Want more Balance? Make Better Commitments.

Want more Balance? Make better Commitments.

A top goal for many of my clients is to find balance or inner harmony. For strivers that are in the mid-stage of their career at fast paced jobs, they frequently feel like a Stretch Armstrong toy pulled hard in every imaginable direction. Working in these environments is challenging. It’s why we choose them. But they are fraught with Catch 22s and Sucker’s Choices.  Another major contributor outside of just the professional realm is the cruel fact of life that when we get to a certain age, it’s quite likely that our kids (if we have them), our parents (if we’re lucky to still have them) and our careers are the most demanding of us that they will ever be in our lives…at the same time. Sweet. For those that have related with me over this topic, they’ve heard me lovingly refer to this period as THE VICE. Stretching us further in every direction.

If you care deeply about each of these vectors of life, there is no easy fix. It will be challenging. And that’s OK. ‘Me time’ will have it’s time and place.

I’ve thought at length both personally and about my clients with this challenge and tried to understand what separates those that feel incredibly stretched vs. those who maintain a level of balance and control. From my seat, a driving factor is the clarity in which we hold Commitments in our lives.

Those with strong and well understood Commitments tend to be self-aware, focused, direct in nature and demanding of themselves and others. Importantly, they are comfortable holding others to account and to owning their mistakes.

‘The Vice’ tends to get its squeeze on when we are out of integrity with some portion of our life. I define ‘out of integrity’ as living in a way that is not in harmony with our core values, or misaligned. To extrapolate further, I believe it is when 1) we are not taking full responsibility, 2) we are not speaking authentically and 3) we are in default of many of our Commitments, without ownership.

This misalignment manifests as a heaviness in our heart or gut because we’ve ‘left someone hanging’. Or let ourselves down. It could show up as frustration or disappointment that an implied agreement is not being met by a teammate, partner or direct report and we haven’t done anything about it. It also could feel like unfairness or inequity because we’re living squarely in the ‘reality distortion field’ of what is not humanly possible. Instead of renegotiating, we fumble and lose sleep over how or if to communicate our point of view.

Hang with me as I propose a framework that could help.

What is a ‘good commitment’?

Not necessarily for this post, but it helps if you’ve done a little soul searching to start. For partial reference, I outlined a part of my process and the Ikigai framework here. Per my definition, it’s hard to ‘be in integrity’ if you don’t know what your core values even are. With that as a pre-req for ‘Commitments 101’ understood, let’s get started.

For us to make progress toward ‘compliance with all Commitments’, we need to continually make progress on the following: 1) Making clear Commitments; 2) Keeping Commitments; 3) Renegotiating Commitments; and 4) Cleaning up broken Commitments. So much of the progress here is about awareness first, and then communication.

Who is asking what?!?

Fred Kofman’s framework in Conscious Business postulates that in order to clearly accept an agreement or commitment in the first place, we must ask ourselves four questions:

1. Do I understand what the other is asking of me?
2. Do I have the skills and resources to do it?
3. Am I convinced that those on whom I depend will deliver for me?
4. Am I willing to be held accountable for anticipating potential breakdowns?

Not being able to say ‘yes’ to these four questions should be a flashing red light that you cannot commit in good conscience, or in integrity.

Making a Clear Request

And to reverse roles, if you are the requestor (vs. the request-ee), be sure to understand these questions and what you’re asking of a teammate, direct report or partner.

It should be abundantly clear in a Commitment with mutual accountability who will do what by when. To share the Middle Path framework developed by Chris Holmberg, Clear Requests start by stating the Context (your intent and making it clear that you are making a request).

They are followed by a Past-Present-Future flow.

1. Past — give necessary facts and background.
2. Present — communicate why this is important and give the bigger picture.
3. Future — make your request. “I ask you do X by Y. Will you do it?”

When it comes to teams or groups, this is where we give props to that same person that ends each meeting by clearly establishing ‘who is responsible for what by when’ takeaways. Don’t roll your eyes at them, this is the MVP of the meeting. They are the attorneys crafting our constitutions that the team will abide by.

Message received…now what?

To continue with the Conscious Business framework, we have six possible responses assuming we are clear on the request. 1) Yes, I promise. 2) No, I do not commit (although I can try..). 3) I need clarification. 4) I commit to respond by (a definite date). 5) I accept conditionally. I can commit to do what you ask if R (a mutually observable condition) happens. Would that work for you? and 6) Let me make a counteroffer. “I can’t commit to doing X by Y, but I could do S by T. Would that work for you?”

Once we have the mutual buy-in and understanding, it’s time to get to work. If only it were that simple. Sh*t happens, commitments get ‘layered’, our priorities might shift and/or new information frequently changes the picture. It is incumbent upon both parties of the commitment to objectively assess evolving situations with transparency and timeliness. Bad news ages miserably. It’s on us to continue to communicate on the status/compliance of our agreements, but also deal with commitments or agreements that need to be re-acknowledged, renegotiated or eliminated.

To maintain the balance we’re all striving for, we need to be just as clear and focused if we need to renegotiate or clean up a broken agreement. Forgetting you made a request or hoping that no one notices you haven’t held your end of the bargain…aren’t solutions. Conscious Business and The Middle Path encourages us to use Productive Complaints (could be that a request-ee hasn’t delivered, or that a requestor missed something material) and Productive Apologies to bring the conversation back to the front of the room. The Context-Past-Present-Future framework works beautifully here as well!

This sounds very business-y, but these same concepts exist with all relationships be it kids, parents, partners, friends, or most important, with ourselves.

Getting started.

If we’re ‘yes men or women’, we’ve got commitments all over town! And if we’re shiny object or distracted managers or leaders, we’re likely to have made very opaque requests of our team that are definitely not as clear as they could be. The question is where the hell do all of these agreements stand?

Take stock. What does your inventory of commitments look like? What needs to be cleaned up or renegotiated? Who needs to be acknowledged of its cancellation? How can we leverage our audit of our commitments to start fresh with no baggage of ambiguity hanging over our heads? Let’s ensure we have a clean file of commitments to move forward.

Strong self awareness and bold communication are paramount. It takes courage when we need to own a mistake or hold others to account for not holding up their end of the deal. My hope is that by leveraging this systematic approach to the commitments we keep and requests we make that the grip on that Vice loosens a bit. By extension, the goal is to spend far less unnecessary time, energy and emotion on living in the purgatory of our commitments. We can stand forward confidently in our integrity, and know that if we have to modify or renegotiate, it’s just part of the process.

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