How do successful communicators build unshakeable trust and credibility?

What is an essential quality of a successful communicator?

The photo above is your clue… it is credibility.

What is credibility? The dictionary defines it as the quality of being trusted and believed in.

Aristotle is credited with the idea that for communication to be persuasive it must have ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is credibility. Pathos is emotional appeal. Logos is logical evidence for support.

How is credibility essential for communication success?

Without credibility, a message or a communicator will not be trusted. As the illustration above suggests, credibility is associated with being trusted, viewed as authentic, and having a reputation that makes one believable.

Chapter 2 in Communicating Nutrition: The Authoritative Guide states that successful nutrition communicators are credible:

A communicator must be perceived as credible before an audience will pay attention, listen, and trust the message. A communicator’s credibility is built on more than academic degrees; it derives from the audience’s perception of the communicator as believable. Professionalism and integrity build credibility. Communicators who exhibit these qualities will be highly respected and will have greater influence and impact.

Let’s revisit these two components of credibility and consider how communicators can build unshakeable trust.

How does professionalism impact a communicator’s credibility?

What exactly is professionalism? Chapter 2 describes it as conduct in the workplace demonstrated by high standards, appropriate workplace behaviors, and a positive attitude, which reflects well on the individual as well as the individual’s entire profession.

A previous post: How do you describe professionalism? lists 5 principles of professionalism, which are:

1.      Demonstrate respect

2.      Show up and follow through

3.      Demonstrate competence

4.      Communicate with empathy and confidence

5.      Hold to the highest standard

Chapter 2 includes a list of professional attributes and behaviors derived from three years of survey data collected by the Center for Professional Excellence at York College of Pennsylvania. The top five are being prepared, communication skills, appearance, ambitious, and polite.

This list also describes what is considered unprofessional with the top five descriptors being disrespectful, lack of communication skills, lack of ambition, appearance, and entitlement.

How does one assess professionalism? A tool used by the University of Mississippi Medical College can be accessed online. An example of how this tool scores the attribute of appearance is as follows:

Source: https://umc.edu/Research/Centers-and-Institutes/Centers/Center-for-Bioethics-and-Medical-Humanities/files/professionalism-assessment-tool.pdf

What is considered “appropriate” or “inappropriate” appearance depends on the situation. Being professional does not require wearing a suit but it does require being respectful of oneself and others in one’s clothing and other attributes of one’s appearance.

Professionalism is a perceived quality that supports a perception of credibility. To build unshakeable trust and credibility, exhibit professionalism.

How does integrity impact a communicator’s credibility?

What is integrity? According to Chapter 2, it includes being reliable, honest, ethical, and trustworthy.

Integrity is an essential component of building credibility and trust. An Australian-based study of dietitian-client relationships found that key values attributed to dietitians included honesty, reliability, and integrity. These attributes, supported by credentials and enhanced by communication skills, resulted in a trusting relationship. As soon as a practitioner loses the trust of a client or audience member, credibility is lost as well.

Integrity and professionalism are closely intertwined and most generally occur simultaneously.

To build unshakeable trust and credibility, exhibit integrity and professionalism.

“To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful. ” ~ Edward R. Murrow

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