Essential Practices That Build Your Credibility and Influence
“There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other.”
–J. K. ROWLING
Your ability to win well and produce lasting results through healthy relationships depends on how much influence you have with your people. Influence is not the power to make people do things. Influence only comes through credibility—the extent to which your people know you, believe you, trust you, and respect you.
• • •
Karin had just been promoted to her first big leadership position in human resources, concurrent with a significant merger at Verizon. All the “important” players were new. Karin had a new boss, a new team, and new senior leaders to impress. Life can be messy: She was also going through a divorce and trying to pick up the pieces in a new life, in a new home, as a single mom. She lived in Baltimore, and the job required substantial travel to Manhattan.
One of the first tasks in her new role was to build a diversity strategy. She gathered a “diversity council” representing each business unit to collaborate on the strategy and plans. The work they were doing was vital. She was convinced she was nailing her new role.
Until ….
A woman from her diversity council burst into Karin’s office, pointed her finger at her, and yelled, “You’re a fraud!” Karin couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. She was deeply hurt by the remark from this trusted teammate.
The woman continued, “I came by your office yesterday to drop something off when you weren’t here and saw the pictures on your desk. They’re all of you and your son—no dad. You lead all these meetings where we work on programs to make it easier for single moms and not one time do you mention that you are one. What else aren’t you sharing?”
Karin was nailed. She had an explanation—a justified spin—but as hard as she tried to get the words out, there was no legitimate way to explain.
The truth was that Karin had been very deliberate about hiding her messy life circumstances. Even her new boss did not know what she was going through. Karin had heard enough discussion about the concept of single moms needing special accommodations to be able do their jobs. She thought, “I’m not like that. I’m a different kind of single mom. I’m an executive.”
Plus, she’d been in enough closed-door discussions to know that although such circumstances shouldn’t matter, they can easily lead to subtle biases that make someone else a “better fit.” Karin was certain that if her secret came out, the decision makers would question her ability to travel and to work the long hours. Not to mention doubting the credibility of an HR leader who couldn’t even hold her marriage together.
Suddenly Karin realized how ridiculous this all sounded, even to herself. She began checking around with some other folks on the council. One man who was gay said, “I came out to you—that took courage that you don’t have. We all trusted you with some pretty big stuff, but we’re starting to wonder about you. You know all about us, but we know nothing about you. We’re not sure we can trust you.”
Karin realized she had achieved a position but had lost the trust of her people. She had a beautiful opportunity to use her life as an example of what a single mom could achieve, to face any subtle discrimination head on and be the voice of those who did not yet have a seat at the table.
Instead she checked true courage at the door, buckled down, and protected herself, all the while creating a diversity strategy that she convinced herself (and others) was game changing.
That’s not game changing. That’s gaming. Imagine the impact she could have had if she had led from who she truly was.
Have you ever felt like Karin, fearful of letting others know what’s really going on for fear you might be judged?
WHY YOU AND YOUR TEAM YEARN FOR AUTHENTICITY
We’ve never met a team that wished their manager was less authentic. It’s hard to overdo this one. Authenticity also serves you. Here are a few reasons why managers and their teams yearn for authenticity.
1. The team has been screwed before.
Oh, they have stories. Trust us. We hear them. Assume somewhere along the line they’ve felt betrayed. Even if it’s not at your company or even under your watch, once upon a time, a manager has lied to them. Guaranteed. Their guard is up. They need someone to restore their trust in authority. They need reassurance in action, not words.
They’re not going to tell you the truth until they are perfectly sure you’ve been doing the same, over and over. Your team also desperately wants to know that the good guys can (and do) win. There’s no better gift you can give your team than leading from who you are toward head-turning results.
Keeping up appearances is an energy-sucking, never-ending vacuum of misery. Trying to lead like someone else, or spin the truth, will wear you down and make you cranky. Your team would rather you show up real, and devote your energy to supporting them than to keeping up a façade. Gamers spend their time working to show up differently from who they are, to keep up a facade, and they waste precious energy that could be invested in creating breakthrough vision, developing people, and doing the work.
3. You waste their energy.
When you aren’t authentic, you guide your team to behaviors that are a waste of energy. If your team senses you’re playing games, they’ll spend a lot of time trying to figure out the rules of that game rather than doing productive work. In fact, if you have surface success, they’ll be taking notes to learn to play it too. All that façade building is contagious. It pulls hearts and minds from the important mission at hand. Your team would rather spend their energy working on the work than trying to play your game.
4. You’re their lifeline.
Particularly in a big organization, the immediate manager makes all the difference. You can’t outsource leadership, not even to your boss or to HR. Your people want to hear the story from you, and they want to know you don’t just read talking points crafted from someone else. If they can’t trust you to be genuine, where will they turn? That answer may be really dangerous.
