Persuade

2Building Credibility

“People want an authority to tell them how to value things, but they choose this authority not based on facts or results.”

– Michael Burry, Hedge fund manager featured in the movie The Big Short

• Michelin restaurant
• New York Times bestseller
• Directed by Steven Spielberg

If that is all you knew about a restaurant, book, or movie, would you be inclined to pay for it? Notice how quickly you can establish credibility. By the same token, put the words felon, discredited, or disbarred before a description and see what happens.

Before any attempt to influence people or before any decisions are made, you must establish you are credible, that you are believable and people can trust you. It does not matter how logical your reasoning is; if you are not credible, then you are unlikely to be convincing. In other words, without credibility, the message will not get through. This is because people are often persuaded not by the logic but by whom it is coming from and how it is communicated.

Thus, Building Credibility is the first step in the Four-Step Process of Influence and Persuasion. In this chapter, you will learn how credibility is built along with tips and tactics to establish your trustworthiness and expertise.

Figure 2.1

Credibility: Trust and Expertise

To learn how credibility is established, we need to understand what it is. Credibility refers to the ...