2.

4 Communication Credibility
2.4.1 Communicating With Credibility
by Christine W. Zust, M.A.
Credibility. How do you get it? More importantly, how do you keep it? Gaining
credibility takes years to achieve, and maintaining it is a lifetime goal for any
leader. One wrong move can erase in an instant many years of hard work.
Communicating with credibility is an art form, one which you can master by
using a few simple guidelines.
Align your verbal and nonverbal language. Credibility is enhanced through
consistent verbal and nonverbal language. The key word here is consistent.
Executives who overlook nonverbal language, or body language, are dismissing
one of communications most powerful tools. When your verbal and nonverbal
language is out of alignment, you send out a mixed message. The result? The
person receiving that message is confused, wondering what to believe -- your
verbal or nonverbal. Nonverbal communication has many functions, but the two
highlighted here are the functions of reinforcing or contradicting your verbal
message. When nonverbal reinforces the verbal message, you maintain your
credibility. When the nonverbal contradicts, or is inconsistent, with the verbal
message, you run the risk of sending mixed messages, and losing credibility.
For instance, the leader who says, "I am in full support of these salary
negotiations" but looks away or down, sends out a conflicting nonverbal
message that says, "Im not really in full support of this." When the verbal and
nonverbal messages are conflicting, the nonverbal message will always win,
because it is perceived to be more believable. That is why its called the "silent
language." Remember, the foundation of your credibility is your believability.
Be consistent in your verbal and nonverbal language, and you will never have to
worry about sending mixed messages which may jeopardize your credibility.

Lead by Listening. Ask executives across the country what they look for in
their top management teams, and most will say, "Good listeners." The good
news about listening is that it is a learned behavior, which means, even if you
are a poor listener today, you can train yourself to be a better listener tomorrow.
How well do you listen to your key clients and customers? Your employees?
Your stockholders? Your key advisors? The good listener does not merely hear
what is being said but rather observes and uses all the senses to reflect on the
whole picture. Why should listening matter to you as a leader? In todays
competitive marketplace, silent observation is one of the most influential tools
you can develop to gain a keen sense of awareness and keep you at the front of
your game.
Make realistic promises and keep them. Credibility can fizzle if you dont
keep your word, whether you have communicated it in writing or verbally. Your
credibility slips when you dont live up to the standards you have set for
yourself or others have set for you. If promises are made and repeatedly broken,
you begin to lose your credibility. Whether it is a key client , a constituent or
your staff who you make promises to, you will spiral downward ever so quickly
if you dont deliver on your promises. If you have a bad habit of committing
more than you can deliver, take this advice: Think before you speak, and
realistically promise only what you know you can deliver.
Speak from the heart. Some of the most powerful presenters are people who
speak from the heart. When a message is communicated from the heart, it is
more believable. An audience can quickly tell the difference between a speaker
who is genuine and one who is artificial. Some professionals have their
presentations so over-rehearsed that they are often interpreted by the audience
as phony or insincere. Dont just talk the talk. Walk the talk.

Be yourself. This is an easy one. Many people who fall into the credibility gap
do so because they misrepresent themselves as someone else. We all know
individuals who have inflated their professional accomplishments to appear
more attractive for a leadership position. They soon discover once they are in
the position, they dont have the level of expertise others expected of them (and
everyone around them knows it!). People can see through individuals who try to
position themselves as someone they are not. While there are people who spend
time joining the right clubs, travelling in the right circles, and attending high
profile events, the in crowd knows the difference between a wannabe leader and
the real thing.
I recently reviewed an advance copy of an acceptance speech for the recipient
of a prestigious community award. I immediately recommended that he delete
several canned jokes from his speech. His assistant assured me that the corny
joke-telling was part of her bosss delivery style. I advised against it because it
jeopardized the mans integrity. This executive had more than 50 years of
outstanding leadership in his professional and voluneer roles, so he did not need
a joke about a farmers daughter or a frog to connect with his audience. Surely,
he had more meaningful personal stories to tell. On the night of his presentation,
I was pleased when he deleted the jokes in exchange for a more believable
humorous personal story. It worked, because he did not rely on someone elses
stale joke to artificially spice up his speech. The audience responded very
favorably to his story, because he was being himself.
Be an expert. You are at the top because you know your business, and you have
an uncanny ability to lead others. Yet, there are leaders who lack credibility
because they only have a superficial knowledge base with no depth. The more
you know, the more believable you are. But it doesnt stop there. The credible
leader is one who is willing to share that acquired knowledge with others and
encourage open communication and idea sharing. Its not just how much you