5. They want to be like you—maybe.
Some folks on your team have serious aspirations to move up in the organization, but they don’t want to lose their souls in the process. They’re watching you to see how you handle the pressure. Do you stay true to who you are, or are you being groomed to be just like those above you?
6. They have important news to share.
They’ve got ideas and solutions, but your team wants to ensure that they’ll have a receptive audience. If you’re afraid to share with them, they’ll be reluctant to share with you.
To be real with your team, you first have to be real with yourself. Know that you’re not perfect and you have so much value to share.
FACE YOUR FEARS
There’s a scene in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when Professor Lupin teaches the students about boggarts—shape-shifters that take on the form of whatever a person fears the most. A boggart is inside an antique, cobweb-covered cabinet that stands eight feet high. The cabinet begins to rock, and you hear a tap-tap-tapping turn into a crescendo of banging. The boggart is clearly trying to escape.
One by one, Lupin instructs the students to visualize their biggest fear—to imagine what will be coming out of that cabinet. And then he teaches them a secret.
“Luckily a very simple charm exists to repel a boggart.”
It turns out you can tame your fears by making them look ridiculous.
Neville fears the intimidating Professor Snape. To conquer his fear and vanquish the boggart, Neville imagines Snape dressed as his grandmother with a big red handbag and a huge hat with a stuffed vulture on the top. Everyone laughs and—poof!—the fear vanishes.
Our biggest leadership screw-ups are fear in disguise. Fears have a powerful and dangerous habit of shape-shifting into a monster that stands in our way, blocking the behaviors we most need for success.
Karin’s biggest fear when she led the diversity council was that if people knew she was a single mom, they would lose respect for her. As it turned out, that was ridiculous. Ironically, the behavior she used to protect herself, hiding that fact, was what made them lose respect.
Now, you may be wondering what fear would come out of your cabinet. Most of us have several choices.
Let’s try it.
Shut your eyes. Imagine that old rickety cabinet with your boggart inside. What does it look like? Name it. Now find an image that would make it ridiculous.
When we can name our fear and see it for what it truly is—a ridiculous exaggeration of the worst-case scenario—we can stop the cycle. It’s nearly impossible to be real when you’re scared. To lead more authentically, get in touch with what most scares you.
TWO WORDS THAT IMMEDIATELY BUILD CREDIBILITY AND TRUST
During his teaching days, David led a team of teachers and high school students on a Rocky Mountain white–water–rafting trip. They had just finished on the water, changed into fresh clothes, and loaded up their convoy of vans to head out to the hotel.
David confidently led the line of vans out of the parking lot and onto a frontage road that ran parallel to the highway before it crossed over and merged with the highway—or so he thought.
With the other drivers in tight formation behind him, he led the team up a hill, but as he crested the hill and descended the other side, it looked like the road narrowed. He slowed a bit but kept going; they were in the mountains, after all, and roads there aren’t always built perfectly.
However, as he continued down the hill, the asphalt dwindled until it was just wide enough for one vehicle before it took a sharp right turn and disappeared out of sight under the highway.
Then he saw it.
A round cornering mirror—the kind of mirror you see in grocery stores or bike paths with blind corners. The type of mirror that allows bike riders to see approaching traffic around the corner.
Yes, bikes.
He’d led his team down a bike path.
Now they were stuck—a line of vans pointed downhill on a narrow bike path. The ground on either side of the path was soft, and there was no room to turn around and no way to go forward.
Have you ever led your team down a dead end? Maybe you had a bad idea, your information was wrong, or you just plain screwed up?
If not, it’s just a matter of time. As a manager, you can’t live in fear of never making a mistake. Sometimes you have to take action with the best information you have and move your team forward.
If it doesn’t work out, and especially if you made a true mistake, what you do next makes all the difference in whether your team will trust you in the future. What you say next will answer the most vital question they have about you: Can we really trust you? The times you screw up give you the greatest opportunities to answer this question. In these moments, you have the chance to build your credibility and your team’s trust—or to go in the other direction and lose it.
On the bike path, David had to ask all the students to hike back up the hill and down the other side. Once the students were clear, he and another teacher backed each vehicle up the path, then back down the other side until they reached the parking lot where they could turn around.
Also, he had to apologize.
Your team needs to hear you say two words that immediately build credibility and trust: “I’m sorry.”
Many times, managers are reluctant to apologize because they fear they’ll be seen as incompetent or weak. This fear ignores one prominent fact: Your team already knows you’re not perfect.
It was quite clear to everyone in those vans that David had led them down a bike path. In the same way, your team usually knows or strongly suspects when you’ve screwed up. It’s not a secret.
