The Credibility and Power Matrix (CPM)

Credibility of a person and the power they wield over others are somewhat key to relating in these fast paced days of the internet of things.

Power is sweet, credibility is tasteful; their mastery has exponential relational derivatives, as many people seek to acquire more followers, more partners, and more friends, in a bid to increase influence and profit.

In such a quest, there are arise the dynamics of management of the dynamics of all such relationships, just as is with customer relationship management.

Credibility is essential to relating with a partner, investor, employee, friend, or student.

Power is especially in relation to customer, those that have purchased a product, or a service from you, including prospective customers as well.

The mastery of knowing how to easily profile the people, within minutes, if possible, will help in the healthy advancement of your cause as a business person, leader, and even team player.

Today’s consumer has power of opinion that shapes buyer behaviour of those they influence, all brought about with the increased communications platforms and trends of brand consumption.

Today’s entrepreneurs have different levels of credibility that they must maintain, suiting circumstances of transaction or acquaintance, again, all because of the increased modes of business to business communication platforms.

Life is a stage that one has no option but to perform on it, and such performance generating all manner of results depending on their disposition accumulated by their relational environment.

Enter the Credibility and Power Matrix. The Credibility and Power Matrix is a behaviour and performance measurement tool for relating with people in business and customer relations, giving one the ability to predict future behaviour using profiles that simulate character and charisma of people.

Background and Need

The Credibility and Power Matrix is based on observation, market researches, and simply spending thousands of hours in coffee shops, street corners, and social media platforms, just watching the human being in their natural habitat of relating in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.

In dealing and relating with a diverse people, there are common denominators that kept coming up, that helped me to develop a psychoanalytical profiling that is in close relation to the elements of weather per se. 

Credibility is often misunderstood by many as being something that must be attained by the one requiring business or the one needing the relationship, but in truth, credibility is dual in that both parties must be credible for the relating to be effective and derive specifics. 

Power is often misused and sometimes results in, for example, customers becoming bullies to brands and businesses, or leaders over shadowing their followers lives.

An entrepreneur needs to know how to relate with partners, clients, employees regardless their psychological disposition, trustworthy or not, that they have an open mind, profiling them so as to relate better.

A brand or business needs to know the power of each of its customers, their disposition being revealed in the Credibility and Power Matrix, helping to profile and define proper expectations on each customer.

The Credibility and Power Matrix

The Credibility and Power Matrix is a behaviour and performance measurement tool for relating with people in business and customer relations, giving one the ability to predict future behaviour using profiles that simulate character and charisma of people.

The Matrix has four profiles of behaviour that help someone understand the credibility and power of people around them, for relational beneficiation.

The Credibility and Power Matrix has Earth Behaviour, Fire Behaviour, Water Behaviour, Wind Behaviour. 

The matrix profiles the behaviour of the person one will be relating with. 

There are four types of behaviours in the Credibility Matrix – Earth, Water, Wind and Fire. 

To know these, understand them, use them, is the mastery of psychoanalytical profiling of all those that are around you, as you relate for pleasure and profit. 

These psychoanalytical profiling of Earth, Water, Fire and Wind are not exhaustive, can be extended further; hence are just a provision of basics to shape a relational understanding of any person with close enough personality traits.

EARTH Behaviour

Earth, soil, is solid, malleable, and hosts all manner of seed, and is able to cause the growth of plant life, and even is somewhat the source of animal life, and its food.

In the same manner, the earth person is solid, fertile, focussed, serious, yet bit course, hard, and may appear independent with hints perfectionism.

There are customers that are solid, know what they want, and can support a brand and business based on carefully calculated decisions for product or service consumption.

There is that employee that is sound, sober, and has workmanship that can be measured with a consistent trajectory showing growth and betterment of self and business.

There are business partners that solid, careful, and always do a due diligence before engaging in any major decision or transaction, as there are most things to risk than rewards may appear.

