Building credibility is a hot topic that has become vital for executives and professionals in today’s fast-paced workplace. However, many leaders struggle to earn lasting trust and influence. Are you consistently seen as someone who delivers on promises and inspires confidence?
In this episode, you will learn the core principles of building credibility at work. Our host and CEO Porschia, alongside our guest Victor Barnes, will share real-world insights from his 35-year global leadership journey at Coca-Cola, Anaplan, and beyond.
They will also discuss how to develop an executive presence that combines authenticity, competence, and consistency. So you can stand out and lead effectively! You’ll hear practical formulas and stories to help you understand where credibility really comes from, plus tips on navigating “managing up” without sacrificing your integrity.
Victor Barnes is a seasoned international executive, board director, and author of Chasing Credibility: Discovering Self, Making Connections, and Finding Meaning. As a former corporate executive, he brings deep expertise in finance, leadership development, and cross-cultural collaboration. Now an executive coach, Victor guides leaders to strengthen their impact and build trust at every level.
What you’ll learn:
- The real definition of credibility and Victor’s easy to use credibility formula
- How to cultivate an executive presence that earns respect and trust
- Key strategies for “managing up” and influencing leaders above you
- Pivotal ways to align your authentic self with workplace expectations
- Common pitfalls professionals face when trying building credibility
- Actionable tips for turning credibility into career momentum
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Resources:
- Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Hello, I’m Portia Parker Griffin, and I wanna welcome you to the Career 1 0 1 Podcast, a place for ambitious professionals and seasoned executives who want an edge in their career. We’re talking about all of the things you were never taught or told when it comes to career growth, development, and change.
Now let’s get into it.
Today we are talking about building credibility at work with Victor Barnes. Victor Barnes is a seasoned international executive with 35 years of experience in multiple industries, markets, cultures, and business models. He currently serves on the board of directors for Chantel is an executive coach and the author of Chasing Credibility.
His most recent corporate role was Chief [00:01:00] of Connected Planning at Anup Plan, Inc. Previously, Victor retired from the Coca-Cola company after 26 years, where he most recently served as global CFO of the McDonald’s division, one of the company’s largest and most strategic customers. Prior to that, Victor was CFO of the Coca-Cola Company’s Canada Business Unit, where he was also a company officer.
Hi, Victor. How are you today? I.
Victor: Hi, Portia. I’m great. Thank you. How are you?
Porschia: I am doing well, and I am thrilled to have you with us to discuss building credibility at work. But first we want to know a little more about you. So tell me about 7-year-old Victor.
Victor: 7-year-old Victor was in Ms. Fields second grade class, and I start there because Ms.
Fields wrote a. Comment on the cover of my book. This is Some of Victor’s [00:02:00] best work yet. Yes, my second grade teacher is still in my life. She was also my kindergarten and first grade teacher. She kept looping with her class ’cause she loved us so much. We were her first class out of college. So that’s also an anchor about.
I give back and stay connected to people for such a long period of time. And I don’t know if your listeners will find this out naturally, but I coached you 20 years ago in basketball.
Porschia: Yes. So
Victor: long time connections. Having solid relationships with people are very meaningful to me.
Porschia: Absolutely. So the listeners know if I slip up and say, coach Barnes that is the reason why.
So what did you wanna be when you grew up and you were in Miss Field’s class?
Victor: So I had this. Desire to learn about business, but I had no idea what type of business, [00:03:00] because I grew up on the south side of Chicago and what is referred to as the projects. And there was this father, Mr. Peterson, who had kids who were older than me, but he sold candy on a truck.
He sold balloons whenever there were parades in Chicago. He had a job as a night security agent at a hotel where he took me and his son to work with him one evening, and I got a sense of downtown Chicago and all the big buildings. I remember that being a mind expanding experience and thinking about that.
And later on, my brother, I. Decided he wanted to be in business. He’s three years older than me and he had a candy truck and I used to work in his truck. Then he managed the shoe store and I used to work in a shoe store. So those were reinforcing elements. And then the capstone on that. Even before getting out of high school, I worked in the school’s attendance office where I was a key punch operator.
This was before computers and a key punch O operator would punch out these cards and the [00:04:00] cards would get mailed downtown to schedule the next semester’s classes or quarters classes for students. So computers, business, those are things that kind of perked me up early on. But I knew nothing about business per se.
In hindsight,
Porschia: I mean it sounds like you had a lot of great work experience very early on in life. So tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started your business.
