Building Credibility

Last week’s newsletter talked about leadership and the qualities we should look for in our leaders-be it sports leaders, political leaders, or educational leaders. I appreciate those of you who responded with your thoughts and hopefully you reflected on your own leadership abilities and how you can build those.

I had another quality that came up this week that I want to add to our list of qualities of a leader: credibility. I subscribe to a weekly newsletter from educational leader and instructional coach guru, Steve Barkley. His blog this week is about teacher credibility-he defines that as “students belief that they can learn from a particular teaccher because the adult is believable, convincing, and capable of persuading students they can be successful.” Research is pretty clear that when students view their teachers as credible, they are much more likely to engage and succeed in the classroom. We would all agree that we want credible teachers for our kids (are we supporting our teachers to help do this…sorry I digress! 😁 ) so that they get the most out of their educational careers.

The same would apply to our activities coaches. This past week, I have wrapped up the mentoring work I am doing with new volleyball coaches and have now started working with new girls basketball coaches. It is fair to say that it is vital for new coaches to build credibility with athletes quickly if they want to build a successful program. So how do we build credibility as coaches, and even as leaders in other walks of life?

Barkley mentions 4 key components of credibility in educators that I think apply to other areas of life:

• Trust: the article says that learners have trust when they believe that the teacher has an expectation and vested interest in their learning success. That trust comes from building a relationship with that student.

• Competence: this would be being good at the important parts of your job. For teachers, those parts would be teaching/instruction, managing the classrom, assessing students, and personal competencies-Simon Sinek would call those “soft skills”.

• Dynamism: for teachers, this would be their enthusiasm for teaching, body language, tone, and excitement every day. This would also include teachers who love their work.

• Immediacy: Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey describe immediacy as acccessibility and relatability as perceived by students. THey need to know that their work matters and we aren’t wasting their time.

Credibility in educators and coaches is a very complex quality. Ultimately, credibility lies in students’ perception. Credibility lies in students’ perception. We can think and feel that we are a credible person but ultimately, if the people we are working with or influencing don’t feel the same way, then we don’t have credibility.

What actions of ours impact our credibility with others including teams we work with? How do we know we have credibility? Ultimately, this comes back to feedback from others and reflections of our own. How do others respond when we talk to them? Do I have someone on my team/group that I trust to give me honest feedback on my credibility? Am I willing to make some changes to increase my credibility? These are all questions we need to consider if we are truly trying to improve our credibility and lead others in an even better fashion. Barkley’s blog shares some other resources about credibility so check out this awesome resource for individual improvement. Have a great week!

Coach K