Credibility is a mandate for power. When a leader has credibility they have the capacity to create change, the support to carry sceptics and followers, the momentum to succeed and the freedom to build new futures. But what does it take to be a credible leader?
Research by James Kouzes and Barry Posner, authors of The Leadership Challenge, reveals that the four most commonly cited qualities of leaders whom people would willingly follow are honesty, competency, the ability to inspire and be forward looking.
Machiavelli, on the other hand, thought that a leader should be as cunning as a fox, appearing trustworthy but prepared to sacrifice honesty for results. Experience suggests this is not good long-term advice. Honesty can be qualified but it should not be compromised; leaders should avoid being politic with the truth.
Kouzes and Posner define forward-looking as 'the ability to set or select a desirable destination toward which the company, agency or community should head'.
What people value is someone who makes them feel they are being led in the right direction when the team is being built; new players are joining, the team's strength is growing. This is how a leader practically demonstrates that they are forward looking.
Power to inspire
Kouzes and Posner believe that the ability to inspire through words and deeds is crucial to a leader. Clearly, a leader must be honest with followers and tell it how it is. But they must never be uncertain on the subject of hope. If one thing defines a leader in our psyche it must be someone who does not give up hope Ð even though they are absolutely clear about the realities. A credible leader must be optimistic and not swayed by the equal importance of being straight with the facts.
A credible leader, therefore, is honest, orientated towards the future and optimistic. The final characteristic cited in Kouzes and Posner's work is compet ence. At its most obvious, we want leaders who know what they are doing. But this definition runs the risk of overlooking a vital aspect of leadership: intelligence. To be credible, a leader must be bright. A leader without strong critical faculties is merely a rabble-rouser, capable of inspiring our emotions, but unable to carry us in the right direction.
The four corners of credibility
Adding in the indispensable quality of intelligence, we have the essential ingredients of the credible leader: someone who is intelligent, optimistic, forward-looking and honest. We ask for someone who is bright enough to understand what needs to be done, persuasive in painting a picture of what that means for us, optimistic that we can achieve it despite any difficulties, and who we trust not to deceive us. This is the leader we are willing to follow, regardless of the realities or crises that we will inevitably meet along the way.
Leading principles
• HONESTY
This must be qualified but not compromised. Whereas it would be foolish to
always tell the truth, leaders should avoid untruth, and should avoid giving the
impression that they are saying something that they are not even when this would
serve their interests.
• FORWARD LOOKING
This is about vision and direction, creating the feeling that we know where we
are going and we know what road we have to travel.
• INSPIRING/OPTIMISTIC
A leader must be optimistic and not just offer a sunny disposition or a lack of
realism, nor be reluctant to tell it how it is in case it demotivates people. He
or she should offer hope.
• INTELLIGENT
This is a key factor in leadership credibility because it is the one most
strongly correlated with success - and nothing creates more credibility than
success.
Patrick McHale is head of organisational development at PKF
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