The Credibility of a Source and a Leader
“Credibility is the foundation of leadership. Constituents must be able, above all else, to believe in their leaders. For them to willingly follow someone else, they must believe that the leader's word can be trusted, that she is personally passionate and enthusiastic about the work, and that she has the knowledge and skill to lead.”
The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Posner
To put that in pandemic terms, credibility is an essential worker in leadership. If you are a leader or aspiring leader, it would serve you well to reflect on what defines credibility and how you might continually reinforce the foundation upon which all your potential influence is built. My personal belief is that you don’t have to look far because our current climate is providing a tremendous leadership lesson on credibility.
As a society we are on a collective journey to overcome this health crisis. This journey is unfolding in a digital age where information can be rapidly and widely spread from any source. Pair that with a 24/7 news cycle that reinforces outlets to spend more time producing opinions than reporting objective news. This whirlwind of an environment places credibility in high demand, and truth becomes a premium resource in all the noise. In any journey, but especially in a crisis, people will always seek a source of truth that can best influence their decisions. However, if we wish to be successful in our pursuit of truth, then we must learn to be diligent in our assessment of credibility.
In these last few months we have seen several viral videos shared on a mass scale where the credibility of the content is very questionable. Notice I didn’t say true or false, right or wrong. I said credible. Credibility isn’t truth. Credibility is the path toward truth. In a world where we have become conditioned to swing hard to one side or the other on any given issue, we tend to pigeon ourselves to think in a binary fashion. However, most things in life, like credibility, aren’t that simple. There is often great variance and multiple factors at play. It’s an environment where two competing ideas can simultaneously be true. It’s a complex dynamic where things are often not mutually exclusive, no matter how hard we might try to force them to be.
Leadership is also about taking people on a journey, and that journey is bound to involve some uncertainty. Perhaps that’s why credibility is so important. It’s the fuel that propels others forward on that journey despite the unknown. If credibility is essential to positively influencing others, leaders would be wise to reflect on what makes something credible. To help facilitate this, we will look at the three basic keys academic scholars use to assess the credibility of a source: expertise, point of view, and timeline. We will examine how these elements of credibility factor in to our current climate and the content we consume. Lastly, we will use those observations as a back drop to shine a light on key leadership insights we can take from 2020.
Expertise
One of the most famed psychological studies of all-time is the Milgram Experiment conducted at Yale University in the early 1960’s. On the heels of World War II, psychologists wanted to understand how people could follow orders to commit such horrific acts. While much has been learned from this landmark study, one key takeaway is the pitfall of perceived expertise.
In the Milgram Experiment participants entered the lab in groups of two. They were greeted by an actor who wore a white lab coat. The intent was to appear as a credible expert, and thus having the authority to give direction. Under the guise of studying how punishment effects learning, the two participants were assigned the role of ‘teacher’ or ‘learner’. Then, the ‘teacher’ was asked to administer electric shocks when the ‘learner’ answered prompts incorrectly. What the ‘teacher’ didn’t know, was that the electric shocks weren’t real and the ‘learner’ was an actor as well. Even though the ‘learner’ would let out screams and pleas to stop, 65% of ‘teachers’ knowingly administered a deadly level of electric shocks at the direction of the actor in the white lab coat.
Just because someone is in a lab coat, even if they have some legitimate expertise, doesn’t necessarily mean they are credible and we should follow their direction. The more significant the implications, the more reason for thoroughly verifying expertise in the content we allow to influence us. In addition to education, credentials, and experience with the subject matter, it would be good to consider the reputation of their expertise in their field. If this content is being made available on a mass scale, there is a good chance a quick Google search could yield much of this information. As important as expertise is, expertise alone is insufficient for determining credibility.
Point of view
The year is 2015. You are scrolling through social media and seemingly the entire world is debating one thing -- the color of a dress. It’s getting national news, celebrities are posting about it, and it’s the point of conversation in most social circles. Depending on your point of view, the dress is either white and gold, or blue and black. Even just typing these words it seems preposterous. How could there have been a debate between two sets of colors that are in such stark contrast?