know that positions you as a credible leader, but how willing you are to share
that knowledge with others.
Last year, I attended a professional development program which was presented
by a high-ranking female executive with a national company. While she
delivered a great multi-media presentation and was an articulate speaker, she
fell apart during the question-answer period. Of the five questions asked of her,
she could answer only one, and deferred the other four to her technical support
staff operating the computer in the back of the room. She immediately lost
credibility with the audience. The energy level in the room plummeted. If she
knew her business and had done a better job of preparing for the questionanswer period, she would have retained credibility with the audience.
Be honest. We need to look no further than the political arena to select our best
examples of how to lose credibility by covering up. What do you think of when
you hear the words, "I am not a crook" and "I did not have sex with that
woman." Do you think of honesty? Hardly. Presidents Nixon and Clinton could
have saved face if they had been honest in their statements from the beginning.
If they had admitted wrongdoing, the public would have been more forgiving.
Instead, their statements came back to haunt them. The old saying, "What goes
around comes around" demonstrates this to be true. Leaders are the first to be
scrutinized during tenuous times, because they are in control, whether they
represent government, corporate America or a non-profit organization. Too
many leaders think they are invincible. When you accept a leadership position,
you also accept full responsibility for your words and actions. Be honest from
the beginning, and your credibility will remain intact.
Be proactive. Its never too late to do a credibility check. To stay on track, ask
yourself questions, like, "What could potentially jeopardize my credibility?"
"What steps can I take to improve my credibility?" "What can I do each day to

ensure that my credibility is maintained?" The more aware you, the better
equipped you are be to keep your credibility elevated.
There is no asset more valuable or powerful than your personal credibility,
because it goes to the very core of who you are as a person and a leader. You are
responsible for building and maintaining it...for life.
Reference: http://www.emergingleader.com/article15.shtml

2.4.2 6 Things You Can Do to Enhance Your Communication Credibility

By: Michael Lovas & Pam Holloway
Most people think Communication occurs when information is sent, like in a
verbal statement or letter. Thats wrong. Thats called a one-way transmission.
Communication happens when the other person receives the information. Why
is that important to you?
In the traditional business communication model, you lose
control of your message as soon as it is sent. Our contention is that, in the
traditional model, you never had control of it in the first place because you
didnt have accurate information about your target market.
Without accurate information, the target isvery likely to misunderstand your
intended message. What if that message is the essence of your business identity,
your offer, your plea for donations?
Having guided many people through exercises to help them improve the
accuracy of their intended messages, Pam and I know (all too well) that human
communication is a sloppy and inexact activity. Thats OK if your message
includes grunts and deals with food or warmth. But, when the message is more
sophisticated, such as your marketing and selling message, its nearly always
off-target.
Corporations spend $millions on their branding. Many of those dollars go
toward assuring that the message is targeted. Still, any word or phrase that
could be misunderstood definitely will be. Anything that is ambiguous or vague
will give the wrong message. Any image, logo or photo that could possibly be
misinterpreted will be. Additionally, any one-way, out-bound message that fails
to include the perceptions of the intended audience will most likely suffer from
grossinaccuracies in reception.

