Making Commitment Fashionable Again

As a thoughtful leader, you want to be seen as someone who is consistently dependable and reliable, right? Recently I have noticed people behaving without the kind of integrity I have come to expect in business, or in life. I don’t know if you have noticed this too, but I thought it worth exploring in this week’s newsletter.

I may be showing my age, but when I grew up, we always had to RSVP to parties and events. The translation of this French phrase simply means “Please respond”. Not such a difficult request. In many cases, there was a date by which the host needed to know if you would be attending or not.

More importantly, I was taught that once I said ‘yes’ to a party or event, I was not allowed to change my mind, even if a better or seemingly more interesting invitation came along. My word was my bond. I still behave in this manner. In fact, when I recently found I had accidentally double-booked myself for the same date, I immediately cancelled the second event I’d said ‘yes’ to, losing a bit of money in doing so.

I have run a large number of events over my career and in my personal life, and I know how important it is for the venue, catering and general planning to have a good idea of the number of attendees. More often than not, people say they are coming and then don’t show up, meaning there is excess food and drink, and perhaps space. I have also observed people showing up without having confirmed their attendance, creating chaos as tables, chairs and food orders are hastily rearranged.

Having experienced two instances of this very recently, I began to think about the possible reasons for this trend of people not committing at all, or not honouring their commitments. My knee-jerk thought was “People have become more flaky” but then I reflected on all the uncertainty we have been through over the past two years. Maybe they were unsure about travelling or worried about catching a virus. Maybe we have lost the art of committing or even making decisions, with so few events during the pandemic.

However, the integrity piece still needs to be addressed. Well before the pandemic, I saw more cancellations, last-minute decisions, after the RSVP date and even the day before or the day of the event! Have you experienced this, or is it just me?

Being a problem solver and hopefully a thoughtful leader, I’d like to be part of the solution and turn this trend around. If fashions can have a comeback, so can good manners. I believe that do create a significant change, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of the event organiser as well as the attendee. 

If you have run events or parties of any kind, you will have been nodding while you’ve been reading this article. How dare people ‘mess you about’ as we say in the UK? So disrespectful! Wait a second. As the organiser, have you made everything very clear and easy for people to understand the details, decide and confirm? 

Last month, I used Facebook to create an event in New York, but because I set it up while in London, the timings were all wrong. I never noticed until someone told me, the day before the event! So people didn’t even have the correct details. Oops. Then I kept posting in the online event, only for people to tell me they didn’t really check Facebook regularly and had missed my updates.

What I should have done was check the details carefully, private message, text or call people to ensure they knew about the event, the RSVP date and my desire for them to attend. This was a small event so that would have been possible. What about a large event? How can you get more commitment and better commitment?

I’ll be controversial here. I think free events are risky and encourage people to think there isn’t much value. Therefore, they don’t treat them (or you) professionally and respectfully. I have been guilty of signing up for a free event and then not attending, and I would bet you have too…

So  charge a fee for professional or more involved social events (perhaps not birthday parties). Even if the fee is refundable, many people will be reluctant to cancel and ask for that refund. A few years ago, before the pandemic, I was planning a webinar and I told my business partners I was going to charge $5 for the spaces. They argued that I couldn’t charge for a webinar, but I did and we got nearly 70% attendance, compared to the 25-30% industry average. I think if I’d charged $20 as I had originally intended, I may have seen up to 90% attendance.

Follow up several times with people, even if you have confirmation. Life is so busy that we can miss reminders. Better to be safe than sorry, as they say. I have just had a restaurant app send me a message asking me to confirm a table I had already confirmed. I thought it was over the top, but I guess they have experienced no-shows and want to give people extra reminders. It took one second for me to click the link to say 'Yes, I'll definitely be there'.

One other tip relates to my experience above. Don’t just broadcast everything. Reach out to people personally if you can. They will feel much more likely to commit and honour that commitment. If you don’t have time to do it, or if there is a large list, get help from your team or even outsource it. I’m sure that extra effort will pay off. 

When you are the invitee, think carefully about whether you want or need to be at the event and make a quick decision, by the RSVP date. Then stick to your decision, even if something that looks better turns up. Show that care and respect for your host.

Knowing what it’s like on the other side, please consider how you and your team, and even your family, can show more respect to event organisers. As human beings, we know how to do this respect thing; we may just have forgotten the importance of it or how to do it well. Let’s make those good manner fashionable again. For my part, my team and I will be reaching out to you personally as part of our event planning. So, see you soon!

P.S. I have another fantastic business angle to share with you next week, so ensure you Subscribe to this newsletter and look out for that!

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