Establishing credibility with you colleagues and subordinates is important in order to establish professional relationships within the work place. What you say and how you say it is important in establishing your credibility. When your credibility has not been established your message may be received with nonchalance, or open hostility.



The following techniques will enable you to persuade and establish credibility;

1. Identify the issue or problem at hand and invite your colleagues to brainstorm and come up with constructive solutions, instead of simply announcing your own solution to the issue.

2. Make your colleagues the primary focus. A sure way to lose credibility is to not consider your colleagues' opinions on the issue at hand.

3. If you want your audience to embrace and fully comprehend your ideas, it is best that you focus all of your attention on you colleagues' opinions. Draw your colleagues in and solicit their ideas, so these ideas can be negotiated and combined with your own; producing a shared outcome.

4. It is very important to speak at the listeners' level. You may know more that your listeners. Your role is that of an agent of influence, to encourage your colleagues to think the same way you do about the issue at hand.

5. Never try to avoid bad outcomes with deception; you will quickly lose your credibility.

6. One of the best ways to reinforce your credibility is to build a reputation of sincerity. If a co-worker challenges you on the basis of inconsistency with a previous statement, admit the discrepancy and simply say, “I misspoke, because I now have a different view of ……..”

7. In order to maintain credibility, your claims need to be substantiated with credible research.

8. To effectively persuade your audience, you must do more than just articulate what you believe to be true. You must match your claims with what you're audience will believe and have facts to substantiate these claims.

9. Using passive language that removes you from ownership of the opinion you are about to state, “Some people may think …….” can be an effective tool of persuasion.

10. In sales situations, sometimes colleagues are encouraged to be less that truthful with the client. Never encourage this practice. Your credibility will be completely undermined.

11. Always keep commitments to your subordinates and colleagues.

12. Expertise gives you credibility and the right to be heard.

13. When your audience questions your credentials, be sure you can supply credentials that establish your credibility on the subject.

14. Building a successful track record can go far in establishing your credibility.