At a fundamental level verbal messages convey meanings the speaker has

encoded into the words of an utterance, but a listener who has understood the
utterance has gone beyond the literal meaning of the words and grasped the
particular sense in which the speaker intended them to be understood. In order
to do so, communicators must make their co-participants' perspectives part of
the process of formulating and interpreting messages. Thus any communicative
exchange is implicitly a joint or collective activity in which meaning emerges
from the participants' collaborative efforts.
In other words, the people who receive the message are the ones who determine
its meaning and value not the sender. So, you have to collect the targets
perceptions prior to releasing your out-bound message.
What about you? Now, if what I just said is true, who do your customers think
you are? More important, who do your prospects think you are? What value do
they think you represent to them? For many businesses, all the target market has
to go by are the inaccurate messages you give them. If your marketing message
is anything like most, what youre saying is NOT what people are receiving.
Huh? Yes, unless you capture the perceptions of your target market before
talking, writing or designing, your message is most likely off-target. Huh? Look
at it this way: because very few professionals and businesses understand this
process, it is highly probable that every person they deal with has the wrong
perception of who they are, what they do, and the value they represent.
Theres no way this short paper could be a comprehensive class in how to fix
that
situation. However, if youll follow these simple steps, your outbound messages
will at least be more accurate. If youd like personal help with your marketing,
please let us know. Pam and I provide a service called Marketing Therapy.
Through it, we nip, tuck, tweak and perfect your messages so they are
psychologically on-target and relevant to your target market.

In the meantime, here are six things you can do to become more aware of how
you are perceived by your stakeholders, and correct that perception.
1. Find out how others see you
See yourself as others see you. Get a second, third and fourth outside
perspective. Interview the people who work in your company. Do it privately
and get them to describe how they see the firm and how they think outsiders
looking in see it.
Dont stop with your employees, ask your customers. Ask your suppliers. Ask
anyone would either is or could become a stakeholder. Pay attention. Listen to
whats going on around you. Listen not only to those from whom you ask for
feedback but to those you didnt.
Try to gather intel on what your competitors are saying aboutyou. How about
potential employees? Off the record, why do you want to work here? What do
we represent to you? Talk to former employees and former suppliers. What are
they saying about you?
Finally create a matrix of all the comments. Look for any common themes in
the feedback. Identify the areas that you can address immediately.
2. Get to Know Your Target Market
This is where most marketing slams into a brick wall. Very few firms can
describe their target market in realistic terms. Age, zip code, household inco me,
purchase history those things tell you something about your target market, but
not very much. They describe details of a mass market, but mass marketing has
been ineffective for more than ten years for all but the largest of megacorporations. So, who is your target market? And, how do you describe them?
Lets throw the book out the window and look at target markets in a completely
different way. What would you love to know about a potential customer hidden
out there? Mainly, how they use your type of product. That tells you what they
value about your product. If you know that, you can create compelling, personal

and relevant marketing. And, that includes sales presentations, webinars,

seminars and keynotes.
So, how do you discover that information? Research, analysis and projection.
Research the social media sites that are related to your product. Read the
comments pro and con about how people perceive it. What do they like and
dislike?
What else do they want. We live in an incredible world where you can learn
those things with relative ease. But, even more astounding, you can actually
communicate with them directly and get even more information.
All of the little bits of intel that you collect combine to give you a terrific
picture of what to offer, how to offer it, and who will be attracted to it.
3. Speak the Language of Your Target Market
Once you get to know your target audience, in terms of what they want and how
they use your product, your next step is to learn to speak their language.
Those are the two most difficult objectives in modern business.
Speaking the language means using specific words, phrases, structures,
concepts, colors, images and designs that appeal to the mental filters of your
target market. Those elements deliver your message. It means giving the right
people a message that they want to see one they might even be looking for.
But, you have to know what they want before you create the messages.
Consider what we just said. Traditionally, a firm creates a marketing piece to
promote a product and then sends it out. Thats a one-way transmission. That
type of marketing is still being done, but it is becoming less and less effective.
The smart marketer looks at the landscape and figures out what potential buyers
want that is relevant to his product. Then, he builds the marketing around those
findings. In a real way, your target market actually directs what you say in your
marketing, so its a two-way conversation, rather than a one-way transmission.
NOTE:

