Leadership Voice, Part II: Building leadership credibility

My recent post on Finding Your Leadership Voice really heated up my inbox – thanks for all the comments! A key theme I heard was the challenge leaders have in the area of authenticity and believability (another theme was how to get leaders to become more self-aware – that’s for another post).  So here is Part II on Leadership Voice - building leadership credibility. A longish post with a lot to cover, so let dive right in.

Agreeing on the definition

Credibility, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is the “ability to inspire belief.” This is a key aspect of leadership, but it’s only one aspect. For example, Credibility doesn’t necessarily validate the nobility of a leader’s belief, just that others will buy into it. Martin Luther King Jr. led a cultural movement by inspiring the world with his noble belief that people should be judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin. On the other hand, the road of history is strewn with moral potholes left by leaders who inspired entire societies to buy into (and act on) insane beliefs.

So credibility is measured solely by the level of belief in your followers. Truly great leadership requires credibility, but it also requires much more. For this post, we’ll just focus on the elements of credibility, so we can really get a handle on how it works independent of other aspects of leadership.

Working on being credible?

But before we go further, let’s acknowledge that this can be an odd topic to get your brain around.  Why should a leader have to work on being more credible?  It seems like a contradiction – why would I work on something that’s supposed to be natural and authentic?  For two very good reasons:

• Leadership amplifies and distorts your authentic self: As your authority increases, so does your persona, and that persona is held up to scrutiny. Just as a film actor has to work so her facial expressions look normal when 30 feet tall on the screen, you need to understand and address how your authentic self comes across in organizational life. Small, even silly things can become large – like the media circus that ensued when George HW Bush mentioned he didn’t like broccoli in the early 90’s. Your followers’ perception of your credibility is subjective, complex and dynamic, often shaped through back-channel communications, events and the context of the workplace.
• Reactivity steers you away from your authentic self: An ambiguous, high-velocity work environment can quickly shift an ungrounded leader into a reactive mode, where the leader’s actions may have no connection to who or what they are. So while you’re dealing with mess after mess and bouncing around like a pinball, your people are reading your behavior as if you are purposely, carefully choosing every step you take as a reflection of your core values. Scary, but true. 

Suffice it to say that being credible as a leader isn’t so simple.  Or, better put, it’s simple, but not easy.  And it’s definitely work.

Five pillars of leadership credibility

There is a vast amount of information available on this topic, but all seem to mix leadership credibility with other elements of leadership that are more about just being a good and noble leader in general.  For example, Kouzes and Posner, in their excellent book on credibility, site things like appreciating the diversity of constituents.  This is a great thing for a leader to do, for sure, but it’s not necessarily a requirement to be viewed as a credible leader.

So, in culling from the best, here’s my list of the five key elements of credibility that leaders can’t do without:

1. Purpose: To “inspire belief,” you need to be extremely clear about what that belief actually is.  Your mission and the possible future you lay before others need to be so palpable that others can taste it.  To do that, you need to be extremely clear yourself, and be deliberate in how you communicate and model your purpose. You also need to communicate that purpose in a way that connects with common desires or concerns that cut across the people you wish to inspire.
2. Competence: People need to perceive that you understand your job and can handle your scope of responsibilities.  Domain knowledge, good judgment and a pattern of success are the three keys to demonstrating that you are up to the task in the eyes of followers. No matter how wonderful the destination, no one wants to get in the car with someone who doesn’t know how to drive.
3. Confidence:  People will not find you believable as a leader if you don’t demonstrate belief in yourself.  This is different from competence, in that even the smartest leaders can appear unsure, particularly in ambiguous, unpredictable situations.  Confidence is most important when followers are not feeling confident themselves. In toughest times, this manifests itself as leadership resolve – think Winston Churchill during WW II, constantly reminding the people of Great Britain the importance of no surrender, regardless of how the war appeared to be going.
4. Openness: On the other hand, leaders can take confidence too far and show up as headstrong – they have decided what they will do and won’t hear otherwise. It’s a fine line.  A truly credible leader allows room for input from others, especially those who work directly with that leader on a regular basis.  The act of listening – really listening – to others affected by your decisions shows them you have enough adaptability to consider new information, inspiring trust.  Open dialogue also provides others a window into your human, relational side, where your values and priorities can come through.
5. Integrity: Integrity simply means that everything hangs together, like the structural integrity of a building. In my earlier post on Leadership Voice, this is where I spoke of “the audio matching the video.”  People usually associate integrity with morality (not lying on a tax return or stealing from the company, for example), but that’s just one form of integrity.  Essentially, integrity has three parts – alignment of what you say and do (e.g., keeping promises and following through), consistency over time, and honesty – being transparent and truthful (no hidden agendas). Integrity removes the questions of your trustworthiness so followers can focus on where you want to take them.

Being vs. doing

So you can see from the above attributes that credibility is more about being something than doing something.  Sure, actions reflect who you are, but the source of credibility is the character of the leader, which develops over a lifetime.  That said, character and credibility can definitely be developed through self-awareness of these five areas and a real commitment to change.  In many cases, a leader may lack credibility due to a glaring issue in just one of the above areas (like confidence, or openness).  By identifying and addressing a single, serious blind spot, a leader can significantly improve leadership credibility.