How Your Communication Can Earn You Trust, Reputation and Influence
We get noticed and judged, one way or another, and it impacts our jobs and careers
We may not always pause and think about how our communication contributes to our professional outcomes yet it is a powerful variable in determining how specifically people experience and judge us, how much influence, if any, we can build and how persuasive they will allow us to be with them.
There was a recent article published that illustrated it. I will briefly touch on the highlights and why they are important to know and remember, for your benefit.
Ruben Amorim’s reputation precedes him before he walks into a new organization and position of leadership. Amorim is a sports professional yet this analysis and advisory is not about sports. It’s bigger than that context so if you’re not into sports, this short time spent can still be enlightening and practical.
Amorim is a Portuguese professional football manager as well as a former player who is the current head coach of Premier League club Manchester United, per Wikipedia.
People who once were led by him marvel at his communication skills and practices, which have helped him become respected, trusted and influential in the organizations in which he has worked and now works.
“Mister Amorim makes things very clear… about his vision, about the (mission), about how he sees your character and how you can improve,” says one former professional he led, Morten Hjulmand. “He is very good at knowing how he can make his (people) better. How he needs to treat one (person) and another (person) differently.”
Not all communication and people connection-skill is created equally. Here, you have a person — Amorim — in authority, leadership and power who is able to express himself in such a way that removes near all uncertainty and ambiguity involving the macro (big picture) and the micro (the individual).
That’s no small ability, skill, habit and practice. Without clarity there is confusion, doubt, grumbling and at times, if not distrust, then insufficient trust or an absence of it. That makes any leader’s job even more difficult, frustrating and stressful.
Moving forward in the right direction and effectively, becomes arduous.
That’s not all that this leader has as a positive, admired reputation.
He notices what is positive and valuable about each person and then moves on to how they can improve, grow and help the collective be better. They are more receptive because of how he communicates.
Amorin stands out for knowing precisely how to encourage, inspire and respectfully push them to get stronger.
He realizes that not every person has the same personality and responds the similarly to the same approach so he customizes it for the best results for each professional in his charge, the team and the collective mission.
Another professional who worked under Amorim talked about what has impressed him.
“He’s very calm and he’s someone who sees everyone not only as professionals but also as human beings,” says Fransérgio Rodrigues Barbosa, professionally known as Fransérgio. “He would often inquire about our families, he would check on how foreign players were adjusting to life in Portugal.”
Calmness always stands out in professions where intensity is the norm.
Leadership seeing the professionals assigned to them them in the organizational hierarchy as people too and not just as organizational chess pieces, build into the relationship dynamic a vital, helpful foundation to some degree of psychological safety and thus, improved or solid-level trust. This is recognized and appreciated.
What this person in authority has done — and what most all of us have the potential to do — is powerful: built trust, professional relationships, reputation and influence.
That assists the performers, the collective, the mission and to no surprise, ourselves.
Michael Toebe is a specialist for trust, risk, relationship, communications and reputation at Reputation Intelligence - Reputation Quality. He serves individuals and organizations by helping them further build, protect, restore and reconstruct reputation.
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