The Best Tricks to Establish Credibility at Work

When employees join a new company or new team, they often face a difficult challenge.  How to be accepted and begin contributing quickly?


Starting on a New Team Is Much Easier With This Simple Trick
Although their credentials were clearly impressive enough to land the job, or be included in a new team, they are faced with a certain amount of distrust or skepticism about their abilities to do their new job well. How can a new employee establish themselves with little experience at the company or in their new job?
One simple idea will help new employees build trust and rapport every time. It turns out that it’s all about establishing credibility.

Why Credibility

When teams are working with a new member, they often do not know with what the new person can be trusted. This means that new team members are often given simple tasks that the team can be sure they will accomplish, leading new team members to feel bored or disengaged from their new projects.
How do you, as a new team member, prevent this from happening? Work hard, early on, to establish credibility with your new team. If they are presented with evidence that you are able to accomplish advanced tasks, on time and with reliability, they will be infinitely more likely to trust you with more responsibility when it comes up.
Credibility Can Change Everything about Your Early Days on a Team

How to Establish Credibility

Experts have devoted years of research to figuring out the best way to establish credibility in the office. The Harvard Business Review recently released research indicating that five simple steps often prove the most effective. (Make sure to check out #5, the most important step!)

1. Show off your research skills

Once you have a general idea of some of the problems facing your team or issues that they normally discuss, you can quickly establish yourself as an authority by conducting some quick research and becoming the team expert on a useful topic.

2. Identify the unique skills that you bring to the team

While doing some research to become a subject-matter expert on your team, you can do some similar searching to try to identify the unique skills that you bring to the team’s work. You were hired for a reason, and once you establish what that reason was, then you can use the skills or experience that got you hired to leverage more responsibility.
Establish Credibility Early On WIth These 5 Steps

3. Volunteer for new projects

Beyond showing that you know the information necessary to perform your job well, it is helpful to also prove that you are available to work hard for your new team. One of the best ways to do that is to volunteer for new projects. This shows eagerness and dedication to your team’s work and your role within that team.

4. Work to establish relationships with your new team members

If no one on your team knows you very well, it is unlikely that you will be the first to come to mind when an interesting new task or project comes up. By making sure to devote time to building relationships with your coworkers, you will strengthen the bonds between you and ensure that you will be included on fun new tasks.

5. Manage your tasks and responsibilities

This last one is the most important. All of the research, personal relationships, and volunteering in the world will not matter if you do not show early on that you are capable of handling the responsibilities that you are given. This level of accountability shows itself in your commitment to high quality results and meeting deadlines on time, demonstrating to your team how reliable you are.

A quick and easy way to drive accountability for yourself and your team is to use a software solution like CommandHound. CommandHound has worked with dozens of clients, both individuals and teams, who are trying to improve personal and professional accountability. By monitoring both deadlines and tasks in conjunction, CommandHound ensures that nothing will fall through the cracks and that your team will consider you a reliable source of high-quality work.  CommandHound also allows the rest of team to see who is getting things done.
Learn more about how CommandHound can help establish credibility on your team by signing up for a free account: