Impact Lacks Without Consistency

Take out a piece of paper right now. Write down two adjectives that best describe how you want to be perceived, no matter whom you're communicating with or through which communication medium. 

Did you write down confident?

Credible?

Trustworthy? Whatever adjectives you chose, here's the hard truth: you can't be those things Monday through Wednesday while slacking the rest of the week. You can't deliver impact in high-stakes meetings then phone it in during routine conference calls. Professional impact doesn't work on a part-time schedule.

Think about it this way: if you wanted to lose weight or start eating healthy, exercising three days a week will never give you lasting results. You need to be all in. The same principle applies to your professional impact. Impact is the result of being consistent, period.

Your Daily Communications Shape Your Reputation

I'm guessing you take time to prepare your message prior to participating in high-stakes conversations. You ensure you sound knowledgeable, confident, ready to deliver impact on your listener. You may even stand up while practicing your delivery beforehand. Do you put in the same amount of effort preparing for the conference call you facilitate? The casual check-in with your team? The email response to a colleague?

If not, you're not all in. If your day-to-day communication doesn't deliver impact, it will be extremely difficult to have impact during your high-stakes conversations. Your listeners are forming opinions about you during every interaction—not just the important ones.

Consistency Builds Credibility

Research on communication credibility reveals a critical finding: when listeners perceive inconsistency between your verbal messages, nonverbal signals, communication mediums, your credibility suffers dramatically. If your listeners don't see consistency in how you communicate through all mediums, there's a strong probability they will not perceive you as confident, credible, trustworthy—whatever adjective you identified earlier.

Your reputation isn't built during presentations alone. It's built during every phone call, every email, every casual conversation, every virtual meeting. Each interaction either reinforces your professional brand or undermines it. There's no middle ground.

The Energy Cost of Inconsistency

Here's what most professionals don't realize: it's actually more difficult for you to turn your professional presence on off all day, every day. When you focus, hold yourself accountable, practice enhancing your communication skills on a consistent basis, you no longer need to "turn it on" from one conversation to another.

Inconsistent communicators exhaust themselves switching between professional personas. They spend mental energy remembering which version of themselves to present in each situation. Consistent communicators operate from a single, authentic, powerful version of themselves. They conserve energy while maximizing impact.

Small Moments, Big Consequences

Your listeners are making judgments about your competence during brief email exchanges. They're evaluating your leadership potential during routine team meetings. They're assessing your credibility during casual hallway conversations. These aren't low-stakes interactions—they're relationship-building opportunities disguised as everyday moments.

When you bring the same level of preparation, presence, intentionality to every communication, you're not just improving individual interactions. You're building a reputation for impact that precedes you into every room.

Where Do You Begin?

Start with awareness. Today, ask a peer, friend, family member what perception they have of you based on your verbal nonverbal communication. Is this feedback consistent across your personal professional relationships? Is this feedback consistent across communication mediums: presentations, meetings, virtual face-to-face conversations?

The answers might surprise you. Most professionals have blind spots about how they're perceived in different contexts. Some are confident in presentations yet tentative in one-on-one conversations. Others are articulate in writing yet scattered in verbal communication.

Your Call to Action

Begin today to create consistency in your life. Identify the communication habits that serve you well in high-stakes situations, then apply them to every situation. Prepare for routine calls the way you prepare for important meetings. Craft emails with the same care you put into presentations. Show up with intention whether you're addressing one person or one hundred.

Professional impact isn't about perfection—it's about consistency. When your communication standards never waiver, your reputation becomes unshakeable. When people know what to expect from you regardless of the context, they learn to trust you completely.

Stop saving your best communication for special occasions. Make every interaction special by bringing your most professional, prepared, powerful self to each one. Your career depends on it.

Research consistently demonstrates that perceived consistency between verbal and nonverbal communication significantly impacts speaker credibility and audience trust: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295251323_Consistency_between_verbal_and_non-verbal_affective_cues_a_clue_to_speaker_credibility