MBA1588 Guest Teacher – Alain Hunkins – How to Increase Your Impact and Influence by Building Your Credibility

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Hey, welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Because that better business begins with you. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episodes we bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. And today we have Alon Hunkins and he'll be teaching you how to increase your impact and influence by building your credibility. Your credibility, your reputation is your business. Not only with your customers, but even internally with your team. If your team believes you do what you say and you say what you do, you will go a whole lot further. But how do you build that credibility? Whether it's with your customers, your team, your clients, your suppliers. That's why we brought on today's guest teacher to explain step by step how to get started. We got a lot to cover, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's guest teacher, Alon Hutkins is the author of Cracking the Leadership Code. Three Secrets to Building Strong Leaders. If you want to get the first chapter for free, hang on to the end of the episode. I'll show you how you can get it. Alon is a sought after trainer, speaker, consultant and Coach. For over 20 years he's worked with big brands like Walmart, Pfizer, Citigroup, General Electric, IBM, gm, State Farm Insurance, Microsoft and more. And today he's going to break down how to build your credibility, your authority with your team with your actual clients, with anybody you work with. Some simple steps you can take. This is especially important if you're new to this. If you are dealing with new clients or you have new teammates joining your team, the first thing everybody's thinking about when they meet you is, is this person the real deal? Can I trust them? Will they deliver? Are they the leader I'm looking for? Is this the business or client I want to work with? And that all boils down to are you credible? Let's make sure the answer is yes. So I'm going to pass it on to Alon to teach you today's guest teacher lesson. But I'll be back to wrap up today's episode and share with you that link to get the free first chapter of Alain's book, Cracking the Leadership Code. But for now, take it away, Alain.

Hello there, my name is Alain Hunkins. Thank you for joining me today. Today I'll be teaching you how to increase your influence and impact by building your credibility. So let's get down to business. I'd like to start by giving you a 30,000 foot high level overview of our lesson today. We'll start by looking at what credibility is, then take a look at why it's so important and then look at the three biggest actions that you can take to build your credibility. But let's start with a story about a leader named Clint. Clint is the co founder of a software company that's grown rapidly over the last three years. He's smart, outgoing and he's great in front of customers. In fact, the sales team has nicknamed Clint Midas because everything he touches turns to gold. However, for all of Clint's strengths, he has this tragic flaw. He's consistently late for meetings. 10, 20, 30 minutes late is par for the course with Clint, sometimes even more. And Clint is also the master of excuses as to why he's late. He'll say, well, this customer meeting went long or this operational issue needed my time or gosh, the traffic from the airport was horrible. However, as much as Clint tries to explain and excuse his way out of it, his team is just not having it anymore. It's having an impact on engagement, morale. In fact, two of Clint's direct reports have quit in the last week. And the sad truth is Clint doesn't have a clue as to why. And the reason is because Clint has never stopped to recognize the importance of of credibility. So let's start and take a look. What exactly is credibility? Well, credibility comes from the Latin word credibilis, which means Worthy to believed. Credibility is the main ingredient in trust. And trust is the glue of human relationship. Turns out credibility shares the same etymological root as the word credit, which means a loan or a thing entrusted to another. So let's take a look at why that is so important. See, if you want to influence others, you want them to do something because it's important to you. So how do they decide if they're going to do it? Well, it's based on your relationship credit score. If you have a high credit score, you've proven yourself as a low risk, high return person and the other person is likely to help. They think you're a good investment. However, if you're a high risk, low return person, forget about it. They're not going to help. Fact is, people own their own talents and skills and they only offer them to you on loan. So having a high level of credibility or relationship credit score is your way of proving that you're worth loaning to. For people to truly follow you, they have to believe you're worth following. And how do they decide? It's through your actions. Or as Albert Schweitzer, the Nobel Prize winner, put it, example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. So if you want to increase your influence and impact on others, you need to grow your credibility. Let's take a look at the top three things that you can do to make that happen. First, showing up on time. It's a lesson from Clint. If I could only choose one practice to grow my credibility, I'd say show up on time. You should treat your performance in this arena as a big deal.

It is.