You might want to be sitting down for this, but when I looked at that iconic photo I saw a white and gold dress. No amount of debate or persuasion would convince me otherwise. It was as clear to me as the sky being blue and the grass being green. (Or is it?) Unfortunately, as it turned out, the dress manufacturer released a statement that it was in fact blue and black, and they even provided additional photos as proof.
But what if the creator of the dress never said anything? I would have never known that my point of view was wrong. While seeing the dress in a different color wasn’t a function of bias, it can provide a good illustration for how easily and automatically bias can occur. Further, what if the dress manufacturer had something to gain from persuading me to think the dress was white and gold even when it wasn’t? Not only would my personal bias have played a role in my interpretation, but the content creator’s bias would have influenced me as well. In any exchange of communication there is a sending and receiving of information that is subject to each person’s point of view.
Bias can manifest itself in deliberate and conscious forms often when someone stands to benefit, like the coffee shop claiming the world’s best cup of coffee. Bias can also manifest itself unintentionally, similarly to the dress illustration. While this article won’t cover all the commonly studied biases, one that is constantly at play in point of view is the confirmation bias. This is where we have the innate tendency to consume and remember information that favors our beliefs. The result is a distorted reality of ignored or discounted information that could be pertinent. The point here is that avoiding bias is impossible. It’s as if bias is the cost of doing business with people. In your business there is a certain amount of overhead cost that is inevitable. While it would certainly be wise to minimize these costs to the best of your ability, you accept that there will always be overhead.
In our digital society people have the capability to share their opinions on a mass scale. Opinions and editorials are valuable and have their place but remember that it doesn’t necessarily make the claims credible. A credible source offering their point of view will clearly differentiate where the facts stop and their opinions start. A source trying to appear credible will blur the two so much that the message is one in the same at best, and all opinions at worst.
Especially in our current environment of high emotions and being inundated with information, we must guard against the “lazy thinking” Daniel Kahneman warns about in his book Thinking Fast and Slow. We must have deliberate, critical thinking, that challenges the opinions being formed from the content we consume. Otherwise, we risk succumbing to the biases of ourselves and others. Since bias is something we know will be present, it would be prudent to become skilled at identifying it and accounting for it when assessing one’s point of view. Consider taking on the mindset of a detective examining a crime scene. Everything is evidence. What’s there and what’s missing are all clues. It’s not a matter of if there is evidence, it’s a matter of how you perceive the evidence. Your job is to analyze everything. It’s tedious. It’s time consuming. But it is a necessary pursuit for determining credibility.
When assessing a content’s point a view, the question isn’t, “Do they have a bias?” but rather, “What are their biases?” This reframe will help position you to an analytical perspective keen on identifying a variety of perspectives, which can enable you to arrive at the most objective conclusion.
Timeline
I’ll never forget working at a new job and being told all facial hair was forbidden. Now it’s not like I was a fire fighter, and it was a safety issue of me needing to wear a respirator mask. It was a corporate setting and I was completely dumbfounded by the demand, not request. An article was emailed widely to justify the demand and it made the claim that research shows men with facial hair were perceived to be less trustworthy. The article had been scanned into a PDF and it was in black and white but appearing as though it wasn’t in color to begin with. It looked worn and faded, and it appeared unlikely that it was written with anything that would resemble modern technology. There was no date listed so it wasn’t clear when it was published, but what was clear is that it was at least 25 years old and that was being generous.
Even if we assume this article was from some renowned expert in trustworthiness (which it wasn’t) and that it had been extensively peer-reviewed for reliability (which it hadn’t), a lot changes in 25 plus years for trends regarding appearance. This pandemic is teaching all of us that a lot can change in just a few days. Regardless of your profession or hobbies, each of us could come up with countless examples where something was once believed to be best practice but is now widely regarded as not the case.
The point is that the amount of time since something was published, and the date you are consuming the content is paramount. The nature of the content and industry certainly plays a factor in the amount of change that occurs, but in the case of a novel and rapidly evolving health crisis, change can happen very quickly. Information shared months ago by otherwise credible sources could now very well be unreliable information. Not because they don’t know what they are doing (expertise) or have nefarious intentions (point of view), but simply because time has passed and new information is now available.
