How committed are you to people?

This is a question that seems to have a common sense answer. Many people truly believe they are committed and make promises with the intention to deliver. However, they don’t always think about commitments as promises. Essentially, when you break a commitment, you’ve really broken a promise. You've let someone down. When you make a promise, you gain trust from that person that you will commit to your word which used to be such a powerful thing in history. Your honour and word was your reputation and it represented who you were, which family you came from and how people viewed you. It should hold true for people today.

I work in HR and I see people make commitments all the time. Think of employers - they make promises more often than they think. Posting a job description and stating that the candidate who gets hired for this position will be involved in continuous learning and development, strategic decision-making and have the ability to work in a strong team and mentorship environment will apply for the job to do just that. If the new hire steps into a role that is everything but what they applied for (think, lack of development opportunities, lack of strategic work and a poor team working environment with a manager that has little time to provide mentorship), you have attracted top talent and essentially deceived them. How much would it take for an employer to provide a candidate with as much of what the job description entailed so that the candidate truly felt like they had applied to a job with an accurate description.

Imagine treating your customers this way? You advertise to your customers that your product or service will give you this specific value and after you gain them as a paying customer, you fail to deliver on what you promised. This happens with some businesses sometimes, but keep this up and your business won’t exist for long. The old adage to treat your employees like your customers holds true and vice versa.

Managers and leaders often over commit to employees by failing to keep the promises they make to their direct reports. Think about every time you promised to have a 1:1 meeting with your employee but you got busy and had to cancel or keep them waiting. Each time a commitment is broken, you garner less respect from your employee and you start to gain a reputation as someone who fails to keep promises. In time, this can hurt you as a leader. You can build an empire but without people who will trust and follow you, you’ll be building it on your own.

Commitments can be extremely powerful if you can actually keep your word and follow through. Even small commitments, when followed through, can create immense feelings of trust, gratitude and respect. If you know you can’t commit to everything you promise, don’t over promise and under deliver but do the opposite - under promise and over deliver. Never forget that a commitment is a promise and it should be taken seriously every single time. Don't let your people down.