If you are able to inspire others to trust and believe in who you are and what you do, you have a strong personal credibility. A strong personal credibility helps you form productive relationships and accomplish more within those relationships. Following from, how to build personal credibility springs crucial.
How To Build Personal Credibility Unfurls
1. Kick The Tendency To Brag Or Enlarge The Truth
If you have a tendency to brag or enlarge the truth on a regular basis, you will lose credibility over time with others. With this behaviour, others will not see you as real or authentic and will lose trust in anything you say. If others cannot trust you, they will be reluctant to form a close relationship with you.
2. Be Willing To Demonstrate Openness
Being stiff or stilted in your communication, makes it difficult for others to get a sense of who you are. When you open up a little to anyone and reveal little about yourself, others will find it difficult to trust you. They will simply say, “if you do not trust me enough to be sincere and open, I really cannot trust you either.” Without trust from others, you lose personal credibility. Embracing this, helps to show off nicely other ideas behind how to build personal credibility.
3. Internally Acknowledge Imperfections
When you understand that you are an imperfect being, who mess up, make mistakes, and do not have all the answers, you become more self-accepting and expect others to make mistakes too. In consequence, you cultivate more willingness to develop and practice respectful yet open, honest, and straightforward communication. You inspire others when your focus is more on “How can I better know and understand you,” not “what are you thinking of me?”
4. Line Up What You Do To Your Inner Beliefs
If you believe that you should improve, you should first focus on changing your thinking, emotions. Thereafter, you can invest in changing your actions, to align to your true beliefs and values. You appear more authentic and trustworthy when you act from your beliefs. Doing this consistently takes you to the good of how to build personal credibility.
5. Suspend Judgement And Take A Neutral Position While Considering Others’ Perspectives
You will be enlisted with highly credible people when you do this, as you have decided to be OK with being wrong or having your opinions challenged. You, with a high personal credibility, are able to roll things over in your mind, consider differing perspectives, and stay neutral in your own positions while you do this. Though you have passions, strong beliefs, and opinions, you have chosen neutrality as a first course. You are able to suspend your inner leanings, and be open to other opinions, ideas, and thoughts, even if those are different from yours.
6. Become Knowledgeable, Skilled, And Make A Commitment To Do Your Best
To become knowledgeable and skilled helps you to make a commitment to do your best in whatever you do. Knowing your stuff makes it easier to be authentic, as you are confident in what you know and do. Clearly, the drive to become more competent helps to energise how to build personal credibility. As a parent, you are more credible when you have educated yourself on the value of making thoughtful decisions about raising kids, and then applying a consistent approach to raising those kids. Also, you as a friend, stand more credible when you understand what your friend is in need of.
7. Realise That Keeping Small Commitments Adds Up To Big Credibility
In this, avoid overcommitment. Be realistic with yourself and others about your ability to do something. For example, “I can’t make that commitment now” is more effective than “I just couldn’t get that done.” More, schedule daily communication time. Use this period to return phone calls, emails, send birthday or thank you cards, and keep abreast with communication. Doing this about the same time daily turns it into a habit that builds credibility.
Else, allow transition time between appointments, to handle unexpected issues that surface. Also, have one single place where you record messages received, notes from conversations, appointments, to-do lists, project milestones, and everything occurring in your life. This makes it easier to see the reality of your schedule and avoid overcommitting. Furthermore, if conditions change or something happens, and you suspect that you might not be able to keep a commitment, let that person know immediately.
8. Honour Confidences And Avoid Gossip
“Please don’t reveal this to anyone, but…” You can remember conversations you either started or been a part of that began in this way. Though most of us make a quick, easy commitment to keep that confidence, we end up telling just one person. This person will never repeat it anyway, right? Sharing information that was given in confidence, decreases your credibility, even if that person keeps the information strictly confidential. Hence, it is wise to avoid this kind of behaviour to align yourself to noteworthy ideas of how to build personal credibility.
9. Know Your Strengths And Weaknesses
Cultivating the ability to see both your strengths and weaknesses in a factual, objective manner, helps you develop successful strategies to overcome tendencies that might impede your success. In consequence, you increase personal credibility. For instance, if you know you have a tendency to get mired in over analysing details of an idea to an extent that causes the idea to stall out and not be implemented, you can purposefully chose to surround yourself with people who could help you transcend this tendency. These people can think outside the box, be open to new and untried ideas, and give you direct feedback when your data-gathering tendencies cause an idea to lose momentum.
10. Stop And Listen To Others
Choosing first to value the other person helps us open the door to problem solving and a productive relationship. Following on, respect occurs in successful relationships. Respect, given and received, promotes personal credibility. Stopping and listening, shows as a good way to give value and respect, and start ourselves to how to build personal credibility. Many who we have come to trust and respect, take the time to stop and listen to others.
Furthermore, here feature specific tactics that can make a huge difference both in how well we really listen and how others perceive us.
a. Stop other activities.
b. Make eye contact.
c. Show engagement in your body language.
You can do this by nodding your head, leaning forward, occasionally interjecting an “uh – huh” or “I see.” Smile when appropriate.
d. Think in terms of capturing the key points of the other, not your response.
Great listeners employ the technique of paraphrasing or restating what they are hearing in their own words. They interrupt the conversation from time to time and say things that allow you both to know that you are on the same track. As you hear the listener using his or her own words to summarize or restate what you are saying, you become convinced that this individual is carefully listening to you. Personal credibility is enhanced by our ability to step back, ask more questions, and better understand the other person, not by our jumping in to express our thoughts.
11. Maximise Agreement Situations
Agreements give us the chance to reassure others that we are on the same page. We maximise Agreement situations when we both acknowledge the fact that we are in agreement, explain why and how it matters, and its impact.
Conclusion
Strong personal credibility helps us to build productive relationships and accomplish more. This personal credibility factor is based on what you do, not the position or role you have. The real power is the positive impact you leave as you walk or drive away. This standard underlies how to build personal credibility.
