Being successful at work is a balance between competence and credibility. If you want to get ahead, you need to be able to demonstrate that you can do your job and have the skills to move to the next level.
These tips will help you boost your credibility.
1. Always tell the truth
Credibility is built on trust. And trust is established through reliability and honesty.
If you lie at work, eventually someone will discover your deception, denting your credibility. Even if the lie itself is relatively minor, people will always doubt your honesty. They quite legitimately wonder that else you might be lying about.
It is not possible to lie and remain credible.
So instead you need to set yourself a personal standard of always telling the truth. It may not make you popular, but it will certainly improve your credibility.
2. Use Spell Check
Working in an office, you probably type hundreds, if not thousands of words each day. Emails, letters, internal documents, client proposals – the list goes on and on.
Every time you write a word, you’re setting out your stall of self-promotion whether you realize it or not. People judge you by what they see. And if that’s a collection of poorly-spelled documents, you could be damaging your credibility. Because if your writing is littered with spelling errors it suggests that you lack attention to detail. Or that you are too lazy (or incompetent) to click the spell check button.
In the age of the spell-checker there is absolutely no excuse for spelling mistakes. Allow yourself a few seconds to spell check every written communication you send out and watch your credibility climb.
3. Dress well
It’s a sad fact of life, but people really do judge books by their covers. Similarly your co-workers will often judge you by how you dress.
This fact does however allow you to work that knowledge to your advantage. By dressing well, you can help improve your image. This then translates to a rise in credibility, even though you haven’t really done anything at all.
4. Don’t gossip
Gossip plays a key part in office politics and has the potential to build or destroy careers. But no one likes their colleagues talking behind their backs.
By participating in gossip, you help to create divisions within your team that limit productivity and success. If you want to appear credible, you need to be successful.
Gossiping is also a great way to destroy trust. If people know you talk about others behind their backs, they will naturally assume you do the same about them. And if they make that connection, they won’t trust you.
Which is just as bad for your credibility as lying.
5. Keep your word
If you promise to meet a deadline, make a delivery or complete a job, make sure you do it. Your promises (and how well you keep them) are crucial to establishing credibility at work.
And it’s not just work-related promises you need to keep either. If you make a personal promise to one of your colleagues, like attending a party or providing them with off-the-clock help, you need to keep it.
If you build a reputation as someone who promises the world but never delivers, people will learn not to trust what you say. Which is as damaging to your credibility as lying.
So you must always do what you say, when you say.
Boosting credibility at work – it isn’t rocket science
Boosting your credibility at work isn’t really that hard. All you need to do is think about the people you trust in your office and consider why they are trustworthy. You can then apply these observations to your own character, helping you to build your credibility at work.