When you refuse to acknowledge that you goofed up, your employees learn to emulate your behavior. They won’t trust you, because they know perfection in others isn’t real. In contrast, when you screw up and apologize, you actually increase your team’s trust in you. They know:
• You are strong enough to do the right thing.
• You have the integrity to admit the truth even when it doesn’t cast you in the best light.
• You don’t consider yourself more valuable than your team.
• You’re committed to solutions and the mission above appearances.
That knowledge suggests that you’re reliable, credible, and can be trusted. When you make a mistake, there are just a few simple things to do:
1. Take responsibility. Admit what happened. Keep it simple. Don’t make excuses, but you also don’t have to beat yourself up.
2. Apologize. Use sincere, plain, straightforward language, like you would with a friend or a spouse. Never apologize like a politician.
Do This: “I am so, so sorry. I’ve got to take responsibility for that.” (sincere, simple)
Don’t Do This: “I regret if you felt bad about what I might have said.” (indirect, political, blame-shifting)
3. Make it right. If there is something you need to correct, fix, or restore, do it. Those vans had to be backed up and turned around.
David has recalled that moment on the bike path many times through the years. When he makes a mistake, he knows that the shortest path to get things going right again is to back up the van and find the right road. When you apologize, you model accountability, you build trust, and you give everyone a chance to move forward.
When you apologize, you model accountability, you build trust, and you give everyone a chance to move forward.
TELL OTHERS THE TRUTH
Your team wants to see you for who you are. They also want to know that you’re telling them the truth.
It takes real confidence to tell the truth. When you sugarcoat, it’s easy to pretend that you’re protecting other people, but mostly you’re protecting yourself. That’s not confidence, that’s not humility—and it certainly won’t help build relationships or achieve lasting results.
Three Rules for Speaking the Truth
Follow these three rules consistently and you’re more likely to be seen as a manager who wins well.
1. Lose the Diaper Genie and be direct.
We’re not fans of the sandwich feedback technique so frequently taught in management training (i.e., give positive feedback, offer your criticism, close with something positive). It’s way too much for people to hear, and the positive aspects often end up feeling like BS, and all the person can hear is what’s wrong.
We’ve called this less-than-real feedback Diaper Genie feedback ever since a blog subscriber sent Karin this note:
“I took my first real leadership position when my oldest son was still in diapers. Every time I used our Diaper Genie, I thought, this is just how feedback and bad news works. Each level takes the poop and seals it in a bag before it gets sent to the next level up. Then, that level sanitizes it some more with another layer of protection. By the time it gets to the top, it smells pretty benign.”
You’re much better off starting from a place of genuine caring and being direct. We offer a technique at the end of this chapter that will help.
2. Stop spinning.
Have you ever sat in a manager meeting with your peers going around and around asking, “How do we explain this to our employees in a way they can hear, understand, and feel good about?” How you position a difficult message matters—a lot.
And yet, if you find yourself in meeting after meeting working to wordsmith your communication to better “position” what is happening, we encourage you to ask one question: “What if you told your employees the truth?”
• Overtime is too high; we must increase productivity.
• The stock price is stagnant; we will all benefit from better financials.
• We need to ensure that everyone is contributing.
• This new automation will be more efficient.
People want the truth. Not spin. Most people will respect you far more for being real than for any elegant positioning you can concoct.
When people feel respected, they will respond.
When people feel respected, they will join.
When people feel respected, they will try.
At the same time, unfiltered truth shared in an uncaring way creates unproductive havoc. Start with the truth and then consider:
• What are the best and worst parts of this situation?
• Who will this impact in what ways?
• What questions will be most relevant to whom?
• What additional information should I have available?
• What other questions will they ask?
We have never regretted erring on the side of the truth even when it was scary. Even if the awkward truth creates short-term anxiety, when you communicate well, the credibility you establish is worth the risk.
3. Be Open to the truths of others.
Be real with your team and let them be real with you. If you’re going to change the game, you’ll need a big dose of real.
It may not seem like it at the time, but we’ve both found that most folks do appreciate the truth, even when it’s hard to hear. Your employees will be better off in the long run if you’re honest and don’t let a bad situation linger too long.
YOUR WINNING WELL ACTION PLAN
1. What would be different if you were more real with your team?
2. What fear would come out of your leadership cabinet? Name it. How can you follow Professor Lupin’s example and see that the fear is ridiculous?
3. Is there a place where you have let your people down? Hurt them? Broken a commitment? If so, when and how can you apologize to restore your credibility?
4. Write down and revisit your leadership credo. Writing down your “This is what I believe” statement is a good way to keep yourself in check. We try to do this after each assignment. Take some time every year, or after each assignment, to write down what you believe, and score yourself from time to time. The exercise can be truly humbling. For a step-by-step guide to building your leadership credo, visit our website, www.WinningWellBook.com.