These next three items deal with a different aspect of communication credibility.
They are activities you can engage in that will communicate your credibility
through behaviors. Remember, behavior is just another way we communicate.
4. Choose your associations wisely
One of the main mental filtering mechanisms we all unconsciously use is
association, or generalization. This ishow we know how to open just about
every door on the planet, and why we get confused by push-button car ignitions.
What? No key? In that same way, we associate (or generalize) an individual
with the people (both professionally and personally) he/she associates with.
And, we associate a company with firms in the same industry, and with the
other companies it does business with.
In other words, you are the sum of your relationships. Every relationship or
association either positively enhances your credibility and reputation, or it
detracts
from it. This dynamic is always moving in one direction or the other. It does not
remain static and it does not hover in the middle. But, the good news is, you can
take control of it.
Make a list of all your business relationships. Analyze each in terms of whether
it
adds value or detracts value fromyour reputation. If the other firm is soiled,
distance yourself or sever the link.
Otherwise, you risk looking like you support a firm or person with questionable
qualities. Develop a profile of a person that represents the polar opposite of you.
List that hypothetical persons characteristics. Then, list the characteristics and
determine where you score on them.
Finally, ask yourself these questions:
Does this relationship work for me?
Are there common values or a shared purpose?
Is this relationship important to my long-term goals?

 Is this the kind of company or individual I want to be associated with?

Does this association add credibility or detract from it?
5. Tell the Truth
When you make a mistake, fess up. Admit it. Customers are far more likely to
forgive a mistake than they are a cover-up or a withholding of information.
Many people find this extremely difficult to do. Thats because they attach
emotion to the information. Instead, consider that the information is just that
data. And, data has no connection to emotion. Think of the data as though its
just numbers.
Dont hide your services inside or behind marketing-eeze or legal-eeze.
Describe distinctly and coherently who you are and what you do. The more
open and honest you are about what you can (and cannot) or will (or wont) do,
the more your customers and prospects will respond.
6. Walk the Talk
Theres a story among the consulting ranks of a renowned time management
consultant who responded to questions abouthis program by saying I havent
had time to look at it.
It appears that it is not only time management consultants who are afflicted with
this. Financial consultants with bad personal investment track records,
Insurance guys who dont use their own products, marriage counselors who
have never been married or who have multiple divorces, and so on.
If you are concerned about your integrity and credibility (and you better be),
never, under any circumstances try to sell something that youre not. Inevitably
someone will call you on it. Strive to be congruent in everything you do.
As coaches, were often contacted by new sales people. They usually have
concerns about their level of expertise and ask us how to deal with that. How
can I convince someone that Im an expert when Im not? Our answer is
always, Dont. Dont pretend youre something youre not. So, what are you?
Then, together we figure out what it is that the person actually does well.

It could initiate the relationship, establish a network of other experts, approach

service with the big-picture perspective, possess great capacity to deal with
details. The key to being congruent with who you are is to understand who you
are and what natural strengths and talents you have.
In Conclusion...
Why is credibility important here? Simply because it represents movement in a
positive direction. It distinguishes you from everyone who does not understand
how to use Communication Psychology to craft and deliver relevant, accurate
messages to their specific target market segments. Until you can clearly identify
each element in the communication chain, you will experience pops and sputters
as the intended message misfires with the intended target audience. When you
want help with this process, just give us a call.
Reference: http://levelbreaker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/6-Things-YouCan-Do-to-Enhance-Your-Communication-Credibility.pdf

