3.9 The credo strategy: bragging without bragging
Showing people who you are is an essential part of leadership, because…
If you aren’t seen for who you are,
You can’t attract kindred spirits,
And if you can’t attract kindred spirits,
You can’t lead.
But what if you want visibility, except…
You hate bragging.
What can you do instead? You can use what I call…
The credo strategy.
Bragging means that when you talk about yourself…
You step back and away. You evaluate yourself with judgmental terms as though you’re an outside expert.
The credo stance means…
You step deeper inside yourself.
And…
You speak from your heart.
So it’s much like narrating yourself.
Bragging puts a little chill in the air. Maybe pushes people away. By contrast, the credo approach…
Warms up the conversation.
Bragging means you sound like this…
I’m the best!
I’m the greatest!
The credo strategy means you take people deeper into who you are. You take them behind the scenes. Maybe tell them a story.
Here’s an example. Marianna is at a mixer looking to connect with possible donors, and a guy she doesn’t know comes over to her and excitedly says…
“People tell me you’re a brilliant writer!”
And Marianna replies…
“I’m always glad to hear that, but I would have to put it differently. Because I don’t see that I have any particular brilliance or special mastery of craft.
“Years ago I had a writing teacher who said, ‘You put in the work so your reader doesn’t have to.’
“That’s stuck with me. It’s my favorite piece of writing advice ever. I have it on a card pinned over my desk.
“I’m thinking that a brilliant writer could dash off great stuff quickly. But I’m not like that. I’m slow. I wrestle with my writing. I do many, many drafts till I get the clarity I want, and the emotional punch.
“So when people say I’m a great writer, I always want to correct them and say, ‘No, it’s just that I put in the work.’”
Instead of letting someone slap a generic label on her, Marianna tells a story. She replaces glib praise with a personal story, which makes for a warmer, sweeter connection. And might well open a deeper conversation than any label could.
So she gets to brag about how hard she works at her writing without bragging. She gets to make herself visible in an engaging way.
Here are some of the phrases that you might use to open a credo story…
I give so much of myself to my work because I believe so deeply in…
What’s deepest in my heart is x and that’s why I work so hard at y.
I love what I do because…
Let me tell you why I do my work the way I do it…
This work means the world to me because…
I got into this work because…
I stay with this work because…
You’re showing your listener what guides you, what calls to you, what you stand for, what you hope for. These are the kind of things people can identify with.
The key to the credo strategy is that you’re giving people…
The inside story.
You’re speaking from…
Inside your mission.
Or from…
Inside the deepest place in your heart.
So people get to know you, and appreciate you, and maybe they’re even a little wowed by you, and all this without any bragging.
Bragging, since it’s an evaluation, can be contested.
But with a credo statement, you’re talking about what’s personally true for you. So while people might not believe in the same things you believe in, you’re simply revealing to them who you are and that can’t really be contested.
And the credo strategy applies equally well to when you want to talk about your organization.
Randy’s the ED of the Teen Trauma Center and he’s meeting with a possible donor, who opens with this line: “I’ve been told you guys are the best at what you do on the whole West Coast.”
Randy could say…
That’s right, we’re the best. There are other groups which try to match us, but really no one compares with us. No one comes close.
How does that feel? Not very good? A bit distancing?
Well, of course there are some people who like that kind of thing. Maybe they’re braggarts themselves and want to be linked up with the best.
But Randy is a humble, sincere guy, but not self-diminishing, so he handles this conversation differently. He starts by saying…
Every person on staff at the TTC, went through trauma in their teen years, or they have close friends or loved ones who went through trauma. So for us, what we do is not just a mission, it’s very, very personal. This means we put heart and soul into giving our teens the best possible care we can.
And maybe that’s enough for the donor, but maybe not. Maybe he wants to hear more, so Randy adds this…
We do a two-hour staff session each week with all our therapists. And this is the key to the quality of our treatment. These are not your typical drowse-your-way-through inservices where people drift in twenty minutes late. They’re intense sessions. Everyone is there on time, so as not to miss a minute.
We wrestle with the hardest issues that have come up during the week with our clients. And this keeps us improving our work in significant ways week by week.
And if the donor is now even more intrigued, Randy can take his story deeper…
Our staff has a proactive spirit. We like being pioneers. So we devote the first staff session of each month, the full two hour, to brainstorming ways we can participate in advancing trauma therapy as a field. We bring in people to help provoke our thinking.
Sometimes it’s the kind of people you’d expect, trauma experts, authors of books that have meant a lot to us. But we also like to play outside the box. One time we brought in a corporate director of new product development and had a rock-and-roll discussion.
We had an advertising art director lead us through a set of exercises to open our imaginations.
And last month, we brought in a martial arts teacher. She kept us moving the whole time we were brainstorming. That was an especially surprising and productive session.
Randy bypasses the praise trap. He ignores that generic and empty comment about being “great.” Instead he takes the donor behind the scenes and shows him what kind of people the TTC staff are.
So now the donor says to himself: “What dedication! What innovation!”
And maybe he concludes, “No wonder they’re the best.” So he writes a check.
But maybe he doesn’t care about “best” anymore. Maybe now he just says to himself…
“I really like who these people are. I want to support them and I want to get to know them.”
And so he writes a bigger check than he expected to write.
