Quiet Competence in Business and How to Express It

It’s understandable that you might want everyone out there to know all about your excellent business accomplishments. However, getting that out there might equate to boasting – something that can be damaging to your reputation in itself, but especially so if you aren’t able to back up those words with quality output.

You don’t just want to be describing how great your business is, you want that to be clear – meaning a more subtle form of communication. Exuding competence and confidence in every aspect of your business might sound like a tall order, but it can have a resounding impact.

Let Your Product Speak for Itself

Your central product or service is ultimately why your audiences are here. While you might have roped them in with your quality marketing, that won’t be why they’re sticking around – you need to ensure that you’re consistently supplying them with quality output. The difficulty can come when you feel yourself beginning to grow stale or stagnant in the eyes of audiences. Your quality might not have dipped, but if your competitors have all evolved around you, then should you be doing the same?

Experimentation and evolution are certainly important, but they have to be done in a way that feels organic to what your brand has established up to this point. You want your brand to keep pace naturally, in a way where it feels as though you’re abiding by your own standards more than your competitors’.

A Lack of Disruptions

The mark of competence can often be complete and utter silence.

This might be most relevant when it comes to something like security. While business security is largely an internal matter, it can explode out into the public world when a brand finds itself to be the victim of a malicious cyberattack. A breach of confidential data might mean anything from business documents to customer data, but in any case, it can make customers look at you with a lot less trust. 

That might mean that you take a more proactive attitude towards your security – actively anticipating problems so that you can prepare in advance. Understanding the tools that you use thoroughly so that you don’t open up exploitations, such as the API security best practices, can help to cover your bases.

A Professional Demeanor

Sometimes, it’s all about confidence. A strong performance can be undercut by a frantic and more haphazard approach to your tone of voice. While it can pay off to have a brand personality that is affable and less formal, this is something that has to be very carefully considered. Poor attempts to manage this might simply come off as rude or desperate, or worse, attempting to cash in on trends established by other brands.

This isn’t saying that all brands have to have the same dry, professional personality, but it’s understanding the role that professionalism has in any brand personality. You want to take serious complaints seriously, you want to know when to deploy levity and when you should be providing helpful advice.