I recently spent time with senior manufacturing and safety leaders. These leaders navigate fast-paced environments and work long hours to ensure their teams meet production goals safely. They were deeply committed to continuing to strengthen their leadership skills. At one point during our workshop, I asked them to name one thing they could do to elevate their credibility. Two answers kept coming up: “Be more consistent” and “Honor my commitments better.”
Their self-awareness was inspiring. Most leaders say yes to more than they can do well. Then, they underdeliver. People notice that. Trust and credibility take a hit.
A dean at Harvard recently shared this advice with his incoming graduate students: “Harvard is a vast ocean of possibilities and opportunities. But, if you try to take in too much, too fast, then you will quickly find yourself overwhelmed and frustrated. Instead, I encourage you to move at the speed of your joy. The opportunity isn’t going anywhere. So relax. Breathe. Pace yourself.”
He could have just as easily been advising talented professionals. Pace is a credibility issue. Consistency isn’t a character trait people summon. It’s a byproduct of a workload that fits. Leaders who outrun their capacity don’t become unreliable because they stopped caring; they become unreliable because they overcommitted.
While we can be tempted to think of joy at work as frivolous, don’t. Instead, embrace it as a signal. Joy tends to show up where your attention is genuinely engaged, which is often where your contribution is the highest. It takes focus and courage to find joy. Saying no can mean disappointing someone now, in exchange for credibility later. Most trade in the other direction: a pleasing yes today, an erosion of trust later when commitments go unmet.
To support you in building consistency and credibility, consider these actions:
- Be thoughtful about taking on new tasks and initiatives. Avoid instant yeses. Instead, reflect on the commitments you make. Only commit when you can give a confident yes and a clear timeline for delivery. Track your due dates like students track assignments and test dates. Honor your word.
- Practice being on time. Do this by protecting transitions throughout your day. Avoid the common trap of scheduling meetings back-to-back. The more you rush your days, the less consistent and reliable you’ll be.
- Make tradeoffs visible to your team. Discuss what to prioritize and what deliberately needs to wait. Make focused effort the norm.
- Realize that predictability is generosity. When people can trust your performance and response time, they can stop spending energy managing you. Inconsistency is taxing.
- Attend more meetings with your laptop closed. Presence is a direct path to building trust and credibility.
Moving at the speed of joy builds trust, credibility, and consistency. The speed you can sustain is the speed you can be trusted at.
Founded in 2004, Lead Star is the company behind the best-selling books SPARK, Leading from the Front, and Bet on You. Lead Star helps professionals reach new levels of success through its innovative leadership development programs.
