Correspondences: Establishing Credibility

Bonny Hinners and Doina Popa

Architects frequently head into new organizations and projects with a variety of stakeholders who have unpredictable levels of expertise of their own. Are they familiar with the Salesforce Platform? Are they experts in system integrations and application design? Collaborating with each new organization requires not only learning about the expertise of others but also establishing credibility and getting people from a wide range of backgrounds to trust our expertise as quickly as possible.

In this conversation, Bonny Hinners, Principal Customer Success Architect at Salesforce, and Doina Popa, Founder and CEO of InnoTrue, discuss their strategies for establishing credibility as experts themselves.

Doina: Being confident and deeply knowledgeable are the most important tools for establishing credibility. People have preconceptions — we all do, even without realizing it — but they can lose those preconceptions when we start talking with depth, expertise, and confidence. As long as we are not afraid to say what’s important and we can prove that we know what we are talking about, we can win them over.

Passion is the next most important tool we have. When we pursue roles that are interesting and think about what drives our passions, we can use that to establish justification for why the things we care deeply about should also be important to others.

When I was younger — 25 years old and only four years into my career — I used that confidence and passion to schedule an appointment with the CEO of my company, who was a very pragmatic leader. I had thought through the justifications for my proposal and its business benefits. I went into the short meeting well-prepared; I brought my passion for my cause and she found that compelling. As an outcome, we got the approval to set up a new team that developed a new product and I led that team for several years.

Bonny: Confidence and passion are definitely important traits for an architect. Even so, as Madam C.J. Walker said: “There is no royal flower-strewn path to success.” Sometimes the doors don’t open even when we have the confidence and the passion to keep trying. That’s when our allies make the biggest difference.

Having a network of supporters who are willing to vouch for our expertise helps to get the door open in the first place. Especially when we work with new organizations or teams, a sponsor can help us get in front of leadership and on the CEO’s calendar and can help us go in with the best presentation for our new audience so our passion is not wasted on misguided efforts or an audience unprepared to listen.

Doina: It is true, we have to be bold enough to think that people will listen. When I walk in and they see a petite, blond woman, I have to be bold to establish credibility right away, to show that I know what I’m talking about and to establish trust.

Bonny: When we walk into the room conscious of everything that makes us different from others, we do run the risk of taking things personally and losing our boldness, don’t you think? Being bold might just mean that we are willing to look past our differences and not take it personally whether we win over an audience or not.

Doina: Absolutely. Standing up for our point of view, with good reasoning and a calm, constructive attitude usually works miracles. And then being willing to accept and let go when people do not agree is fine, but we need to discern what is really important — to recognize those topics worth fighting for. We have to be flexible and open to understand the other point of view, and to pick our battles wisely.

Bonny: Yes, we need both flexibility and an openness to meet people where they are so that we can coax them into new arenas of knowledge. We have to take the time to hear others. It isn’t the fastest answer that establishes credibility, instead it is the answer that comes from empathy, from hearing what is important to others and making sure we address those concerns in our response.

This means we take the time to ask questions and to restate concerns others have shared. We have to establish ourselves as being willing to negotiate as part of that flexibility too. And asking questions prepares us for successful negotiations, by showing interest in what’s at stake for others. It also helps establish that we have a shared purpose.

Another important aspect to flexibility is taking time to negotiate even on less important items, to establish a rapport on smaller details before something important arises. Ask questions, suggest alternatives, start building that working relationship especially with teams that are well-established in their ways, by making sure they know that we hear them and are giving them space to have control as well.

Doina: We do have to establish some give and take. Establishing credibility is about getting people to trust you and have confidence in communicating with you.

Trust is also about competence. I am a constant learner, which I believe has helped me stay relevant in technology for more than 20 years. It is one of the most dynamic business areas, and I always strive to be on top of new trends and developments.

I keep learning continuously — whether that is getting a new Salesforce certification, immersing myself into learning about robotic process automation, taking an Organizational Design for Digital Transformation class at MIT, or learning about how neuroscience can be applied in a business context as a leader and business owner. This approach helps me broaden my perspective and stay at the top of my game.

Bonny: You are right that being knowledgeable should lead to credibility. But that knowledge gets us nowhere if we have not established trust. Maybe we should call this conversation “Establishing Trust” rather than credibility. We can win over even the most determined audiences by showing that we are listening to them and supporting them. That makes them more open to hearing our knowledge and experiences. And we need them to be open to hearing us in the first place.

One time, I met with a couple of teams at a startup. Two different people on two different teams mentioned that the CEO is approachable. They both said, “when you see him in the elevator he likes to chat.” For a company with such a small office space in a much larger building, elevator encounters seemed too random for two different people to both tell that story. It came across as an urban legend, a company myth handed down from one to another.

Rich stories of our actual experiences can do more to build trust than rote learning. People we meet and work with, who don’t know us and are external to our organization, often share our passion for learning and want to hear details of our experience. These external cohorts are most interested to hear things that don’t come across as learned or rehearsed, details that demonstrate when and how we’ve worked on problems similar to what we are trying to solve with them.

Of course, building trust requires more than sharing our experience, it also requires that we establish commonalities. If I say that I took a certain approach in a similar situation and describe the reasons for success or failure with it, even people who don’t know my work recognize that I’m not just spit-balling an untested strategy but am applying hard-won expertise from a situation common to their own. When others also share their own experiences, it creates a sense of community and trust that further bolsters credibility.

This brings us right back to that boldness, that confidence and passion you mentioned, Doina. Being bold enough to provide specific examples of our successes and failures demonstrates both our confidence and passion.

Combining that with a willingness to meet other technology leaders where they are and listening to their concerns may not provide a quick or flower-strewn path to success. Yet by building trust through flexibility and empathy, and delivering insights with confidence and passion, we smooth the way for establishing the credibility required to be a successful architect.

About the Correspondents:

Bonny Hinners signed up for her first Salesforce developer org in 2004 and has grown her career with the growth of the platform. She has worked on systems ranging in complexity from large enterprise-wide systems comprised of multiple orgs at a Fortune 10 company to small 10 license nonprofit orgs. Currently, she is a Customer Success Architect at Salesforce.org, a social impact center of Salesforce focused on partnering with the global community to tackle the world’s biggest problems.

Bonny remains active in the Trailblazer community as a volunteer coach for RAD Women to help close the tech gender gap by mentoring women who want to learn to code on the Salesforce platform. In addition, she is a speaker at Salesforce and community events.

Doina Popa, now based in Munich, Germany after having lived in London, UK and Bucharest, Romania, has worked in the Salesforce ecosystem for over 10 years out of 20+ in technology. She was the first woman to have achieved the Certified Technical Architect outside of the US in 2014 and holds 18 Salesforce certifications.

Doina is the Founder and CEO of InnoTrue, after experiencing Salesforce from all perspectives in roles as CIO Salesforce at Barclays, CTO Salesforce Capgemini, Senior Strategic Advisor at Salesforce and as Senior Consultant and Developer for an ISV partner.

In her other role as Global VP, Head of Sales Technologies at UiPath, the leader in Robotic Process Automation, Doina is also a Salesforce customer.

She is a member of the Forbes Business Development Council and the leader of “Women Driving Change”, the Salesforce Women in Tech Trailblazer Group in Munich.

You can learn more about Doina’s thoughts on her Medium blog or by attending her sessions at different conferences, where she frequently talks about topics ranging from ground breaking technology innovation to her experiences as an executive and a woman returning to work after a career break.