To boost your credibility, try to unleash your inner consultant. Think of yourself as a highly valued and recognized strategist: how would you engage with your clients? What would you expect of them, and what would they expect of you? As you try out this experiment, think about the foundational enablers required to position yourself as a valued internal consultant:

Trust: If you don’t have trust, you have nothing. It’s a precondition of any communication or collaboration.

Credibility: Your credibility is a valuable asset that should be cultivated and protected. Think carefully about what behaviours, contributions and relationships help build your credibility ‘equity,’ and about factors that erode it. The truism about credibility is that it can take years to build, and moments to kill.

Alignment: To be recognized as a go-to expert in communications, it’s critical that you be seen to be working in alignment with your internal clients’ objectives and priorities. They need to get an immediate sense that you’re on their team and you’re committed to contributing to their success. Sometimes shifting your own mindset in approaching colleagues and managers can do wonders in terms of shifting their perception of your skills and value.

Give it a try. You may not emerge a caped superhero from the experiment, but it’ll probably bring some surprisingly positive results for your internal client relationships.