Victor: So I start with my time at Coopers and Lib Brandand as a brand new CPA doing audits. And that’s when I realized.
I began to realize just how little I knew I was quite naive. There’s so much context that you miss, even as a college student with an accounting degree, and those moments of realizing that I had so much to learn, presented almost like a [00:05:00] binary choice for me, cave into frustration because I know so little or fight.
To catch up. And as a basketball player, I decided to fight for myself and not be afraid to let people know what I wanted to learn, what I was missing, asking questions. And so I count that as a key pivotal moment. And the other one I’ll mention now is the moment I decided to go back and get my executive MBA at Kellogg, that was 2006.
I went to a manager who was a vice president and I said, I feel like my career is like a duck paddling away in water, going nowhere while other people on whitewater rafts zooming by and I wanna know what it takes to get over there. And in that conversation I told him about a role that I wanted, and it was a two level promotion, and he told me how that just [00:06:00] doesn’t happen.
At the Coca-Cola company, and he was right. This wasn’t a put down. This was a manager that was willing to be honest and candid about things. And he told me that my reputation had been that I wasn’t a go-getter, and I had to explain to him how I was a young parent and for the first parts of my career, the manager who told him that.
I didn’t know I was PTA President coaching, broke my kids basketball, band, parent, all these things. And that lit a fire in me and I decided to go back and get my MBA. That’s probably the most pivotal moment. ’cause once I finished that MBA, I ended up working in two continents, three countries, five cities, and 10 years before I retired.
Porschia: Wow. I wanna ask you a little bit about that because back in episode 31, we covered master’s degrees and I dug [00:07:00] into the question, are master’s degrees work? So I wanna know, what was it about the NBA that attaining that? How do you think that you would no longer be the duck paddling, right? Yeah, that’d be zooming by on the boat.
So just tell us a little more on that.
Victor: Yes, I’m so glad you brought that up because it is a seminal question that comes up all the time, and my initial response is not necessarily, it is so uniquely your particular circumstance and in mine working in a hundred. In 25-year-old company, that one leader of vice president who described as a company that is an MBA snob, if you’re gonna get an MBA go to the best, like that was the culture.
And I sensed that I was not, and I know a key topic of our conversation today is credibility. I’m sorry. I know that a key part of our conversation today is [00:08:00] credibility, and I sense that my managers did not believe I had the potential to reach the heights that I felt I had within me, and I decided I just wanted to fill my bucket with additional knowledge that seemed to evade me because I wasn’t included in certain discussions about how the business worked.
So that’s my decision, but everyone isn’t necessarily gonna be in that circumstance.
Porschia: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. It really is a personal decision and there’s so many factors to consider when it comes to, getting an MBA or a master’s degree or a PhD, which we’ve also covered on the show.
So what motivated you to become an executive coach?
Victor: At the age of 40, I had specific goals that I wanted to attain by age 55. And you’ll get a laugh out of this one because being an executive coach is a close connection to [00:09:00] one of those three goals. One of those goals was I would retire, I. From corporate America.
A second goal was that I would move to a town that had a university setting where I could mentor and coach young college students and recent graduates. And three, I was gonna coach basketball. I. And I identified the city, Davidson, North Carolina. My wife and I even visited the city and found that anyone buying a sports pass to season tickets would be able to audit classes for free.
And so I was all set. So coaching was on my mind. Post-retirement. It just so happened just before retiring, I had an executive coach at the Coca-Cola company for the first time ever. And I decided to explore it and I thought I said I was gonna coach, but maybe I’ll try this type of coaching and I’ll just coach my grandkids.
So that really is, that’s not one of those [00:10:00] technical things. Hey, I, I see that as a career where I can grow a business. It was all personal, internal feelings about who I felt I was inside, all along. One who likes to help people reach. Their destination or their goals or whatever, and coaching people in their careers is part a way to do that.
Porschia: Yeah, absolutely. How did you decide to focus on leadership development and advisory services in your business today?
Victor: That is something that I did constantly in my career at the Coca-Cola Company from, and I’ll speak to the advisory piece first. As a finance person, I almost purposely stayed away from anything that had to do with debits and credits.
As a finance person, I was all about sales support, commercializing new products, launching new packages sponsorship marketing and all those things. And then that [00:11:00] role, I was always an advisory person to the sales lead. Who in turn was the point contact with. Disney or the National Basketball Association or any of the teams within it.
So I got a lot of reps at being in that advisory mo role. I connected with people very well and understanding what was going to help them win as opposed to me trying to shine. And I learned that I got a lot out of a lot of fulfillment. Of helping other people shine. So that’s the advisory piece. The leadership piece was from coaching generations of basketball players.
