The Credibility Pyramid

September 1, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

There are four essential components to being believable. These are:

Care and concern
Enthusiasm
Focus
Knowledge

Care and concern is the most important and represents 50% of your believability. Enthusiasm and the focus of your message make up the vast majority of the remainder of your credibility. Your actual knowledge is only worth 10% of your believability. Psychological research shows time and time again that it is not what you know, but the way that you communicate what you do know that contributes most to your believability and trustworthiness. We explore each of these elements in the following pages plus provide details of the research that has led to the development of The Credibility Pyramid.

Why a pyramid?

At the peak of the pyramid is the point you are trying to get across, credibly. Beneath that point lies several layers of material that will enable that point to stand up to scrutiny. At the base of the pyramid is a secure foundation (in this model – knowledge) that allows everything else to work efficiently. Without the right knowledge your credibility will be exposed – no matter how good you are at focus, enthusiasm and care. These elements are about style – and if you only present style, you will be found out as a sham as before long your lack of any substance will become apparent. So, you need to balance knowledge and style appropriately to ensure your message is conveyed.

Who will benefit from The Credibility Pyramid?

The concepts behind The Credibility Pyramid will help anyone who has to communicate – so that’s all of us really! However the ideas contained on these pages should be of particular value to:

Business presenters, Public speakers, Teachers, Trainers, Managers, Consultants, Leaders, Sales staff

Filed Under: Elements, Front

Set the right knowledge foundations

September 1, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

Clearly, to get a message across and be really believed you need to know something about what you say – but not a lot! The fact that you know what you are talking about helps, but it is not a significant contributor to credibility. In fact, only 10% of your credibility is due to the knowledge you have and the content of your message. Research shows that audiences rely on two factors to determine what they think about your knowledge. The first is your personality and the way you communicate, the second is what is called ‘status’ or ‘authority’. This is actually given to you by your audience and it varies. For instance, say you are the Chief Executive Officer of a company. Your status and how it relates to your credibility is vastly different when you are talking to your staff than when you are talking at a meeting of other CEOs. Your status and therefore your knowledge appears to vary, even though it doesn’t. Each different audience ascribes different knowledge states to you – you can do nothing about it. Different audiences make assumptions about your knowledge depending upon your authority to speak to them.

Luckily, your knowledge is of little importance. Except for one, fundamental fact – if you expose any lack of knowledge about your topic your credibility is shot to pieces, no matter how well you have done with care, enthusiasm and focus. Hence the right knowledge content for your speech or presentation is the foundation on which you base everything else. However, far too many speakers, presenters and communicators concentrate most of their efforts on getting the content right. This is a complete waste of time when trying to gain credibility.

Practical steps you can take

1. Be single minded – look through your material and reject everything that is not directly related to your message. Trim your content and strip out unnecessary detail. Not only does this help with focus, but it enables you to make sure you really know your subject matter inside out.

2. Don’t waste time – when preparing your material, remember that you only need to invest 10% of your allocated time to getting the content right. The rest of the time should be devoted to setting up a caring, enthusiastic, focused delivery.

3. Store the background – put all the background information you have in some accessible place (such as a set of notes). You can then call on these if needed when asked questions. No one expects you to know all the answers to all the questions.; you are at perfect liberty to check your notes without reducing credibility. But your believability will be reduced significantly if you have to try to answer but fail as you will not convince your audience you know what you are talking about.

Filed Under: Elements, Knowledge

Stay focused

September 1, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

We believe people who deliver a single message, who don’t deviate or go off at tangents. When people who talk to us are clear about what it is they are talking about, we believe them much more than when they provide extra detail or additional, related material.

You will be much more credible if you deliver less material. You need to deliver ‘depth’ rather than ‘breadth’. Credibility comes from delivering a single, clearly focused message that is backed with evidence and supported by relevant detail. You lose credibility when you try to cover too much ground. Most business presentations lose substantial credibility because they try to deliver too much material. For improved credibility less is more. In fact, if you really focus your message and deliver a fragment of what you had intended your credibility will shoot up. Altogether, a highly focused message can contribute as much as 15% of your believability.

Practical steps you can take

1. Review your material and cut out everything that is not directly related to your material.

2. Make sure you only have ONE MESSAGE to give – ignore all the advice you have ever heard about having three or four ‘bullet points’ for each presentation or speech. Evidence shows it doesn’t work – people only remember one thing about your talk, so only give them one.

3. Make sure your message invites some action on the part of the audience – people relate much more easily to material that has a practical side, instead of having to work this out for themselves. The less thinking your audience has to do, the more they believe you. Make it easy for them to understand.

