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Build and Maintain the Boss’s Credibility

Serving the boss well is more than about making that person happy or even keeping him or her satisfied. It does, however, have a lot to do with building and maintaining the boss’s credibility.

Credibility means different things to different people. My criterion for credibility is whether a person can be trusted, can be believed, can be taken at his or her word. That is important whether it’s by an outsider or by someone on the staff. You can help build such credibility for your boss.

As is the case for the boss, maintaining credibility is important for you, too. You are a reflection of that person. As your credibility grows, so will the degree to which you’re sought after as an informative, thoughtful source of well-reasoned advice that you can lend the boss.

If the boss’s credibility is intact, people within the organization will follow that leader. If either you or the boss loses that all-important credibility, you might as well fold up your tent and go home. The road ahead will be lined with mishaps.

You can pick up the newspaper any day and find examples of people who have lost their way: corporate leaders, politicians, people in any walk of life who forget who they are and where they are going. Lying, cheating, and stealing aren’t just examples of breaking the law; they’re about breaking a bond with people who trusted them, who believed in them, who followed them because they thought they were headed in the right direction.

Some of those people who err go to jail; others step down from elected office. Not just guilty as charged or sentenced as deemed fit but forever embarrassed. Unfortunately, the shame is not confined to them. It affects their families, their friends, and their organizational following.

One of the most egregious examples of corporate misconduct was the Enron debacle that began in 2001. Kenneth Lay was the CEO of Enron, one of the world’s largest electricity and natural gas traders. The company was based in Houston, Texas. Lay was one of that city’s biggest philanthropists. His reputation and his credibility were solid, especially among the Enron employees, whom he encouraged to add to their 401(k) plans by buying Enron stock.

Unfortunately for them and for Lay, the Enron house of cards started to collapse when a whistle-blower caused the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a formal investigation into possible conflict of interest related to the company’s overrated earnings. Lay and other corporate leaders at Enron were engaged in a plot to inflate profit and hide losses. He resigned in disgrace and was forced to testify before Congress. Indicted in 2004, he stood trial and was found guilty. Before his sentencing in 2006, Lay died of a heart attack. Meanwhile, the company went bankrupt and all those employees’ savings were lost along with a lot of credibility.

Someone should have been monitoring the actions of Enron’s leadership. If you are responsible for that type of oversight and for the boss’s credibility and reputation, what is your standard of conduct acceptability and mission accomplishment? If you don’t have one, get one.

In what form? One may be simply profit or loss numbers, and another may be retention levels. It could come in the form of feedback solicited from stakeholders, starting with the employees. There’s nothing unusual about conducting surveys, nothing difficult about having town hall meetings, nothing complex about creating a chat room on your website. They are means that will tell you how the boss is doing or how the organization is faring.

If you are a handler for the boss and don’t see or sense an established standard coming from your leader, it’s time for a chat with that person. Ask for a verbal description of the desired standard or create one yourself. Put it in writing, get it blessed, distribute it to all the parties concerned. If you get pushback or resistance, stand your ground. This is not about you, and it is not just about the boss either; it is about everyone who chooses to follow that person.

Almost every organization has a code of conduct, a set of ethics or rules of the road. At least it should. That doesn’t guarantee that anybody reads them, follows them, or cares about them. When was the last time you looked at the state of your organizational standards? When was the last time you sat the staff down for a “conscience” session? If you have a meeting designed for that purpose, don’t be asking and answering your own questions. If you believe in feedback and you believe in honesty from others, you believe in progress.

I have worked for bosses who lacked credibility. I wished more than anything that they would be replaced. That’s not always how the system works. Their lack of credibility affected all of us in ways that made the job more difficult to do. Discussions with those bosses to help them restore their credibility fell on deaf ears. Choices were few: quit, endure, or plug away at change.

Actually, the bottom-up approach is not the best or easiest way to fix a problem, but it may be all you have. My tactic was to motivate the staff and keep the boss in balance; it was not a perfect approach, but it was the best I had available at the time. Fortunately, in each case, those bosses were gone before I was and their successors were better models. Time heals all wounds. In those difficult cases, the advancement in time brought new faces, and they took us to new places.

As I place credibility on the hierarchy of character traits, it looms at the top. It’s more than a word, it’s more than a wish, it’s everything. You bruise it, you lose it. To not lose it, protect it for all it’s worth; it’s golden.

Credibility is not something you are born with. It’s something you earn and build over time. You can’t put it on your résumé, but you need to put it into practice, for every day and in virtually every way that credibility will be tested. Stand up to that test and pass it with flying colors. You will not regret it. In fact, you will come to treasure it.