I learned that I was darn good at getting people to commit around a common goal and do it in a way without being an authoritarian, someone who instilled fear, but rather someone who could come off as the leader clearly in control, but that the players gravitated to and liked. So advisory and leadership was just a natural thing for me [00:12:00] to pursue.
And the last thing on that, I’ll say for whatever reason, unfortunately it’s exceptional, that people have leaders that they say, see them. Care about them aren’t just trying to advance their careers. Unfortunately, that has appeared in my 35 plus year career to have been an exception for most people, and I was one that was constantly being told Victor, you’re an exception.
No one’s ever had lunch with me like this. No one’s told me things about how the business works because it didn’t relate to my job when it didn’t relate to my job, I should say. So those things were just in me and I gravitated to it, and that’s why I figured that I would be really good at doing that as a post corporate career.
Porschia: Yeah, I could definitely see that. [00:13:00] So we discussed leadership in someone’s image or presence a lot on this podcast. Back. So 13, we talked about developing an executive presence. So since you’ve been a long tenured executive, I’m interested to know what are your thoughts on how someone can develop an executive presence?
Victor: I love that question for a couple of reasons. One, I’ll start with, it was always so confusing for me early in my career. Now, I had this particular metric that I was measured on as a CPA auditor because for the first eight years of my career, I was either in public accounting, auditing companies or internal audit, and there was one metric.
We were measured on developing a rapport. Which to me came natural as a person that collaborated, was a good teammate in basketball, and I’m talking about in my twenties. So that’s a time when you don’t really have the language of [00:14:00] business and all these words like executive presence, I, what do I know about an executive presence?
But I was being measured on this. Fast forward to about 2015. I was at a reunion at Kellogg where I got my MBA and a professor actually gave a formula for executive presence, a mathematical formula, and it is, you’re gonna love this. Executive presence equals credibility plus ease as in ease of.
Talking to others, approachability, credibility plus ease divided by ego.
Porschia: I love that. I love that. And I did not know you were gonna say that. I just thought executive to me, I said, oh, I’ve gotta slip in this executive presence question. Because, to me it. Is impacted by credibility, but I [00:15:00] love this formula. Yes. Victor. Yes. It’s so powerful.
Victor: Thank you.
Now, Porsche, this is a cool part because, we’re doing this podcast and we didn’t rehearse anything. We haven’t had a bunch of q and a and what I’m gonna say and what now, here’s another one I think you’re gonna love. Because of the focus on credibility in this episode, when I began writing my book two years, no, five years later, I.
I started thinking in my mind, what is it that made me credible? And I thought about the trust that I gained from people, but I said, I think trust is inherent in something else. So I came up with a formula for credibility and credibility equals authenticity plus competence times consistency. Now the competence component of that [00:16:00] formula for credibility.
It encapsulates working with and through others, bringing others along, influencing outcomes, setting a vision, like to me, to be competent. You must do all of that. It’s not just being that individual that gets stuff done while stepping over people’s backs. And then the authentic part often gets isolated as, Hey, be authentic and you’re gonna be a great leader.
No, you must get stuff done. You must execute. So I combine those two, but then you’ve gotta do it consistently. I. You need to be known for that, which is the only way to get known for those attributes. You gotta do it on a consistent basis, not on Mondays or every other month. And when you have all those components, you will be credible.
And I tell you, I’m 60 years old and after 35 years I was always a student of what was going on. As someone who was a [00:17:00] first generation college graduate, no one in my family had graduated. Be in my family before me, even though I was the youngest of seven, but I was always trying to figure out what I need to be and do to be like that person I was seeing and I was constantly trying to figure out is there a formula?
I never thought I’d be in this place talking to someone about these two ways of thinking about executive presence and credibility and how they kind of correlate to one another. But here
Porschia: we are, a lot of writer downers Victor for everyone. I was gonna ask you prior to this conversation, what your definition of credibility is, but we know that it’s authenticity plus competence times consistency, so I love that formula as well.
Why do you think building credibility at work is important?
Victor: I will [00:18:00] let you know Portia, that even as much as I’m able to rail off these comments that you and I are talking about now, I continue to refresh my own thoughts and perspective on these things and will revisit books that I’ve read, which I highly recommend people a to read, but also take good notes at the front of the book.