The Earth customer, employee, and entrepreneur, or leader, has firm emotional dispositions, as they are grounded in a carefully crafted lifestyle that raised them from the beginning of life.

The earth knows its place and does not change, they remain consistent and are very supportive, tolerant and have a deeper understanding of various subject matters.

In boardrooms, the earth behaviour is one that derives the solid matters on the agenda, making sure they are address and decisions made with key results pointed out. 

Brands followed by Earth consumers must makes sure their advertising is clear, even if humorous, intelligent, but it must be straightforward, and without clatter. 

Earth tends to be immovable in its natural state, solid, firm, and often considered rigid, or even too independent and domineering.

There are people that are not easy going, firm and often inconsiderate in dealing with correcting others, or even resolving disputes, personal or corporate; these are earthen vessels of behaviour.

Earth people are those with ordered lifestyles, methods of communication, and tried and tested ways of conduct, whether right or wrong.

WATER Behaviour

Water is fluid, flows, shapeless, and can penetrate any matter that can absorb it, and move over anything that limits it, or even overwhelm that which may prohibit it.

In the same manner, there are people that are as water, fluid and flowing in all aspects of relating; consumer or leader, they are people that are easy going and can flow smoothly.

Water people possess power of crowds, as they are able to round up their strength and overwhelm any challenge that arises and needs dealing with.

The shapelessness of water allows it to take any shape or form, and that being a strength and a weakness at the same time. Water can take shape of any vessel it is captured in, and also can take a solid state shape when it is frozen into a vessel desired.

The power of water can be in various manners such as waves, rivers, lakes, pools, springs, and so forth. Such is the power of water people, able to conquer in forms of waves, lead in rivers, settle as lakes, pools, and rise from limitations like springs.

The water consumer is one able to consume brands with passion, socking self into all aspects of the brand, being loyal and never leaving.

A water leader leads with force, cunning skills, and easy going relationships.

There is however a lack of assertiveness with water people as they are illusive, due to their fitting in disposition, hence may have questionable loyalties.

Water people may do things in support only if it suits them, moving in many places, taking many shapes in order to survive and achieve objectives of life.

Water friends are those that are close to all but may not necessarily be loyal to none, as they may be the carriers of all detail within the community of friends.

FIRE Behaviour

Fire is hot, passionate, powerful, energetic, dramatic, able to not only warm, heat, but also destroy, bringing dynamic change to its environment depending on what it has been exposed to and at what rate of energy.

All brands and leaders love and need passionate followers and consumers that are dedicated to the brand cause and that are the force for growth of territory.

Energy and drama, a combination that brings powerful change to what it is exposed to is most valuable to cause related campaigns in business and leadership, and even in branding.

Passionate friends are a source of inspiration for many people that lack energy to do things, and often provide warmth and comfort.

Fire, however burns, and can destroy, and most often happens when they are not treated in the manner they deem right.

Passionate consumers are sometimes the ones that are trigger happy to bully the same brand they so passionately supported.

Leaders with fire behaviour are those that turn against them they once stood with, or aggressively spit flames of offense even when not necessary, as bitterness is a burning force of negativity.

Most negative people are passionately destructive as untamed fire, with flaming opinions aimed at either scotching or destroying what they deem needing it.

Relating with a fire friend often requires one to always be careful as they are manipulative, and often greedy in that fire consumes all at the expense of the needs of others.

It often seems that a person strong in there is difficult to redirect, and that makes fire people self-destructive, until there are extinguished.

Remember, though, that fire is best dealt with by quenching it, and that can either be a safe or unsafe event, depending on skill of the fire expert.

WIND Behaviour

Wind is formless, intangible, powerful, exciting, can cause dramatic change, and reshape or move things from one place to the next, a behaviour trait that many leaders, consumers and friends possess.

Undetected, wind people have the ability to fit in to situations and take control and redirect affairs to directions suitable to them, and such consumers or leaders often bring great change.

A wind consumer is one that becomes an advocate for the brand, over and above being a loyal consumer; they preach the gospel of the brand.

