, in other situations, where uncertainty exists, personal relationships and character have a large role to play in creating our credibility. Displaying expertise will mean at times adopting a position that can be challenged by others on reasonable grounds. In these situations expertise alone won’t be enough to support your position in a credible way.
ii) Personal Relationships
The literature, according to Conger, has demonstrated time and time again that, on a personal basis, people trust those who listen to them and those that are perceived as working in the best interest of others. These two attitudes of interpersonal relationships build good will, and audiences will draw their own conclusions, principally by associating the speaker with positive management attitudes. The speaker is perceived as credible. These associations are drawn continuously and have a positive influence on subsequent judgements by audiences.
Also, in terms of associations, a certain degree of consistency is required. Lawyers, for example, are expected to act as lawyers, just as medical doctors are expected to act and deal with people in a way that is consistent with how people think they should. Likewise, a staff member has a perception of what a good manager should be. This may be partly idealistic or utopian, but it is also practical. In a free environment where people have alternatives, a manager must either live up to staff expectations or learn to modify them. Either way, a level of trust must exist between the parties before a message will be accepted with a degree of enthusiasm. Audiences will make their judgements and our level of existing goodwill is assessed on our perceived attitude to relationships. But this trust is a feeling, a feeling that is deduced from our observations of a person’s character in action.