by Luba Sakharuk
Imagine a world where you show up and people see you as a credible expert in your field? You get promotions. Salary Increases. Opportunities for interesting new projects and perhaps collaborative partnerships. The last ten years of my full-time employment, I have been hired to teach a certain methodology called “Agile”, along with the framework called “Scrum”.
The job includes influencing folks who don’t report to me to embrace this new way of working, even when they don’t want to. In this context, I often start with the following questions,
- “What is in it for them?”
- “How do I show up credible in their eyes, so they have a reason to listen to me?”
- “How can I influence them in such a way that they ask for help themselves and embrace change with enthusiasm rather than feeling like it has been shoved down their throats”?
It is not an easy task, but extremely rewarding after the change is embraced. It is rewarding when you see more effective collaboration and more efficient solution development!
It is no different when you become an entrepreneur.
Why should people buy your services? Say there is a market for what you are offering, and your offer is different from others and there is demand, however, YOU are the face of the company and it is YOUR services they would be buying, so they need to see YOU as someone who is credible.
How does one go about boosting their credibility beyond the initial set of formal credentials seen on your resume or bio?
Over the last couple of years since I started my company, RALM3 Consulting, I decided to fully embrace the topic of credibility.
Credibility makes us more marketable, more influential, more successful in whatever it is we are set out to do.
A few months ago, I decided to boost my credibility as a Public Speaker and deliver my first TEDx talk. As I was going through hundreds of ideas to choose just the right one that would be worth spreading, I settled on the topic Beyond Diplomas: 5 Ways to Boost Your Credibility. I won’t share the full talk but would like to share main points.
What made me credible to talk about this topic?
Imagine, your career takes you on a journey of interviewing and working with 100s of people who have the highest level of education.
You see people with PhD(s), masters degrees and long lists of certifications and they are not always having the jobs of their dreams.
In fact, they don’t always have jobs.
You see incredibly smart and educated people not respected by their peers.
You see people with formal credentials not seen as credible.
I learned that Respect and Credibility is NOT about formal CREDENTIALS and definitely not about how smart or not smart you believe you are!
I shared an acronym I came up with to describe the five ways to boost your credibility. SMILE.
SMILE stands for: Share | Mentor | Invest | Leverage | Explore.
While diving into the topic of mentorship, I shared the following,
It is an amazing feeling to see someone else shine and it also boosts our credibility!
By mentoring others, we build relationships.
By building relationships, we build trust.
By building trust, we open the doors for people to ask us questions.
By answering questions, we show our expertise, earn respect, and boost our credibility.
Mentorship has been a big part of my career on both sides, as a mentee and as a mentor. After being a mentor for a couple of years, I decided to organize a mastermind and held many discovery sessions with potential attendees. When I mentioned that the theme of the mastermind would be to boost credibility in order to show up more marketable, I saw many nods and clear enthusiasm for the topic. As we discussed the artifacts that could be leveraged for credibility, we discussed publishing books, creating courses, delivering TEDx talks, as well as showing up on LinkedIn or other social media platforms. These discovery sessions led to a mastermind agenda like no other!
We have folks lined up to teach each other their craft. We have a professional photographer capturing folks on stage sharing their craft. We have breakout sessions dedicated to writing impactful social media posts sharing people’s expertise. We have an exercise to design offers people cannot say no to and workshops on branding and thought leadership to learn how we can differentiate ourselves.
Show UP More Credible and Become More Marketable!
To learn more, visit www.ralm3.com or book a discovery session via calendly.com/ralm3