4. Make sure your material is ‘real life’ – even if you have to talk about concepts, relate them to everyday experiences. Wherever possible give examples that explain your ideas.

Filed Under: Elements, Focus

Be really enthusiastic

September 1, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

Enthusiasm is vital. Audience studies show that we view enthusiastic speakers as much more believable than less enthusiastic (but more knowledgeable) people. Your enthusiasm level dramatically affects your credibility, in fact as much as 25% of your believability comes from being enthusiastic.

One of the most important things we do to show how enthusiastic we are about something is movement. When we are static we show boredom and lack of interest. Whenever we are interested we are physically active. This means that whenever you are communicating you should move. Static presenters and speech givers are never as highly believed as people who move around the platform. Don’t move too much though – otherwise you look rather manic. Instead, move at a steady pace and relate your movements to your speech. For instance, walk from one side of the room to the other – make a point while standing still, then only move again when your ‘text’ is not quite so dramatic or important. Don’t pace up and down!

An important aspect of enthusiasm is when things have gone wrong. You need to be extra enthusiastic when you are dealing with problems. But don’t be enthusiastic about the problem – be enthusiastic about the solution.

Practical steps you can take

1. Give examples that you have been personally involved with – when you talk about personal experiences you are much more enthusiastic, naturally, so you don’t have to work at it.

2. Get some exercise before you have to deliver your message – you will be feeling much more positive and bright after a brisk walk, for instance. This will help you feel and therefore appear more enthusiastic.

3. Visualise success – have a picture in your mind of the end game. If you know exactly what is going to happen after your message delivery you will be much more enthusiastic.

Filed Under: Elements, Enthusiasm

Show them you care

September 1, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

Caring for your audience is more important than anything else. Every aspect of your communications needs to show a great deal of care and concern for your audience – even if this is just a single person. You need to see the entire communication session – whether it’s a conversation, a presentation, a speech, or a contribution to a meeting – from the perspective of the audience. Don’t waste your time worrying about what you want to say. Instead, consider what the audience wants to hear – then deliver it and they will start to build your credibility rating.

Caring for your audience accounts for 50% of your credibility. If you show them you care for them they will start to believe you – no matter what else you are saying. To each and every one of us, the most important person in the world is ourselves. Hence when other people take notice of us, look after our needs – make us feel loved – we respond. By focusing on your audience’s requirement you are satisfying one of the most basic human needs and boosting your own credibility as a result.

Practical steps you can take

1. Look at them – have plenty of eye contact as this demonstrates your interest in them.

2. Smile – this signifies your positive view of your audience and provides further confirmation of your interest in them.

3. Get close to them – move near or lean towards them; demonstrating your physical closeness shows great interest in your audience.

4. Ask them questions – ask about them, not about what they think of you, your products or company or whatever. Turn questions around to ask how they feel they would use your product/service. In other words, involve your audience – they are waiting for you to do it and if you neglect this, you are demonstrating lack of care.

5. Use their name – it’s the most important word in the world to each of us. Calling people by name shows you have taken the time to remember it, indicating how much you think of them.

6. Value their input – thank people for their questions, their contributions and their ideas. Never dismiss what people tell you or appear as though you ignore it. Saying ‘thank you’ really helps.

7. Consider the physical – are the comfortable, or too hot or cold? Is it too bright or too dark? Can they see you or your presentations materials? Taking the time to ensure that people are in good physical conditions will make them more receptive to your message, but also has a second benefit as it shows you have thought about their needs. Never ask ‘can you hear me at the back?’ or ‘can you see the screen?’ as these kinds of questions indicate your lack of preparation; if you have prepared for your audience you will have made sure that everyone can see and that you can be heard effectively.

8. Deliver pictures – human memory is heavily biased towards the pictorial. If you deliver text-rich material, such as bullet point slides, you make it harder for people to remember. Indeed, you’ll notice a handful of cartoons on this web site that taken together summarise the points being made. All you need to do is look at the pictures and you know how to be credible! If you talk in pictures your audience won’t have to concentrate so hard, reducing the mental effort they require and they’ll love you for that.

9. Fit in with expectations – people have an internal ‘schema’ that is a representation of every event they encounter. So we have a pre-defined plan for what we expect a presentation or a meeting to be like. If you deviate too far from the audience’s expectation you will not fit in with their internal schemas making it harder for them to interpret the situation. Fit in with their expectations (which you need to find out in advance) and you score extra credibility points.

10. Think – make sure your planning process is very thoughtful. Think about how your audience would view your message or materials and consider their reaction. Thoughtful preparation, taking into account the audience’s point of view, is much more valuable in credibility terms than, say, having nice looking slides.

Filed Under: Care, Elements