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The “three strikes and you’re out rule” applies not just in baseball but to your daily relationships at work. If you fail to live up to your commitments, you might get a pass after the first and second lapse but the third time you have probably broken trust irreparably.
“We play the game of life with a ‘three strikes and you’re out rule,’” leadership expert James Kouzes says in The Radical Promise, a fable co-written with longtime collaborator Barry Posner as well as consultant Steve Farber.
After that third strike, whatever you promise – be it to deliver a project, provide a service to a client or meet the expected budget numbers – will be suspect. The relationship is done or at least severely damaged.
That applies individually but also, of course, to organizations. To avoid such harm, you must do what you say you will do.
It’s a simple concept but hard to follow through on. Not just because of the endless pressures at work that can divert you from your intention but because sometimes you don’t even realize you are making a commitment.
“I often let my words fly out of my mouth with reckless abandon without realizing that the person I’m talking to is hearing me with critical precision,” observes Mr. Farber. “I think I’m just spewing words or maybe thinking out loud; they’re hearing a commitment, a pledge, a vow to follow up and deliver. And when I don’t come through on that pledge that I didn’t know I took, that person’s trust drops a notch.”
The authors ask you to sign on to a radical promise: Holding yourself 100-per-cent accountable to your own words. Make doing what you say you will do the core of who you are.
That will mean a greater self-awareness, in which you think before you speak and say something that unwittingly commits you to an action. As an imperfect human being, you won’t always live up to the 100-per-cent standard you are seeking. But aspiring to that level will lead to greater success – and fewer strike threes.
To get started, they recommend marking down each commitment for a week in a “contract journal,” a small notebook or device that will always be with you. This is part of assuming a contractual attitude in which every utterance is treated as a formal agreement with the other parties.
Whenever you clearly say you are doing something – be it to send an email, introduce somebody to someone else who can help them or meet a deadline – write it down immediately. Those are your overt promises: obvious, intentional commitments.
But you must also track the slipperier part, your implied promises. Be alert to the offhand comments somebody else might hear as a commitment. They point to phrases such as “we should get together”, “I’ll take a look” or “let me think about it.” The authors note those “can land as promises, especially when people trust you or depend on you. If it could be interpreted as a commitment, write it down.”
There’s an old rubric: What gets measured gets done. So at the end of the day, they urge you to take score: Which ones did you already follow through on and which ones carry over? Look back at the end of the week and see what you learned about the way you speak, where you unintentionally were creating expectations that then had to be dealt with, whether there are commitments you shy away from acting upon and how you follow up on what you promise. Then continue to use your contract journal to help you keep your word in the coming weeks.
It’s not baseball – a game. It’s your credibility – potentially your career at stake – and you want to minimize strikeouts.
Quick hits
- A big problem we have to overcome, entrepreneur Michela Allocca points out, is how to focus when our brain has been trained to scroll. She has been helped by setting aside two daily blocks of time, each two hours in length, in which she has a defined, specific output. If it’s a large project, clarify what you intend to accomplish now. If tackling more than one task, try to make them similar so you are not forcing your brain to switch contexts.
- Entrepreneur Seth Godin says a quick response is one of the cheapest and most reliable ways to demonstrate empathy for others.
- Unfair advantages are found in the things that anyone could do but few choose to do, observes Ottawa thought leader Shane Parrish.
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