Evaluating Credibility and Pursuing Truth
Again, credibility is not truth, but rather the path toward truth. It’s a continuous journey that must be executed with strong critical thinking otherwise we risk not arriving at the destination. By examining each component that makes a source credible, we see that this is not a game of ‘best two out of three’, nor can either component be adequately assessed using a pass/fail grading system. A truly credible source must possess all three components, and even then, the degree of each component can vary.
As citizens of the digital world with great power to spread information, we have a great responsibility to ourselves and others to thoroughly assess the credibility of content we consume and share. The consequences in the most extreme cases can be life threatening, but commonly can be anxiety and fear provoking. It may help to simply think of these three aspects of credibility – expertise, point of view, timeline – each on a scale of one (poor) to five (excellent). If your cumulative score adds up to anything below 12 then that might be reason to hit pause on accepting that influence for yourself or sharing it with others.
Lastly, keep in mind that assessing credibility is an exercise of critical thinking, and neuroscience research is clear that critical thinking skills greatly diminish when emotions are high. It’s something we have all experienced when our emotions get the best of us and we do something that defies obvious logic. That is not to say that emotions are bad or should be avoided, they have their place as part of the human experience, but their place does not coexist with sound logic. It would be wise to build self-awareness around identifying when your emotions are high, and when they are, exercise self-management around topics where critical thinking is essential. We need not shame the emotions, but merely recognize them and respond to them appropriately.
Leadership Insights
According to The Leadership Challenge, “Credibility is the foundation of leadership.” Therefore, to maximize your leadership potential, you would be wise to continuously reinforce this foundation through intentional efforts of developing your expertise, point of view, and timeline. Your actions and inactions shape the lives of others, and as such, with great power comes great responsibility.
It’s clear that right now people are desperate to distinguish credible from counterfeit and the same is true in leadership. The significant toll this impact is having on society is reflective of the power leadership can have on your team and business. Leadership is a repeated tax on performance when it’s counterfeit, and a repeated dividend when it’s credible. If we were to parallel back to the credibility of content, the leader would be the ‘source’ and the team would be the ‘consumer.’ So, the question is, if your team were analyzing your credibility, what would they conclude? Would their score be 12 or better?
How long has it been since you put intentional efforts toward developing your expertise? Not just in your specific business domain, but in leadership. After all, a leader is generally less responsible for the work and more responsible for the people doing the work. With that shift in responsibility comes the truth that the expertise that made you successful in previous roles, won’t necessarily make you a successful leader. Consider attending a virtual conference or workshop. Maybe use what was once commute time to read or listen to a book. Schedule a virtual chat to discuss leadership with someone you admire. Lastly, if you’re a seasoned leader, remember that your journey to leadership expertise is never finished. The pursuit of leadership expertise parallels the pursuit of physical health in that it’s continuous and has no finish line.
Have you noticed how so much of the tension right now in society exists because of the inability to see another’s point of view? What if that’s how others feel about working with you? If you want to expand your point of view to build credibility, then you must take intentional steps to hear other’s perspectives. Spend more time asking questions than giving statements. Embrace ideas that aren’t yours or the way you would have done it. Fostering new perspectives and ideas is kind of like winning new customers. You must work hard to bring them in, and then once you do, how you treat them is everything. If you let your emotions or ego shutdown other’s ideas, then you will find yourself in a position said best by Andy Stanley: “Leaders who don’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.”
The last element of credibility is timeline. It’s been said that the seven most expensive words in business are, “We have always done it this way.” Is it possible that the way you, your team, or your business operates, is as dated as ‘men with facial hair aren’t trustworthy’? In this pandemic we are seeing that innovation can happen very quickly when we are open to it. Focus less on reopening and more on refreshing. It’s quite possible there are things you started doing in this pandemic that shouldn’t go away and things you stopped doing that shouldn’t come back. Don’t miss the opportunity to look back on 2020 as the catalyst that propelled you into uncharted territory.
The credibility of sources, or lack thereof, is influencing our society in significant ways. By reflecting on these dynamics and the responsibility of leadership, you just might find insights that shape the way you lead forever.