This is one of my hot, top, top hot tips I’ll give today when I read a book. I will on a blank page, write the page number of something I really thought was so important, and I wanna read something that the author of this book titled, credibility Work credibility Wrote, strengthening Credibility begins with an Understanding of Human Dynamics of Trust.
That’s a quote from that book and the bottom line breakdown. That relates to that, which is, and they interviewed in this book, this authors of credibility, thousands of people, and they came back with some key [00:19:00] words, but the phrase that kept coming up again and again, credible people do what they say they will do,
but then they thought. They fine tune that you can be, they say they do what they say they will do, that makes a credible person. But within the context of a company which has shared values and a shared mission, they put a twist on that. They do what we say we will do, and that makes a credible leader differentiated from credible person.
As tough as it is to attain what are the attributes that one must go after to be what they wanna be. I’ve worked my butt off trying to figure out how to bring into focus and a few simple phrases, things for people to think about, which they then can start their own [00:20:00] discovery process. Like hearing a podcast like this and saying, okay, let me check out that book.
Let me read on this topic. Credibility for my own understanding and see how I process it.
Porschia: Yeah, the human dynamics of trust, right? And doing what you say you’re gonna do. I think that’s really powerful to hear. I think of some people, that have had issues with credibility, and I think that they had issues with some of those areas too.
So your full book title is Chasing Credibility, discovering Self Making Connections, and Finding Meaning. Yes. Why do you think discovering self making connections and finding meaning are essential?
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Show notes.
Victor: Let me say this, my subtitle was something altogether different initially, and while writing the manuscript. I got feedback from the person that I was working with that I’ll refer to as a developmental editor, and he said, you’ve gotta have some citations to go along with the stories you tell that makes a book. I was discovering how to be an author, and initially the easy part for me was telling stories about things I experienced and how I processed it, but then supporting it with things that I’ve actually read and can cite.
And I began looking online for books and I said, wait a minute. I’ve been reading books as part of my own personal development, and if I’m writing a book about how I got here. [00:23:00] Which is really what was a driving force like, how did I get to an executive level given my humble background? Instead of looking online for books, I went to my bookshelf and I started looking at the books I read, and those notes I took, the book wrote itself, and what I realized is that I was discovering myself.
I was making connections between so many things that I learned and so many experience that I, experiences that I gained. And so discovering self, making connections, and then encapsulating it and the meaning of those things, which is what I got to and toward the ends of chapters, ends of sections of the book.
And in the conclusion. That is how the subtitle really wrote itself.
Porschia: I love it. And I did appreciate how you had those sections of the book. And tied all [00:24:00] that in. I. In your book, you talk about the significance of authenticity, and you shared how it’s part of the credibility formula.
Just earlier, what would you say to someone who feels that building credibility at work is in conflict with their authentic self?
Victor: I have a few thoughts about that, and it may bring a few buzzwords to the conversation, which might be an entirely different podcast, such as covering and code switching, which I also mentioned in the book, and I ask my. Few followers on LinkedIn on multiple posts as I was writing my book, because one thing I learned Porsche about writing a book, a key thing, long form writing is less about.
Just putting on paper what’s in your head is more about pulling in information from outside [00:25:00] sources and people, right? And so I posed that question to multiple people. And the one thing that came up that I, I think I put the quote in my book. You have to discover your own magic. You have to discover your own magic.
There’s no one formula for the balancing act that one must do to both be authentic and then excel at work. And there’s research by this podcast. Host is a duo. The podcast host, last name is Hansen, and his father is a clinical psychologist and his name is Rick Hansen, and their podcast is titled, being and they have an entire episode on authenticity.
And within that is why I ended up coming up with a title of chapter one of my book, the Authenticity Conundrum. Hernia Ibarra, a London School of [00:26:00] Business professor, speaks about the authenticity paradox, which finds people saying, that’s not me, quotes, so I won’t do this. She’s not a big proponent of that because sometimes she said people must fast prototype who they must become or can become.
She used the word fast prototype, so authenticity I think, gets too simplified when it is so nuanced and because of my background. That I’ve briefly described where I didn’t have a lot of business perspective and did come from humble beginnings. If I was ever going to be what I needed to be, I could never be fixated on this is me.
That’s not me. I won’t do that. I had to be willing to explore and in exploring, if I’m both honest, do what I say I’m [00:27:00] going to do. Unafraid to show myself. Here’s one of my favorite phrases. People talk about wanting to be seen. I found that I’m seen better when I show myself first. I. What I’m afraid of, what I don’t know, what I’d like to know, what I’d like to become.
