Hey folks – this week I want to cover another one of those “skills for the new economy” that breaks things down a bit differently than normal leadership development. This time – it’s about believability.

I’m seeing a significantly higher desire from individuals to be recognized for their influence or authority, and in an effort to drive this perception, they are building up their “answers” to big challenges, support with facts and limited research.

While this may have worked in the past, the challenge is now elevated. For others to recognize this influence, we have a new level of focus, and that’s believability. Believability, as I dive into the podcast, is a pairing of influence, authority, credibility, reputation, trust and more. For those looking to move ahead at the workplace, it’s a game changer.

There is no shortage of information out there; facts that we can pull out at random times to seem like we know what we are talking about. But what we are learning is that facts require context, and understanding the implication of these facts in a broader context is a step too often not taken far enough.

Trust in our opinions and commentary is something that is earned over time, and we can take tangible steps in order to build this reputation and become more believable, and thus more valuable, to those around us.

We need to elevate our learning, understand our belief systems, ask really good questions and teach those around us the process of coming to a solution.

It’s no longer possible to just be an “idea person.” We have to become thinkers that elevate the group. Rather than just talking about what’s possible, we need to challenge ourselves and others to think philosophically and tangibly at the same time … it’s where the real value lies.

Good luck, and be believable!

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Click Here for an Unedited Transcript of the Podcast

