What is trust? What is credibility? Are they the same? Can you have one without the other?
Jenni provides in-depth answers during this episode, reveals why we listen to some people more than others, and shares three core things to consider when it comes to building trust.
Things that will help you go from chaos to calm:
Podcast: Chaos to calm: Leading remotely S2 E1
Podcast: Chaos to calm: Fear and trust S1 E5
Messengers: 8 Ways to Get Heard by Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks
You can continue the conversation with Jenni on Twitter and LinkedIn
Transcript for this podcast
Hi and welcome to this episode of Redefining Comms with me, Jenni Field. Today, I’m going to be talking about trust and credibility. These are two things I probably write and speak about most when it comes to leadership and communication. And in my episode about remote leadership, I talked about the importance of relationships at work. So, in this episode, I want to explore trust and credibility really as the two foundations of those relationships.
I want to delve into what chaos looks like when there isn’t trust or credibility. And then I want to share the three things you need to consider to be seen as credible. I also want to talk about the importance of understanding why we listen to some people and not others. And then I’m going to share the three things to consider when it comes to trust.
What does chaos look like when there isn’t trust or credibility in the workplace?
Now, when I think about the chaos that can happen inside organisations, so much of it can come back to trust and credibility. Even if I think about more recent examples of organisations experiencing chaos, trust seems to be at the root of a lot of it.
Now, as an employee, we trust our employer. We trust them to treat us fairly. We trust them to make sure we’re respected for our skills and also to support us in our career development, you know, whatever that might look like for us as an individual. It’s almost like a contract. There’s this sort of two-way agreement of what should be really built on trust.
So, when that’s broken or we feel betrayed or something changes, the relationship changes and it changes how we feel about people and it changes how we feel about the organisation as a whole.
Now, in season one of this podcast, I recorded an episode on fear and trust. It’s episode five if you want to go back and have a look. And I’ll pop a link in the show notes. Now, in it, I talk about what happens where there isn’t trust and the chaotic symptoms it brings. So, if I combine that with the list of things that can also be seen when people aren’t perceived as credible, we’ve got quite a long list of stuff.
So, we’ve got a long list of symptoms, including things like high scepticism, no belief in what’s being said, people blocking the change, we’ve got wasted time and effort against the direction of travel for the organisation, we’ve got people feeling threatened, we have people experiencing feelings of stress or anxiety, we might have team friction where people aren’t working well together, and we’ve overall got a lack of respect that’s probably working its way through the organisation.
How do you know if trust and credibility are the issue causing the chaos?
Now I always talk about the symptoms and then getting to the root cause, and it can be easy to just assume it’s something when actually it’s something very different. So if we want to explore whether it’s trust and credibility, there are a few things to think about.
Firstly, if there are people going off with stress and there’s relatively high turnover, you’ll be starting to diagnose the root cause of that chaos. And in most cases when you’re doing that, I will advise that you use listening interviews or one-to-one interviews to ensure that you’re getting richness in the data that you’re gathering, much, much richer than what you’ll get just from a survey.
So, in those conversations, questions should cover trust in leadership, line managers and those around them. So, no matter what you’re trying to diagnose as a root cause, if you’re looking at culture or you’re looking at behaviours or you’re looking at significant
Organisational change, trust and credibility will come up and should be part of your question set in your interviews. And then it’s through that diagnostic process you’ll be able to identify if trust is an issue and if there’s any link to credibility as well.
Now, the two don’t always go hand in hand. You know, I can think you’re really credible at what you do, but I don’t trust you. Trust is much more personal. It’s much more individual in the relationship. So, they are quite different. So, important to sort of pull them apart a little bit.
The second thing is to question your question you own behaviour. So are you doing things that will make people question whether you can be relied upon? You know, have you betrayed someone’s confidence?
You know, whilst we’re looking at diagnosing the root cause, we’re always looking at the environment, we’re looking at the things around us. But if we’re leading a team or leading an organisation, we have to look at ourselves as well. And we have to be able to acknowledge the things that might need to change in order to help the organisation thrive.
How do we shift to a place where we are credible and where we can also be trusted?
Now to build a credibility, there has to be three things. And those three things are goodwill, expertise and trustworthiness. Goodwill is all about demonstrating or showing that you have another person’s interests at heart. You know, are you able to show understanding of their ideas? You’re being empathetic. And for me, it’s also about doing something for the other person without an agenda. You know, it’s having a real attitude of service, that live to serve ethos in some ways. So, doing something for someone else without really any agenda.
The second is expertise. And that’s the belief that you have the skills or the know-how. Now, we can demonstrate expertise by bringing in external elements to the conversation. We can reference books, we can reference papers and data and insight. And we can also upskill ourselves by going on courses or doing qualifications that can help people understand that we do have the expertise on the topic that we’re talking about.
