What Makes a Leader Credible?

Credibility is something that takes a lot of time and effort to build but could very easily be lost. Especially in an organisation, credibility is key to establishing a high trusting culture. 

What is credibility?

Credibility is the quality of being trusted and believed in. It influences your relationships, career and professional life.  In an organisation, being credible enables you to implement and strengthen a culture of collaboration in the workplace, which in turns allow the team members to reach individual and collective objectives. 

In an organisation, when a manager can’t accomplish his function effectively without the combination of great leadership and credibility.

It’s the degree of credibility that employees attribute to their manager that will determine their motivation and will to follow instructions.

So how does a business leader gain this credibility? 

Situational Leadership is the answer

Most of us have heard of what is situational leadership and its amazing perks. Situational leadership is known for its flexibility and allowing the leaders to have the room to adapt to the style of the team members. It is sold as the leadership style that eschews a “one size fits all” approach. As such, most business leaders are keen on adopting this style.  

The leadership style can be described in terms of the amount of direction and support that the leaders give their team members. As we know, there are four quadrants. Each of the quadrants has varying levels of direction and support.  

This leads to the 4 types of styles that an effective leader would alternate between. Coaching, delegating, directing and supporting are the styles of the leader and the adoption of the various methods is dependent on the development of the team members.  

Adopting this leadership model will almost always result in a better business result and a stronger employee engagement score. Employees would feel accounted for by their leaders and in return the work productivity increases. There will be an increased sense of trust in the organisation.  

When an employee feels that their leaders truly want the best for their team members, they would want to improve their skillset and become a better worker. In essence, the leader has gained credibility as their actions have made their team members want to develop themselves.