Effective Leadership through Commitment Tracking: How to Keep Your Team’s Trust and Loyalty
Admit it, you make more promises than you can actually keep. You make promises to your spouse, your child, your team members, and promises to your customers. That’s a lot of promises right there!
I know it’s incredibly tedious to keep track of the promises you make. Perhaps that’s why people have the tendency to over-commit themselves. And when that happens, it’s hard to follow through on all promises made, especially if the fulfillment of one violates the other.
But that’s okay, am not one to judge.
Maybe you delivered on a work-related promise but forgot a family-related commitment. It happens even to the best of us.
Tracking your commitments is a sign of great business communication skills while staying true to your word is the number one sign of effective leadership.
If there’s one sure way for motivating employees, you can bet it’s staying true to your promises, whether that’s an approved vacation leave, a promotion, or even a simple meeting.
Unfortunately, keeping your promises is easier said than done.
Here are a few examples:
- You promise the branch manager that you can meet the target delivery date, without first checking your team’s schedule and available resources.
- You promise the branch manager that you can meet the target delivery date, without first checking your team’s schedule and available resources.
- A team member promises next day refund to a customer, without first checking the requirements for processing said refund.
The good news is there’s a simple (not easy!) way to keep your promises and hone your business communication skills at the same time:
Record every commitment you make, whether you actually committed to it or it’s just implied during a conversation.
Keep a notebook where you list commitments in 5 categories, including the commitment made, who’s involved, when and where it is, and the deadline.
Don’t forget casual promises you make, stuff that you say out loud that others could interpret as a genuine commitment. Good examples are requests for going out to coffee, small errands for your spouse, and routine requests from team members.
Categories:
- Self commitments
- Team members
- Boss and peers
- Clients, vendors or suppliers
- Potential clients
- Friends and family
Understand what is requested.
Okay, this is obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people say “okay” without even understanding what they got themselves into. Treat every commitment like a legally binding contract that you have to read before signing.
If you don’t understand what was requested, ask. There’s no such thing as a ‘stupid’ question, especially when you promised something in the hopes of motivating employees to go above and beyond, like a bonus or promotion.
Execution is the backbone of effective leadership. You can track commitments all you want, but that won’t matter if you don’t act towards fulfilling them. Get the ball rolling by doing at least one thing to move towards that goal immediately after recording it.
Check your record for overpromises, contradictions, and misallocated resources. So you promise to attend your daughter’s recital, only to find out later that you also have a business appointment at the same time! So what’s it gonna be? Your child, or your work?
Hopefully, you wouldn’t have to go through that dilemma. That’s why you need to keep track of every single promise you make.
Another reason is, and this applies to many small businesses without effective business communication skills training in place, is that managers make promises that may contradict or vary slightly from another manager’s promise.
Here’s a simple example: In a sales company, X manager promises the #1 sales representative would get an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii for two. Y manager, however, said the trip is only for 1 person.
Okay…. Which is which? Motivating employees is hard enough, but it’s even harder when they’re not sure who to believe.
Last but not least, evaluate yourself at the end of the month. Check your notebook, and run the numbers on the following:
- Number of promises you made
- How many did you forget?
- How many did you consciously abandon or cancel?
- How many commitments did you fulfill?
Consider the percentage of promises kept as a metric of effective leadership.
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