Lessons in IT Transformation: Technology Expert to Business Leader

Building Credibility

There's an old expression that what you do speaks so loud I can't hear what you say! Don't get me wrong, effective communication and inspiring people is certainly an important part of effective leadership. However, all the motivational speeches in the world can't make up for a lack of credibility.

There are no shortcuts to building credibility. It is a process that evolves a day at a time. Credibility speaks to trust. When you are credible, people know they can trust your words because experience suggests that you back them up with actions that are congruent with your words. One of the best steps you can take to building credibility is building transparence. Let me share an example.

When I began in my current position I was told that the people who had resided in my office (and there had been three in five years!) had no relationship with our board or our business leaders. They didn't communicate very often, and on the rare occasion they did, they spoke in geek speak, a language that is not about business but about acronyms! One of the first things I attempted to do was to build an ongoing communication process with total transparency. As I mentioned in Chapter 4, we published not only the quantitative results of our scorecards but also every single comment we received from our clients (and believe me, we received some beauties!). I was trying to build credibility with my audience. I knew that if I was brutally honest about the feedback we were receiving and ...