Making and managing commitments: The most important team leadership skill?

For a team to succeed, it must deliver on the commitments it makes to its customers and sponsors, and to do that, it needs to rely on the commitments others make to it.

L&D managers and team leaders reach for this most often when a new team is forming, when work crosses departments with no single owner, or when a distributed team cannot simply watch each other work. In each case, a team's performance rests on commitments that are genuinely kept, not just implied.

Fred Kofman, in a chapter entitled 'Impeccable coordination' from his book Conscious Business, sets out how to make commitments explicit, and how to spot a 'weasel' commitment purely from the language used. For example:

• Somebody needs to do something (when everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible)
• Sharon will do that (only an individual can make a commitment - nobody can commit on someone else's behalf)
• I assume that's OK with you (people have to be asked if they commit - it cannot be assumed)
• Let me see what I can do (this is no commitment at all)
• I will do my best (only slightly better)

Key tip: When you are evaluating if you are happy with a commitment being offered, ask yourself: would you accept such a promise from your airline pilot as you go on holiday with your family?

Three skills for managing commitments

Skill 1: Seeking commitments

Kofman points out that there are only six clear answers when you seek a commitment from someone:

1. Yes, I promise
2. No, I don't commit
3. I need clarification before I can answer
4. I promise to give you an answer by this date ('commit to commit')
5. I can promise to get it done if, for example, you help me for two hours or do this bit of it
6. I counter offer - I can't do X but I could do Y

Skill 2: Making commitments

In terms of making solid commitments, we need to have four clarities at the moment we commit:

• Do I understand the request?
• Do I believe I have the necessary tools and resources to fulfil the request?
• Do I believe the other people I depend on will deliver? (As the buck stops with me to deliver - I cannot blame them.)
• Have I anticipated and considered foreseeable risks? (Note foreseeable - we can't predict the future!)

Key tip: Commitments not recorded (and tracked) are not worth the paper they are not written on!

Skill 3: Recording commitments

Teams should maintain a commitment register simply listing for each commitment its four key ingredients plus its status, i.e.:

• Who is committing
• To whom
• About what
• By when, and
• What is the current status of the commitment (on target, at risk, or off-course)

Building this into a team

Reading these skills is one thing; holding to them under real pressure is another. Our high-performing teams simulations put teams through exactly that test. Crew has participants make and keep commitments to teammates while running a fast-paced, resource-constrained project, and Cohesion builds the trust that lets a newly formed team commit to each other at all. Both give L&D teams a safe, facilitated environment to practise seeking, making and recording commitments before the stakes are real.