A wind leader is adventurous, energetic and able to take radical decisions and actions to drive the masses to do dramatic fits of greatness as they pursue their objectives.

Wind people are a necessity in communities needing radical change, and understanding their use will bring enormous results of change, and can even birth new dispensations.

Wind takes the form of whirlwinds, breezes, tornados, and more; all being beneficial or destructive depending on who is using them or in control.

The excitable consumer is a necessity for a brand as they drive hype, that creates interest, sales leads, and eventual consumption.

The dramatic leader can bring radical change to reshape the landscape and stage in specific territories.

Wind people are often regarded as anything goes people, as they can buy into any cause or anything excitable without much thought.

An understanding of wind people help one know how to manage them for benefit, and also learn how to protect self from their raging energy.

Cocktail of the Matrix

The brilliant thinker is one who has the ability to not only identify and relate with those around them, but also create behavioural cocktail of the matrix. 

It can be so that a person can be, for example, Wind and Fire at the same time, and managing them is paramount in that they have dual power of influence, to consume with power for good or bad.

Managing people around requires an ability to fuse two or more of these profiles of behaviour in order to direct energy to effectiveness, which sometimes may not necessarily be to their benefit but for your profit.

Applicability of the Matrix

The Matrix in most relatable to the entrepreneur as they relate to their employees, partners, friends, family, clients and customers; opening their sense of sight to better relate.

Have you ever had a customer that is extremely trigger happy with complaints over service delivery, yet cheap in paying, and if any small little thing happens, they go tell the whole world?

Have you ever had a landlord whom it is never about the rent, but they just find something, anything and everything to comment, correct, decree a law, even to the extent of regulating which direction the sun should shine on you?

Have you ever had a boss that nags so much and says you do not deliver anything yet they themselves actually do not know what they are doing and you do it for them?

Have you ever had friends that are so elusive in relating with you, their loyalties are strongest only when they need help, yet so are the same ones that spread gossip about you, or perpetuate your demise and still stand with you as your fall, only to be irritated when you do not fall?

Have you ever consulted for someone that you assist to start and grow, being their rainmaker and yet they relate with you as a person less that human, treating a commander of an army as a mire security guard?

If these questions are questions relating to you, and more, then the Credibility and Power Matrix is a must read and understand for you, so it helps you not to be bitter, hate people, but understand how to relate with them for your emotional and tangible profitability.

Supporting Ideologies

In constructing the credibility of the people one is relating to, you must understand that everyone is a relational asset or liability, and hence manage your Social Balance Sheet per se.

It is important for a public figure to always see themselves as a listed company, with every activity contributing to their trading statistics and balance sheet, as every leader has a Social Balance Sheet that accounts for their operations (relating with people), and comprises assets and liabilities (relational or otherwise).

In the same manner, the Credibility Matrix is very important for one to understand the aspect of helping, being helped, serving and being served, and that being encapsulated in the Rainmaker Theory.

The Rainmaker Theory denotes that every rainfall and every storm within a season of rain has an author and that is the person to watch as opposed to gauging the strength of the rainfall only. 

Moreover, all people one relates to have an emotional disposition that may not necessarily be well balanced according to others, hence having an emotional sickness that needs to rid of – the Fear Bitterness and Insecurity Virus.

The FBI Virus is a serious, yet subtle virus that grips any wronged or misguided human – spouse, parent, worker, entrepreneur, and even political leader.

Even so, the matrix helps understand the level of influence of those around, and that understanding important for shaping how one relates and benefits in that relating.

Influencer marketing, a new concept of relating with consumers and followers, is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential customers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers.

Influencer content may be framed as testimonial advertising where they play the role of a potential buyer themselves, or they may be third parties.

These four, and more, are behavioural issues that need to be addressed, and must be kept in mind as we proceed to profile the consumer and partner in business and branding.

In Conclusion

Pleasure and profit are the reason why humans relate and understanding the Credibility and Power Matrix helps one know how to derive them at all times.