2.4.3 Credibility in Selling

By Daniel W. Jacob
Everyone agrees that credibility is a scarce and valuable commodity.
But in selling, credibility is indispensable.
You either have it, you get it, or you dont make the sale.
But where do you find it when it seems like you have to have it before you can
get it? You cant force anyone to think you are credible. It cant be bought and
for that matter, it cant be sold. Its invisible, intangible, and seemingly
unattainable if youre not born with it.
Still, it is perceivable to everyone when you do have it. Your credibility seems
to have permeated your entire being. Its perceptible yet untouchable, abstract
but obvious, visible and invisible at the same time. As is said of some of the
more salacious elements in society, you know it when you see it.
Okay, if its so important, where can I get some of this stuff?
Heres the answer.
The key to credibility is trustworthiness, and this made up of a combination
of personal integrity, honesty and your reputation.
If you fail to get people to trust you before you do anything else, you might as
well pack it up. Nothing else you do will work without it.
One of the easiest ways of establishing trust with the customer is something that
you were born with. Be yourself. Customers are not stupid. They know when

theyre only getting a sales pitch. And they can sense when youre not being
yourself and not being honest.
You cant rush this point. Establishing the bond of trust with the customer takes
as long as it takes. Occasionally it can happen right off the bat, sometimes not.
Never push it. Be yourself with yourself and the client, it will show.
Sometimes, they want to test you out and see if you actually do deliver what
you promise. Theyll give you a small order and see how you do. If youre on
time and provide what you promised, confidence and trust will increase and
credibility builds. It is then easier to leverage this into a bigger order next time.
Once you do hold the position in their mind as being reliable and trustworthy,
guard it with your life. It is much easier to gain the position in the first place
than it is to regain it once lost.
Remember that the most important step to close in the selling process happens
before the order is placed. Get them to like you and trust you. Only then will
you become seen as credible and worthy of trust.
But wait, thats not all.
Here is something you may not have suspected.
There is only one reliable way to get them to like you and trust you: You must
like and trust yourself first.
And the only way to really trust yourself is to be honest with yourself.
When you do, you become credible to yourself. Then youll find that people
magically also see you as trustworthy and credible. Its the easiest and most
effective way to get the job done.

If you start by being honest with yourself, trusting yourself comes easy and the
rest falls in place
Reference: http://thesalesmaster.me/credibility-ismission-critical/

2.4.4 5 Ways to Increase Your Communication Credibility

by Vault Careers
Credibility counts, especially at the office. This extends not solely to your job
performance, but also the message you communicate, what you talk about, and
how you talk.
According to communication expert Dianna Booher, words have to match
actions, so if you say youre going to do something, you should do it. In
addition to meeting your deadlines and hitting all your goals, its vital to
establish trust in your communications both verbal and written, including
social otherwise youll run the risk of lowering your hallway credibility. Once
youve lost it, its all but impossible to win back, she says. Think of the saying
actions speak louder than words. However, if your actions match those words,
it gives your communication that much more power.
Booher is the author of Communicate With Confidence. The bestselling classic
aimed at improving readers communication skills has been recently revised and
expanded by McGraw-Hill.

There are over 1,200 tips for increasing

communication skills in her book. Booher promises that just following some
the rules mentioned in her book will help readers, of any skill level, establish
hallway credibility in no time. Here are five quick tips to get you started:
Show Concern. People will care about you and more importantly trust you,
when you care about them. People want to know that they have a sympathetic
ear in you. Even companies need to show concern over individuals before
rectifying situations.

Admit What You Dont Know. When people smell blood, they start to dig. Its
human instinct to push when they feel they are being bluffed. Admitting
ignorance is a simple principle, easy to remember, easy to accomplish, but a
difficult pill to swallow. Nothing makes people believe what you do know like
admitting what you dont.
Keep Confidences. When people know you share personal, confidential
matters about others with them, they fear youll do the same to them. Breaking
confidences speaks volumes about your character. Those who observe your
ability to keep your promises and your confidences will begin to trust you with
their real feelings.
Avoid Exaggeration. Did you wait on the phone for five seconds, or five
minutes? Did the supplier raise the rates by 2% or 10%? Did the scores dip to
30 or down to 10? Exaggeration makes for great humor, but it is a credibility
killer.
Accept Responsibility. If you were involved in the decisions, actions, and
results, or had some control over a situation that didnt end the way others
wanted it to, own up to it. Shirkers suffer credibility gaps.
Reference:

http://www.vault.com/blog/workplace-issues/5-ways-to-increase-

your-communication-credibility