When you are able to just articulate those types of things, you, I believe tend to almost fall into who your true, authentic self is, and people feel like they’re really talking to you. And when people feel like they’re really talking to you, not some facsimile of you, then they trust you. And when they trust you, they will pour into you.
- Which I believe, as you already know, trust is one of the key components that fits within being credible and the capstone on this soliloquy on this topic is a mentor [00:28:00] once told me, Victor, some of the most important decisions about you will happen when you are not in the room. So what do you want people to know about you?
So back to authenticity. I believe a product of being that person who will be represented by others in rooms is going to be enhanced by finding that magic that defines who you are, and that is the stream that kind of continue to pull me along in my career, that I got opportunities that people felt like, Hey, let’s talk to Victor about this opportunity.
It is not simple. It’s should I get an MBA? It’s so many personal factors, but people I believe are best served if they find that way of really being able to articulate the things that they want, [00:29:00] that they don’t, that they know that they don’t know what they’re seeking, and when they do that, they’ll make stronger connections.
So authenticity just becomes.
Porschia: Yeah. I love everything you said. I think people are gonna have to listen to this episode twice to catch all of the gyms that you are sharing with us. From your perspective, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve seen professionals and executives have with building credibility at work?
Victor: Managing up first, it’s the, it is the number one thing. It’s the number one thing and because of my ascension into executive position as executive positions, but then my connections with people no matter where they existed in the organization. Here’s a fun fact of my 26 years in the Coca-Cola company, [00:30:00] there were maybe 10 people that cut through the.
Traffic that the Usher concert caused downtown Atlanta on the night I had my book event launched, which he had rescheduled it to that night. And of the 10 former employees, three were former administrative assistants in departments I worked in over my 26 years. Wow. These are people that I gain relationships regardless of status.
Basketball coach taught me in seventh grade, Victor, respect the principal as you would respect the janitor and vice versa, it should not matter. And that stuck with me. And so my ability to be, let’s say, quote unquote at a high level in an organization, but have people who trust me enough to tell me what they’re experiencing, who are low in the organization, the number one thing that would come up.
[00:31:00] Would be all my manager cares about is getting it in advancement. They take credit for my work or they don’t give me credit for the work that I do. They don’t recognize my, I could go on. And I’m not saying every manager’s like that, but that was, so I believe that’s a two-edged thing.
Like some people can get to high levels despite all that. When I say all that, meaning the lack of
Porschia: right.
Victor: Gaining trust and all that, it happens.
The last three words in my book, more or less, are related to what I discovered my entire career has been all about, and that is pouring into others roughly.
I I rest well at night. I feel the love of and affection and the perspective of people that I, worked with 25 years ago, I’ve discovered that’s the fuel that makes me really feel good about the station in life that I am, and I [00:32:00] believe it’s a little bit of fool’s goal for those leaders who do ascend to heights by stepping over others.
They look around and they don’t have any former coworkers that reach out to them.
And I wanna be happy. And I, it really boils down to that. So I think that’s the thing that stands in a way of really effective leadership, not being about the people first.
Porschia: Yeah. I wanna follow up on something you said, because.
I hear this a lot and have worked with some clients through it. I wanna know what is maybe one or two quick tips you would give to someone about managing up, which you mentioned was, a huge challenge when it comes to credibility.
Victor: Yes. And in terms of a couple of quick things, managing up.
Let me tell you about a piece of feedback I got toward the end of my career. It was this extensive and as [00:33:00] a professional coach yourself, I know that you are trained in a lot of different things, and one of them, I can’t remember the term of this particular assessment that I got, but it was nine attributes.
It was done over a period of three months, and a clinical psych or industrial psychologist interviewed me and so forth, and I got measured on a number of things and it related to. My leadership, my setting of vision and things of that nature. But one of ’em had to do roughly with managing up. I got fours and fives on almost everything, which on one of the items, the person said no one’s ever gotten a five.
And that one related to working with and through others, roughly the only place where I got a three related to something that roughly relates to managing up. It suggested that I didn’t spend enough time, with developing leadership relationships at the highest level because I was already a vp.
And then, we go up one level, you’re the CFO of the Coca-Cola company, [00:34:00] and I looked at that portion, I thought, you know what, I’ll take that l. That’s who I am. I am I, that, that was just not the thing for me. But so for the person that is balanced in between the need to manage up, which is something that’s effective and has to be done, it has to be done in a way that balances with, it’s advocating for your people, right?