Welcome to bellwether. Thank you for being here today. Today on this episode, 105, I think 105. Yes, 105. Today. We’re gonna talk about believability, believability. I want to cover it, what it is, why it’s important. I’m going to tell you that believability is one of those skills that is not developed, but is going to need to be in the new economy. Uh, I had a client who was very big on believability, dove in deep into believability. How do you actually become believable as a human being? And he wanted it more for the people who are speaking up in the organization. How do you just build this credibility? Not even, but credibility is one aspect of it, but it’s not all of it. Uh, we’re gonna talk about all these, you know, authority and, and, and influence and credibility and, and all of these types of things that fall around to it.But the ability to be believable as an individual is becoming more and more important, uh, as we look to become valid members of the executive suite and, and bring real value to organizations. So if we think about broader, you know, you’ll hear me talk all the time on, on this podcast about what are the, what are the skills for the new economy, right? This isn’t 1990s, PowerPoint presentation, crap. What is the stuff that you actually should be focusing on that they’re not teaching you at work? They’re not investing on you in work. These are the things that are, that are actually valid, uh, and different things to get you to think about your capability, your influence, your credibility, your reputation, whatever it is in a different type of way. And believability is one of them. Uh, I’ve talked before about self-efficacy, that’s a huge one.Um, and there’s more and more and more ability to communicate, et cetera, etcetera, this falls under that, that kind of category. So I want to talk to you about believability, how to become believable and what does believability actually mean? And I wanna right at the front say, this is not about making a fact more believable. Okay. Um, or a story more believable or your belief more believable because that’s not you, it’s about making you more believable as an individual. Uh, and, and part of that obviously is there’s going to have to be an accuracy aspect. You can’t just kind of make crap up in order to just be believable because then it will eventually blow up in your face. But how do we make you believable as you sit around the senior leadership table, where people are saying, all right, what that person’s saying is valid, right.I don’t have to take it. You know, I could just take it as, as, as valid. There is this weird conundrum that we have, you know, we have this desire for things like authority and influence. And, and when we think about our development and our success and where we make it to in, in terms of our organization and our company and our business, and, and it’s why we want promotions, right? It’s this external validation that we’re all looking for, but our desire for these things versus what the organization organization sees. There’s a disconnect generally. And, and this disconnect presents challenges for some people. Okay. So our desire for authority and influence, but whether or not the organization sees it are to two things that need to be, to be married in some kind of way. And so more and more, this, this ability to have influence.Uh, and we see this, um, we, we think we need the answers for, for us to have influence. We think we need to go find out all this knowledge and spit back facts and, and do kind of, um, you know, it’s okay, I’m an authority. I know what this is because I watched TikTok video and, and stayed in the holiday in last night. And, and we think this gives us some kind of influence, um, or authority. And, and the challenge you have with that is that, uh, we’re constantly fighting misinformation on, on all sides, right? No matter who you want to go to. So, so if you sit and watch a TikTok video from authority, um, it’s wrong, right? And, and it’s constant half information where people take facts, but then it turns into misguided information. And, uh, for some, their hearts are in the right place, right.They just, they’re really trying really hard and they wanna be valid and they wanna, you know, they they’re looking for this influence and they want to do it. Um, others are just trying to get TikTok views, um, <laugh> or Instagram views or, or whatever. Uh, but at the end of the day, information is now flying at us faster than we could process, which we know. Uh, and one of the things we’re going to have to develop is our reputation as a believable, incredible individual, to help other people’s filters, as they’re filtering information, how do you become the one that they say, you know what? I could ignore this stuff because this individual is giving me trustworthy and accurate information. And I believe that, uh, that, that, that you are who, who you, you say you’re going to be. And so that’s why it’s not about making a fact more believable because the facts are out there.And we can, we can find that it’s about making you more believable, um, as an individual. So in, in order to do that, we have to elevate our education and we have to elevate our learning and our interpretation of data. And, and it needs to evolve with the time. So it was this great video I saw on TikTok <laugh>. Um, but I like the way the guy framed it out. And it was, you know, it was long, it was, um, longer than it should have been for a TikTok video. But basically his argument was we have information at our fingertips, um, and it’s easier than ever to know facts, right? So facts are everywhere. Pull up your phone, right? When was Tom petty born? You got it done, right? Whatever. Um, but the development of why they are relevant, these facts, why we need to be aware of them, uh, why, whatever we ignore the context that informs the fact, because we’re just repeating a fact.And when the context change, it makes the facts inaccurate. And it’s a problem with statistics. Whenever somebody starts quoting statistics, I instantly put them into the mode, like bucket. Um, because they’re, if you’re using statistics to D defend it, I’m instantly thinking that you’re being selective in the information that you’re choosing to do, um, or to use. So anyone can repeat facts. Uh, what I want you to do as an individual is, is wisdom goes far beyond just repeating facts, right? We know theory, um, but not reality. Uh, how do we, how do we translate these facts or ideas or beliefs or whatever it is into some kind of competence or action, uh, or steps to get something done. And when we think about the new economy providing value, uh, the transactional world of you give someone your time to create something for the business and the business pays you.It’s no longer enough to be an idea person. It’s no longer enough to just think stuff up. You have to understand the steps in order to get there. And that’s where real value comes in. And that’s where believability self-efficacy. These are the things that really go hand in hand. Um, and I, I see it very often. Maybe I’m overly sensitive to it, especially in the coaching world. Um, these people come out and said, oh, I took classes in leadership. So now I can lead a team. And you say, you’re not really a good leader until you actually lead people. You can’t be a, a leadership coach unless you’ve actually led a team, right. Because there’s a reality to it. How are you gonna be a business coach