Page 190 - Fearless Leadership

Honoring and Fulfilling Commitments 177

A leader’s credibility requires living by his or her word. If you are of the
misguided opinion that it is acceptable to break small commitments as
long as you keep the big ones, you are heading for a huge fall—a fall in
credibility. You might classify “I’ll call you tomorrow” as a small commit-
ment that is not worthy of worry or angst should you neglect to follow
through. But your thinking is flawed. It does not matter how you think your
broken commitments will impact others. The only relevant data is the
experience others have when you break your commitments.
Use any classification system you want, but when you separate impor-
tant commitments from the not-so-important ones, you are creating a false
dichotomy. When you say “Yes, I will do this,” you have committed. Your
words carry weight, and you lose credibility each time you break or irre-
sponsibly revoke a promise. The people around you tally commitments
the same way one maintains a debit or credit ledger. When you break a
commitment, others put a check mark in the debit column. When you
keep a commitment, they put a check mark in the credit column. From
the perspective of others, you are either a leader who keeps his or her word
or one who does not. There is no gray area. The question you must answer
is “Do you have the courage to live by your word, and to recover quickly
and responsibly when you do not?”

A Good Excuse Is Not a Result

When people do not fulfill their commitments, most have a good excuse.
They will tell you about the effort they put into the project or the circum-
stance that impeded them. They will justify the lack of results with expla-
nations and excuses. But an excuse is not a result that almost made it. An
excuse is an excuse. It is the cover story or pretext intended to explain why
the result or commitment was not fulfilled. It is intended to vindicate and
pardon the person who did not do what he or she promised. And we fall
into the trap of accepting effort as a reasonable excuse for the lack of results.
Have you noticed how conditioned we have become to accepting
excuses and explanations? We frequently ask others “Why is this late?” as
if the answer to “why” justifies the lack of a result. The word why routinely
leads to an explanation, reason, or excuse based on the individual’s inter-
pretation of events. Why do we waste our time asking for interpretations