Tweet

Keep Commitments and Gain Interpersonal Trust

Guest post by: Millard MacAdam

Article Overview: Have you noticed how many people fail to keep the commitments they make? Want to know what you can do to help the members of your staff better keep their commitments, enhance interpersonal trust and increase their personal productivity? Read on!

Keep Commitments and Gain Interpersonal Trust

Have you noticed how many people fail to keep the commitments they make? It's increasingly a problem with our political and business leaders who get bad press over promises broken. At the bottom of the food trough, it happens with business associates, clients, customers, suppliers, subcontractors, and even with friends engaged in purely social things. It also happens in families, and leads to increasing numbers of failed marriages. Failing to keep commitments destroys interpersonal trust and right and productive living. It's becoming a norm that's some how alright for people to be late for appointments, not follow through on promises made, and be unconcerned with deadlines. Grace is great, but what's going on with these people? Are you a victim of this kind of behavior, or possibly guilty of doing it yourself?

Understanding some of the things that drive these unproductive, trust-busting, and relationship-destroying actions is a step toward making and keeping solid commitments and building interpersonal trust with others. The first three reasons for failed commitments listed below are legitimate; the others are the result of a lack of competency, personality short suits and character flaws which deter the keeping of commitments.

Opposing Priorities - When you ask someone to do something and they commit to doing it, make sure the agreement includes a common understanding of the urgency and immediacy of the task involved. Each person has his own set of priorities as to what is most important or urgent. Unfortunately, these differences are not often discussed and clarified and they should be. Here's an example: "It's important to me that you complete the painting by 4:00 p.m. next Thursday. Will you be able to meet that deadline?"

Vagueness - Some people use indirect communication, usually driven by some level of fear. They fail to directly say what they want and don't take steps to ensure that there is a common meeting of the minds. They couch their request so that they do not appear to be demanding. The direct approach: "Will you give me a ride home?" The indirect approach: "My car broke down and I'm wondering how can I get home today after work?" The indirect approach is manipulative. It's far better to say what you want and run the risk of a "no."

Misunderstanding - Sometimes the meanings of words are not crisp. "ASAP" means different things to different people. To a schedule-driven type A, it may mean within the next five minutes. To an easy-going creative type, it can mean sometime today. Eliminate this problem by being clear on what you mean and, if there is any doubt, ask the other person to paraphrase your request.

The above three points have covered the main positive, reasonable, and acceptable reasons for not honoring commitments. The seven that follow are not acceptable, but all too common.

Ineffective Time Initiative - Some people make commitments with the best of intentions toward keeping them, but then something always gets in the way, a previous assignment takes longer than planned, they didn't allow enough time to get there, or they had to do just a little bit more before leaving the office. It's likely that we've all fallen into the time traps. A big one is the inability to say "no" when asked to take on more than you can realistically handle. These time traps and others are seductive because they are based on the motivation to get more done in less time. However, the final result is the other person is inconvenienced and your stress level increases.

Unrealistic Expectations Of Others - Some people have grown up in homes where others took up the slack. They have grown to expect it from those around them. People having unrealistic expectations of others are unfortunate because they probably won't get the very feedback they need to change. Those impacted by the person's unrealistic juvenile behaviors tend to withdraw from the person, get the work done, and thus reinforce a life-long pattern.

Procrastination - Some people act like born procrastinators. No matter how little or how much they have to do, they always come up with reasons for avoiding taking action. You are unfortunate if you have to deal with a committed procrastinator. The best strategy for dealing with them is regularly following up. If you are a procrastinator, and want to break this negative behavior, try everyday for 90 days to select the most unpleasant, difficult, high-priority task from your list and do it first. You'll discover that during this time period you have substituted a new timely behavior for your old behavior. You'll feel better about yourself and enjoy your work more!

Irresponsibility - Being responsible is a learned character trait that some people never master. This character trait is so weak in some adults that they are incapable of honoring their commitments. They were never taught as children to be responsible and most likely had irresponsible parents as role models. Building the character trait of responsibility is a long, hard climb. It often begins with the mastery of the simple tasks and continues, sometimes agonizingly slowly, towards responsible adulthood.

Ego - Some people have the view that others owe them a certain level of deference by virtue of their position, intelligence or wealth. These people think that your concerns are not as important as theirs. When they fail to keep a commitment, they believe it's not important in their slanted picture of things. The best way to deal with these people is to assertively check their intent. When it happens, ask them, "Is your intent to ignore the commitments you have made when you have something to you to do that you consider more important?" Keep pushing and force them to declare their intent. If it's clear their intent is to always keep the options open and not honor commitments, avoid them if you can. Their inflated sense of ego pretty much guarantees that they won't be receptive to your suggestions for growing in commitment and trust.

Manipulation - There are people whose consciences have declined to a point where they have no intention of keeping their commitments. They commit only to stringing you along, getting a little more out of you, and then moving on to the next unwary victim. You don't need these people in your life. Assertively distance yourself from them.

What's my bottom line advice on the issue of interpersonal commitment? Give it, expect it, get it, or forget it, and help the uncommitted to move on and out of your way.

If you need help in mastering and implementing any of the skills and tactics mentioned, I'm here for you! Please visit the Call-A-Coach section of my web site for more information.

Related Articles
  The Power of Integrity
  No Trust, No Team: Building Trust in a Virtual Setting
  Develop Your Interpersonal Communication Skills for Success at Work and at Home
  How to Increase Your Productivity
  A Tryst with Trust
  Building Trust for Explosive Business Success
  In the Workplace, Trust is Fragile
  The Art of Communicating
  Memorable Advice
  How to Earn Respect at the Office
  Leadership & the TRUST Factor
  Time’s a Wasting! What are you doing with it?
  Commitment
  SEO and Personal Resources
  Multiple dumbnesses
  LEADER ARE LIKE CALENDAR ,NEVER LIES.
  What Questions Do New Customers Ask of Entrepreneurs?
  A Matter of Trust
  Permission to Succeed
  The Art of Feeling Good in Life and Work

Article Tags: commitments, interpersonal trust, personal productivity



Related Forum Posts
Re: Essential Leadership skills - Vigilance Trust An ability to DELEGATE
Re: Bad credit guaranteed home loan? - Lending money to people with bad credit was one of the biggest things that put our economy under and many lenders out of business. I'd say if you have this opportunity take it now before it goes away. Trust me, if there are any of these programs left (and don't expect a low interest rate if your credit is bad) they won't be around for ever. At ANY interest rate.
Re: How do you earn trust with an online business? - Add VALUE to your target market. How? Well depends. If your business can start by Educating the target market about how your product or Service can add value to their lives. This can be done via Video (hot right now), basic text, audio etc. I've had a lot of success with Video and am using it primarily as a lead generation tool. If done right your Content can add Value and add to your bottom line at the same time while building Trust.
Re: Do Your Prospects / Customers Trust You? - This is so true. In the software business, if you don't earn their trust in the first few days they start implementing it, they tend to just give up on using it at all.....even if they may have lost a lot of money. With software, silly glitches can have a huge bearing on your newer clients. Especially if they are brand new to software in general. The more established users understand that when you are constantly building and developing the software, there are going to be glitches along the way. Trust is a must!
Women's buying patterns - I'd like to know more about women's buying psychology - what makes them tick? - are they looking for an "experience"? If so, are there important parts of the experience that must exist? - how do you break past Trust barrier? - If you are selling a service what kind of support are women looking for? - do women buy a sampling first to "check out the waters" before they commit to a larger purchase? or do they jump in with both feet?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Convening a focus group for a niche product

How Promotional Caps became a Fashion Trend

Five keys to business success

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.