How Leaders Build or Destroy Trust Through Commitments & Promises - The Character Series, Part 7

The quickest way to destroy trust is to break a commitment or a promise, that you have made. Keeping commitments is key to our integrity. And integrity is key to our unblemished trustworthiness.

If you have ever been on the wrong end of a broken commitment, you will know what that does to your sense of trust towards the other person who broke that commitment or promise. Broken commitments resemble a huge withdrawal from trust, that is particularly hard to recover from.

All of this is obvious for most people. What is a little bit less obvious way of diminishing trust is if you make commitments that are so vague, nobody is really sure what you are committing to or if you’re even committing at all.

Not only does this behavior leave people confused as to what to expect of us, but it also pulls into question about whether we are really on the same team with them.

Little by little, the commitments we have kept, add to our trustworthiness. It profoundly deepens the relationship with the people we interact with. But it is impossible to gain the same reward if we make commitments that are vague. Even if we follow through on a vague commitment, it comes across as a coincidental byproduct of our activity, rather than for deliberate effort, and therefore is not adding to our trustworthiness as much.

I remember a time where I was once interacting with a colleague, who was famous for making vague commitments, or to avoid them altogether. I had a sense that this person may have had a Hidden agenda that would prevent him from making solid commitments, so he would never appear as breaking them. Turns out that in fact did have a Hidden agenda, and he would only follow through if the task would serve himself directly.

A vague commitment is no commitment at all!

However, there are also other reasons as to why people would be making vague commitments. For example, somebody may be asked to do a task and commit to it, but deep down, they are insecure about their own ability to deliver. For those reasons they might not say a straight NO to the request or the task, and therefore, as a way out or an attempt to please, will give a commitment that is inherently vague.

As you can see from these two examples, it becomes clear that the ability to commit is both an indicator of our character AND our competence. When we are unable to truly commit, but commit anyway, we may not possess the guts or motivation to tell the truth about our competence.

Most people will instinctively say that the ability to keep commitments is directly related to integrity. And that’s correct. But it’s not the only thing that it is related to. We also need to be committed to the principles of courage, for accepting a degree of risk with most commitment we make, and we need to possess the humility to admit when our competence for the commitment is not where it needs to be.

It is nearly impossible to work collaboratively with people who are so afraid of making mistakes that you can never get them to commit to anything.?

So in order to gain trust through our commitment, here is what we need to do.

We have to say what we are going to do and then we have to go do what we said we would do. But attention: Because a kept commitment is so precious and a broken commitment is so devastating, we have to be careful and measured about the commitments that we choose to make. ‘Careful and measured’ does not mean vague. Instead, it means that we are exact about what we are willing to commit to, AFTER having assessed and accepted what it will take to follow through.

Trust earned from kept commitments is not a numbers game, though. It is not possible to maintain a high level of trust when we keep 90% of our commitments but on 10% of our commitments we come up short. The dynamic at play here is that the other person needs to feel certain that a commitment made is a commitment kept. If this trust is broken only a few times, you Integrity no longer carries the same weight.

So how would you rank your level of integrity with regards to commitments kept?

If you are unsure, you could look at the commitments you are making to yourself. Are you usually keeping the commitments you make to yourself? Or are you finding reasons as to why you should either break the commitment or lower your standards with regards to your committed actions and behaviors??

Learning how to be 100% effective with the commitments that we make to ourselves is the fastest way of growing our integrity, as others are going to notice this in our personality.

It provides them with insight into the kind of person we are, so they can have?increased confidence and trust for the commitments that we make towards them.?

So let’s start with ourselves! And let’s be careful, measured and wise about our choices on which commitments we truly INTEND on keeping, and which ones we are truly ABLE to keep.?

This article is part of the Character Series!

I am committed to writing about aspects of character development and leadership behaviours that exhibit strong character traits, until the subject is exhausted.

Why am I doing that? I do it to inspire leaders of all levels to continuously challenge themselves to develop the best strength of character they can possibly aspire to possess.?

The Character Series is inspired by the 13 behaviours of high trust leaders, as postulated by Stephen M.R. Covey, but will eventually go beyond it.

As leaders, our impact on both people and business and the world is immense. As we elect our most powerful leaders, we need to become much better judges of character. And that begins with ourselves.

I am the head of?Blue Horizon Training SRL, and inspiring people to become exemplary leaders is our mission.

#leadership?#character?#managers?#trust