Becoming a successful leader means meet certain criteria. Different industries and different seniority of employees will have a different set of boxes that they will need to tick before following you.

As expressed in recent back to basics leadership book: ‘The Truth About Leadership‘, credibility will automatically feature on each of these lists.

Credibility encompasses whether others believe you to be sincere. Credibility also determines whether people will assume you will be able to deliver on what you promise. A leader without credibility may talk the talk, but no-one believe that they can walk-the-walk. Unfortunately, this results in a vicious cycle of under-performance, because all leaders need a passionate and committed team to be able to deliver on their promises.

Credibility in New Leaders

As a result of this phenomenon, you will see two different paths that new leaders go down:

Path 1: A leader rises to a leadership position on a meritorious basis. Either they succeeded as the obvious and popular choice in an internal promotion, or they have ‘organically’ assumed a leadership role through necessity and not title. This leader will already have significant support from their peers. Naturally, this implicit support allowed them to reach the leadership position in the first place. Initial projects will have a higher success rate than:

Path 2: A leader is recruited externally after a secretive selection process. Little is known in the rest of the business about the leaders previous employment history or individual successes. Alternatively the leader was promoted internally, but was a shock victor, and employees suspect that the promotion was made for less honourable reasons that merit alone. The lack of support this leader will initially receive will set them back

Clearly the first type of leader has a natural advantage as they have already partially proven themselves which will give them a head start in building credibility.

Do you believe you began your first leadership role on path 1 or path 2?