HONOR COMMITMENTS: There’s no better way to earn people’s trust than to be true to your word. Do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it. This includes being on time for all phone calls, appointments, meetings, and promises. If a commitment can’t be fulfilled, notify others early and agree on a new time frame to be honored.
Honoring commitments is certainly “related” to acting with integrity. In our business, we interact with other Team members, customers and suppliers, all day, every day. Honoring our commitments to others should be the basis of all of these interactions. We need to live up to, and honor, our commitments EVERY TIME we make them.
One of the keys to being able to honor our commitments is to make sure we keep track of all of the commitments we make. There are several tools available to the Team to help manage our commitments, it is imperative that we; simply write them down, use Outlook tasks, e-mails, or the other resources we have to keep track of and communicate commitments with others. Many of the commitments we make require the involvement of others on the Team, we need to make them aware of the commitment so they can do their part to help ensure that we live up to the commitment.
Another critical aspect of being able to always honor your commitments is to make realistic commitments. There is a fine line on this, we also don’t want to “under commit” just so we have an easy time fulfilling the commitment. We need to find the balance of committing what we can deliver with what the other person needs. When you have done everything possible to live up to a commitment we made and can’t make the commitment happen, let the other person know right away and start working on other options. Stay in close communications until the issue is resolved.
We do have a variety of meetings, maybe too many, but part of honoring commitments is to be on time and ready to go for all meetings, huddles, calls and appointments that you participate in. Show respect for the others in the meeting by being on time and ready to go.
When people can always count on you, they learn to trust and respect you to a greater level. When others trust and respect us individually, they then trust and respect Field as on organization.