if you’ve never worked in a business? Okay. So we could talk about the theory all of the time, but we know that reality is, is a very different, very different puzzle to crack.Um, believability comes with expertise and expertise comes from experience and experience comes from not taking a class of reading a book or watching a TikTok video or anything else. It comes from actually exploring, asking questions and answering the questions that you could be purely curious about and figuring that out and figuring out your, your own typical types of solutions. It comes from learning in the moment comes from harsh, harsh lessons from making mistakes, owning up to them. Uh, a lot of the time I’m working with clients and they want their people to do something different. They want to change behavior. They want to do whatever. Um, and, and the harshest lessons are the best ones. If you have someone who has to own up to the fact that they made a mistake, they will not make that mistake again, if they have to articulate the mistake that they made, right?Because it’s extremely uncomfortable, right? There’s consequence for our actions and our own understanding that we missed. The mark is a life lesson. And when we’ve missed the mark before suddenly our credibility and believability go significantly up in the future, because we’ve actually experienced whatever the other people are trying to experience. Um, so believability, I mean, when we talk about that, what is it? Um, we talk about credibility is one of those words, um, influence authority. Trust is a big one. Uh, reputation is a big one. So all of these words really fill up, um, to do that. And, and what I would say is if I could wrap what it is before we talk about how to do it, how to build your believability, um, we have to create a reputation that we have a desire to find the right solution and not just be right.And there’s nuance in that. And that’s, um, easier said than done, of course, but we have to have a curiosity mindset where we’re asking questions and on wrapping it, and we could talk about all different sides of whatever it is that we’re looking to solve. So how do we do this? How do we become more believable? Uh, we have to be open to changing our thinking, okay. Which easier said than done. Right. And that doesn’t really mean anything, but it means something to me. So <laugh>, I’ll do that. Uh, and, and I wanna give you some notes on beliefs. I’ve spoken before on belief systems. And I did a full episode on belief systems. What do you actually believe? I say, it’s one of the three pillars of your mental health, um, mental health. We talk about self love, right? Loving yourself, self care, take care of yourself, but then what do you actually believe?And the reason I put that into mental health, um, is because it’s part of our self exploration and understanding, and we don’t have to defend things because we understand things at that point. It’s this kind of constant curiosity as to what we believe in questioning ourselves. And, uh, you go into a lot of rabbit holes and it’s a lot of fun and it’s unnerving, but the more you do it, the more comfortable you get with it. And it’s, it’s really exciting. So we tend to in life, we just repeat things. We’ve been told things our entire lives. Um, and the question is, do you actually believe them? And are they just ingrained assumptions that you’re operating on and, and using those and just repeating back, and you can’t really defend it. And we find ourselves trying to defend something we don’t actually believe. And then all of a sudden your believability is shot because you just start shouting and you get defensive and whatever.Um, when we start to explore why we do or do not believe anything, and this could be anything, um, it could be as big as do you believe in God, to what’s the best way to parent to, um, who’s the greatest baseball player of all time. It doesn’t matter. Uh, but when we think about that from what do you actually believe we learn, um, that in order to truly believe something, we have to fully understand the other side. And when you fully understand the other side, you’re having a very different type of conversation, because now you’re just curious about why people believe certain things. And it’s, um, more about exploring an idea rather than just telling people what’s right or wrong. Um, and if you think about the old stoic and, and all of that, they never came to solutions. They just, you know, talked about what if and why, and, and, and all that stuff.So, um, when you’re able to speak objectively about your beliefs, um, and expect and objectively express how you’ve heard the other side, you just have a whole different level of, of conversation. Um, and that’s great, but it goes beyond just what you believe. That’s just one step. It’s a process of figuring out what you believe, just like being, becoming believable as a process and figuring out whatever it is. You’re trying to be an authority on. Okay. Repeating facts does not make you an authority understanding why those facts exist, uh, makes you more believable and makes you more of an authority in understanding that. So, um, and so that’s it. So we want people to, to, to trust the process for influence authority, authority, credibility, whatever it is, believability, we can elevate our status within the organization by becoming more believable by becoming, having a reputation as a believable individual.And we do that by asking really, really good questions. We do this by elevating the group around us to become more philosophical. It <affirmative> it, uh, by elevating people’s thought process, by challenging the way that people think in a really productive way to come to solutions is, uh, a complete game changer in, in the new economy, complete game changer. And so, like I said, just a minute ago, it’s not enough to be an idea person. Um, it might be enough to be a thinker who can elevate the thinking of the group, uh, and rather than just talking about, what’s possible, we have to talk about how do we do this and what if we challenge things and what if we did it in this way, and what are those steps and what does that look like? And having those types of conversations, um, in both a philosophical and a tangible way, there is real, real value in that. And as we think about moving up in a development standpoint from an individual contributor to managing a team, to getting to the C-suite where it’s very philosophical, enterprisewide, let’s talk about theory. There is this full range of reality and theory that we have to mesh together and believability is, is one of those big key components that’s gonna help you get there. I hope that was helpful. It was quick, it’s more just kind of a ramble today. Um, but I’ve been wanting to talk about believabilityFor a while and, and I’m exploring it myself. And it’s something that’s helpful. I think, uh, I’m learning a lot and I hope you learned a lot too. So I would encourage you to think about what makes you believable. And it’s not just repeating <laugh>, it’s not just repeating TikTok videos, uh, as much as I love it, and talk’s a thing, but it’s Facebook posts, whatever social media is one, um, where you get your information is very, very important, um, and do it and explore and learn. And, and that’s tons of fun. So have fun, be believable challenge thinking, think about yourself and do well. And with that, I hope everyone has a wonderful week and I’ll talk to everyone soon. Thanks.