And the last one is trustworthiness. Now, this is about perceived honesty and integrity. And really, whilst it’s trustworthiness, it’s really about whether or not you do what you say you will. And I’ve talked about this a lot when I talk about leadership behaviours. But you know, you have to be consistent. And that’s the point I always reference. You know, are you going to do what you say you’re going to do? And are you going to be consistent in your behaviour with others?
And that’s where trustworthiness really comes in. It’s often a conversation I have with people when they’re looking to move up in their career or change roles. Or it might be a leader that’s struggling to get the engagement from their team. It all comes back to that say-do gap. And it often comes back to making sure that you’re doing what you’ve said you’re going to do. And you’re consistent in your behaviour with your team, that they don’t sort of have this worry of who am I going to get today? And so all of that plays into that trustworthiness.
So, if these are the three foundations for credibility, we can see how we can build that with our stakeholders and our team and those around us. And then if we link that to trust, which is the final point of credibility, you can see how the two really go hand in hand. And a lot of this also links to the type of people we believe, trust and find credible and therefore listen to.
What are hard and soft messengers?
Now, there’s a great book that I’ve read called Eight Ways to Get Heard. It’s by Martin and Marx, and they propose two different types of messengers. They suggest that there are hard and soft messengers.
Hard messengers have or claim to have a higher status than others. Now, this may or may not be true, but you believe they have an elevated status. And as a result, they carry more power. Now, these are people who are more dominant. They are shown more respect. Their traits include things like socioeconomic position, competence, dominance, and attractiveness.
Then we’ve got soft messengers, and soft messengers lead with connectedness. They demonstrate traits of warmth, vulnerability, trustworthiness, and charisma. Now, both of these types of messengers have a role to play in organisations. And as a leader, it’s important to consider really which one you are. And interestingly, you’ll notice that the soft messenger traits are those that you can develop upskilling and learn, which means that you can develop the skills needed to build trust and credibility.
What are the three things you should consider when building trust?
Now, I said at the start, I wanted to share three things that you need to consider when it comes to building trust. So, these are my top three. There are lots of things I could have talked about when it comes to trust. But when I was working through this episode, I came back to the core, really of the three things that I probably advise most of my clients around.
1. Be realistic with your time
You have to be realistic about what you can achieve because managing others’ expectations to make sure that you are doing what you’ve said you’re going to do is a big part of trust. So you have to be realistic about what’s possible in a day, in a week, in a month, in an hour. You know, we have to know what is right for us in terms of how long it takes us to do things or how long it’s going to take us to get back to somebody.
2. Work out your priorities
Now, I often tell the story of Disney when I heard that one of the vice presidents of operations, I think it was, he would handwrite cards to thank employees who were mentioned by name by a guest’s sort of feedback form. And it was a really interesting conversation. He was talking to a room full of operators at the conference. And in that discussion, you could see people thinking, “God, that’s amazing that he had the time to do that.” But it was a priority for him. And therefore, if it’s important to you, you will make the time to do it. So, be clear what your priorities are and make the time for them and do them. It’s easy to say that you’re busy, but it’s just that you’re not prioritising the things that you have to prioritise.
3. Looping back
Now, if you’ve said you’re going to do something, you need to loop back to the person once you’ve done it to tell them either that you’ve done it and what the outcome is or why you couldn’t do it. Even if you think it’s a given, you know, I don’t need to go back to them because they know I’ve done it. It’s fine. Our relationship is really good. There’s no problem. But you don’t know what’s going on in that relationship from the other person’s perspective. And if you’re trying to build that trust, going back to say, “Hi, you know, hi, Jenni, just to let you know, I’ve just followed up with Frank and he said he’s going to get in touch with you next week.” You know, even if our relationship is great, what you’ve done by doing that is showing that I’m still important to you and that you’re still going to take the time to message me.
So it depends where you are at in your relationships and where trust is. But those are the three things to just think about if they might help you make just some small changes in some of your behaviours.
So, I hope they help you build both credibility and trust. There’s quite a few things packed in there to help you think about when it comes to goodwill, expertise, being realistic, working out your priorities, a few different things to try and do a bit differently if trust and credibility is something that you’re looking at.
Thank you for listening!
Now, in my next episode, I’m going to be talking about why accountability can be hard. Now, it’s something that’s been highlighted in recent years as a core element of leadership.
And it’s something that many struggle with for a variety of reasons, which I will talk about in the episode. So we’ll delve into why it’s hard, you know, why we struggle to admit when we’re wrong. And we’ll also look at ways to navigate that in terms of going from chaos to calm.
So, thank you for listening. As always, I’d love to continue this conversation on Twitter or LinkedIn. So, please connect, ask questions, and share your thinking with me. And details are in the show notes on how to stay in touch.