You can be in that room with that person above you and talking about the things that you’ve done and accomplished. Through your team, and I believe that leader both accomplishes the connections they wanna make with the leaders above them. Who in turn speaks about that person as, wow, that person’s really a great leader.
They’re humble, they’re representing their team. That’s who we need. And what I found at my company at Coca-Cola Porsche, that the leaders who were above me during the early parts of my [00:35:00] career that didn’t represent what I’ve just described, they were up there. But for whatever reason, it eventually faded away.
That manager that I told you I had that honest conversation with about my career, who com communicated to me that the word on the street was that I wasn’t a go-getter. Another manager had said that he was honest, he was credible. I believed him. He became the highest ranking finance person in North America.
Those other leaders who were his peers were gone. And I began to formulate my mind. Now I see, yes, people can get to certain heights, but they tend to cap out.
The ones who keep going are the ones that have that thing that is the co. The combination of being able to be effective up here at heights, but be able to communicate effectively and make and be believable and trusted with people that report to them.
And if I had a do-over, I didn’t know I could get that [00:36:00] three score up. ’cause I was discovering that later in my career I was a later advancing executive relative to peers that worked with me in the middle part of my career. Remember that MBAI talked to you about that duck in the water? I decided to supercharge my career ’cause I needed it.
’cause I saw people passing me up. I caught up, but I had gotten there late. Relatively speaking, and that’s when I was taking in this other next level stuff at an executive level. So sorry for the long answer, but I’m telling you there’s a lot packed into that.
I don’t think you can get away from being a trusted individual.
Porschia: Yeah. Agreed. And people are just gonna have to pick up the book. So tell us more about your business, Victor.
Victor: So my business is at a very small scale now. I had one corporate client during the year 20 25, 24 when 25 so that I could focus on writing my book. [00:37:00] And I did my co most of my coaching with Emory, MBA students.
So I’m a hired executive coach in their MBA program, first year MBAs, in their exec, in their full-time MBA program and also their executive MBAs. And my business has really stayed at a small scale on purpose because I am retired, I. Sometimes my wife’s asking me, so you seem sometimes as busy as you were when you were in corporate and it’s something that’s going to evolve and scale up a little bit more later.
Next week I’m on with a boutique consulting firm that has an internal coaching practice, coaching their younger 20 something year old MBAs and I will be talking to them about. Enhancing their coaching culture and that’s where my passion lies. The corporate bigger projects probably are ahead of me as a [00:38:00] professional certified coach.
You know about taking the a CC accreditation. I just. Applied for that, sent in all my requirements for Porsche so that my ability to be a coach at Coca-Cola, which I’ve talked to their head, HR people at a few other companies. That’s where my business will grow into a little bit more. Being a third party person that can coach executives there.
So I really don’t talk much about my business as much because it’s almost been just this thing I’m doing on the side. But now that the book is written, I’m growing into what my business can become.
Porschia: That’s great. We will be providing a link to your website and other social channels in our show notes so people can find you online.
Now, Victor, I wanna ask you our last question that we ask all of our guests. How do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their [00:39:00] career?
Victor: A positive edge in your career, I do believe is about continuing. To grow your knowledge. When I mentioned to you earlier that I continue to read books, reread sections of books, among the things that I saw that relates to being credible that connects to this answer I’m giving you is that competence requires a continuing, competence requires a continuing level of curiosity and growth, which means pouring into yourself is table stakes. You have to continue to be that person that’s taking in new knowledge. Not just from reading books, but also connecting with your team members who have different types of knowledge. I do believe that’s something that people maybe lose sight of once they get to a certain level.[00:40:00]
And like companies that, for example, are late on transforming in terms of their technical capabilities. Oftentimes they’ll. Breach a new level of technol technological capability and believe that this is gonna last the next 10 years and it doesn’t. That continual growth is so necessary both for companies and individuals.
Porschia: I completely agree. I completely agree. Victor, you have shared a lot of wisdom with us today, and I’m sure that our listeners can use it to be more confident and credible in their careers. We appreciate you being with us.
Victor: Thank you. It is been fun, Pia. I appreciate it.
Porschia: This episode was brought to you by the Brave Bird Career Alliance, the go-to membership designed for seasoned executives and ambitious professionals with everything you [00:41:00] need for career planning, strategy, training, and support. Thank you again for listening to the Career 1 0 1 podcast. I hope you have at least one key takeaway that you.
Can use in your own career. If you enjoyed hanging out with us, please rate, subscribe, and share this podcast. Until next time, here’s to your success.
