One of the rewarding facets of life in academia is that we are continuously being challenged as to the source and validity of our statements. This, in many ways, helps us greatly to remain permanent students of our subject. One such challenge recently was by an MBA student who boldly stated that all we needed in our working life was professional credibility. This student rightly pointed out that in the Brendan Bracken case (a copy of which can be found on the web), the protagonist had an extremely high level of professional credibility but didn’t have a corresponding level of personal credibility and yet he received acclamation for his life’s work. Personal credibility, the student argued, didn’t matter to the same extent in this case as professional credibility – the reputation of a person who is competent and can get the job done is enough.
Much of life depends on trust. When there is uncertainty we tend to accept those we trust. But trust is a wide concept. We may trust a pilot to pilot a plane, for example, but we may not trust him to the same degree in other aspects of life. The personal element of trust must always be present – a drunken pilot is as lethal as an incompetent one. However, it was pointed out by another student that this trust need not necessarily be found in equal proportion between personal and professional credibility.
In the case of Bracken, those in the inner circle realized his high level of professional competence, his usefulness and loyalty, while knowing quite well that many personal type questions remained unanswered. Regarding the rest of the population, a ‘glass wall’ protected him, with the aid of the media which he partly controlled as Minister of Information. This was the crisis years of World War ll. Bracken was also very careful to destroy any incriminating written evidence of a personal nature before he died. His personal papers are housed at Churchill College, Cambridge, along with those of Winston Churchill.
What do you think:
Is personal credibility today really important if a person has professional credibility or does it depend on the position held?
In my opinion, both of them are important. It is very difficult to split the two aspects.