Think about it for a moment. Timeliness is, is the easiest and most visible thing to measure. You're either here or you're not. Fact is, lateness is about much more than just a few wasted minutes in life. Being on time is the most basic social contract, that of presence. When you're late, your behavior sends a clear message. I have other things going on that are more important than you are. However, when you're on time, you send a clear message that you value the other person. So you get to choose what's the message that you want to send. And know that your actions speak a lot louder than your intentions. The second thing that you can do to grow your credibility is to do what you say you're going to do. You see, when you open your mouth and promise to do something, you create expectations in those who are listening to you. For them, that promise is now this open psychological Loop of tension that seeks resolution and it stays open, nagging at them as they think, will they follow through or not. The fact is, people crave closure. So every time you do what you say you're going to do, you strengthen the connection between your words and your deeds, which is exactly what's meant by walking the talk. When you walk your talk, you're seen as congruent. And when you don't, you're not. You're out of integrity. Something's off. Which is what Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed when he said, who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying. See, doing what you say you're going to do is the precise definition of accountability. Have you ever wondered where accountability comes from? It comes from the world of accounting. In finance, there's a balance sheet. There's on one side assets. The other side is liabilities. And the two need to equal each other to be in account. Well, in human behavior, the two sides of your behavioral balance sheet are what you say you're gonna do and what you actually did. And when you follow through and do what you say you'll do, the two sides balance out and you're accountable. So a top tip around this. Do you say what you're gonna do is write things down, keep a written record of what you promised to do. You're way better off being someone who under promises and over delivers than the other way around. This means you have to be clear on your commitments and also be willing to say no from time to time. So we've looked at our first two actions. Showing up on time, doing what you say you're gonna do. Our third one is around being consistent. This is the practice of doing what you say you're going to do, not just once, but repeatedly, multiple times over an extended period of time. When you start to build the deposits in that emotional bank account, your credit score goes up. Look, no one's going to throw you a party for showing up on time. However, the little things done over time compound and have a multiplier effect. As an example, take the CEO of Campbell's Soup, a man called Doug Conant. Now, Doug was CEO of Campbell's Soup for 10 years. And in his 10 year period as the leader of Campbell's, Doug wrote 30,000 personal handwritten thank you notes to his employees. Now, by the way, over those 10 years, Campbell's only had 20,000 employees. And if you do the math, and it works out to more than eight thank you notes per day, seven days a week for 10 years now. That's pretty incredible to me. Now, I'm not saying you need to start writing eight thank you notes a day, but I think Doug Conant's example of the power of consistently and showing how that multiplies and compounds over time is great. It's so easy in this world to think that we're too busy to do the important things. See, if you want to know what a person values, look at their calendar and see where they spend their time. Because that is the ultimate test of what you're truly valuing. Because ultimately, every action that you take will either strengthen or weaken your credibility and connection between others, which either strengthens or weakens your influence and your impact. So, in summary, we've explored how to increase your influence and impact by growing your credibility. We've looked at what credibility is, why it's important, and the three biggest actions you can take to make it stronger. Showing up on time, doing what you say you'll do, and be consistent. Now it's up to you. Pick one thing, pick one action, and start applying it tomorrow. With time and deliberate practice, you'll reap the fruits of your labors and become the influencer that you want to be. Thank you so much for joining me today. Again, my name is Alain Hunkins, and if you want to continue learning about credibility and leadership, you can visit my book website. The book is called Cracking the Leadership Code, and the website is www.crackingtheleadershipcode.com. and while you're there, you can download chapter one for free. Again, it's been a pleasure being with you here today. Thanks so much. Now back to Omar.

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What a great episode by Alana Huntkins. Three solid things you need to do. Number one, show up on time. I'll never forget this. My father used to say this to me all the time as a kid. You're either early or you're late. It's very rare that you can actually show up on time. Think about it. If you have an appointment at 8 o', clock, how hard is it for you to be there at 8,00 and 0 seconds? You have a 1 second chance to do that 1 second window. Anything beyond that is late. So you might as well show up early is what he used to say. Show up early because you're either early or you're late. And that's a very simple thing you could do to show people that I respect your time and I actually do what I say. I say we have an appointment this time and I show up that time and that leads me to the second one. Do what you say you will do, okay? So be careful with what you commit to doing. Right? That's a really good tip. If you have too much on your plate, don't put more on your plate. Tell somebody else to do it. Assign it to somebody else. But of course, if you're responsible for doing something, get it done, prioritize it. Make sure the next time you meet it's absolutely completed. And of course, be consistent. There will always be an emergency or an anomaly or an exception. But generally consistency is key. Whether it's serving your customers, whether it's serving your team, whether it's serving yourself when you're working on a personal project or even your physical health. Consistency is key. It's what we remember. And the issue with inconsistency is even if you're inconsistent sporadically, all we remember is the inconsistencies. Think about your friends or a friend that you have that is late more times than you want to remember, right? You might have met up with them, let's say 30 times in the last year and they were late 10 times. But because it was inconsistent, they were not on time consistently. You just label them as late. They're always late even though two thirds of the time they're on time. But the inconsistency tarnishes the reputation. So you gotta be consistent so people can remember you for the good things. Love today's episode. Don't forget to pick up the first chapter to Cracking the Leadership Code over at crackingtheleadershipcode.com this book is coming out very soon, but you get the first chapter very for free. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MVA Show. If you have not hit the subscribe button on whatever you use to listen to podcasts, make sure you hit that subscribe button right now, whether it's on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Stitcher Radio or Himalaya or on every podcast app. By hitting subscribe, you never have to search for the latest episode. It's right there on your device. It also opens you up to over 1500 episodes in our archives. It's the only way to get access to all those lessons. So go ahead and hit subscribe right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this no one's going to take you seriously if you have no credibility. If you can't do these three things we mentioned to show up on time, do what you say you're going to do, and be consistent, then you have no shot at building any credibility with your customers, with your team, with anybody, even in friendships. Doing these three things are going to do wonders for your reputation and make you stand out from the crowd, from the other people that just don't make the effort to build that authority and credibility. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take.

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