It is said: “Lack of credibility slays your character.” (Bernard Kelvin Clive) We all experienced an encounter where we either said or thought: Does this person even know what the hell they’re talking about? The world is flush with self-proclaimed experts in just about anything and everything. Does it not seem that everyone is at the pinnacle, the very standard by which others should aspire? Think of your conversation with family and friends; isn’t every doctor the world-renowned best in the Galactica, the sharpest lawyer, the quintessential professor, the brilliant financial advisor? Where is anyone that might be, God forbid, the average ? 

What do they call the student that finishes last (DFL) in medical school? They call that person Doctor, same as the valedictorian. With all our brilliant, walk-on-water, grandkid generation, why do we not yet have a cure for cancer? Seriously, find me someone whose grandkid is perfectly average. With this as a foundation, I believe there is a fundamental requirement in life which is to simply accept the obligation to know what you’re talking about. We Chicagoans call this “street cred.” You need to have that credibility on the plant floor, the office, the classroom, the board room, or with any flock you may lead. As Richie Norton said: “Credibility comes from results. Everything else is just marketing.”

One of my concerns is what I often see in the classroom. These are brilliant graduate students at a world-renowned university with a 4% acceptance rate. By any measure, one of the elites. On the midterm examination, I posed the question: How will you leverage your graduate degree to brand yourself and leverage a successful career? The three most frequent answers are:

1. I want to go to work for one of the big six and do business consulting. 

My pushback: Let’s see, you’ve never run a business and, in many cases, you’ve never even worked at a business, nor have you had a leadership position in business. Yet, you want to be paid to tell people how to run their business … good luck with that. 

2. I want to be an entrepreneur and run my own business. 

My pushback: Indeed, a worthy pursuit, but make certain you proceed with eyes wide open. When you call the accounting department, you yourself answer the phone. When you call IT, you yourself answer the phone, etc. Do you have the multiple resident skills to go it alone … good luck with that.

3. I want to be a wealth advisor. 

My pushback: First, congratulations on skating, not to where the puck is, but rather to where the puck is going. There is $70 trillion of wealth being passed from the boomer generation to those who don’t know how to manage wealth, so this will indeed be a growing industry. However, while you have not yet generated your own wealth, who are you, how are you to tell others how to manage the wealth you yourself have yet to create … good luck with that. 

Don’t we all know those who boast excessively of their 20 years of experience or expertise? In fact, often they do not have 20 years of experience, but rather one year of experience 20 times over and over or perhaps five years of experience four times over. As people go through life, redundancy tends to repeat their limited expertise over and over. They begin to confuse their “opinion” with “intelligence.” Isn’t it ironic that as you read this, you actually have a name in mind? 

In a recent podcast with career expert Mary Ann Faremouth, I was asked what advice I would give the next generation seeking careers. My answers were twofold:

Accept that a career is a marathon and not a sprint. Thus, level set your expectation timeline; in doing so, you will lessen what otherwise will be redundant disappointment leading to many jobs throughout your career. Do not buy into the popular narrative that you are expected to have seven jobs by age 35! 

Embrace and express humility as that will be a distinct differentiator. There is just so much you do not yet know, nor should you at this stage in your life/career. You are not expected to know 

everything or even know much on the starting line. You need mentors to facilitate your preparation for success. 

Veterans are looking for protégés to mentor. We are not turning over our jobs or even our careers to you, but rather, we are turning over the stewardship of our life’s work. If you were to crash and burn and destroy our businesses due to the absence of readiness then perhaps our life’s work was “for naught.” We want you prepared and, by every measure, we want you successful. 

So, for anyone to be considered legitimate, you need to actually know what you’re talking about. Don’t attempt to be all-knowing on every subject. Rather, identify your passion and stay in your lane. Drill vertically in developing expertise and not horizontally when you know little about much. Edward R. Murrow said: “To be persuasive, (as a leader) we must be believable; to be believable, we must be credible; to be credible, we must be truthful; … first with ourselves.”

This message/advice is not directed solely to the next generation but to my boomer generation as well. There are many “empty suits” out there and they walk among us. We all have that inner compass, that intuition, that compels us to see and call B.S. when something seems counterintuitive. In other words, does it pass the smell test? Listen to your intuition … and, by the way, make sure you’re not the one triggering someone else’s intuition. 

“Credibility, like virginity, can only be lost once and never recovered.” — Charley Reese