Leading So People Will Follow

Think Before You Don’t Act

Finally, one way to support yourself in keeping your commitments is to think consciously about the impact of not fulfilling a commitment, especially without communicating the change. Before you let a commitment slip, think through who it will affect and to what degree. I still remember something that happened to me almost twenty-five years ago that demonstrated the importance of this leader behavior to me: my boss at the time had asked me to work on a project that he told me was very important to the business—a high priority. He said that once I’d finished my part of the work, he would review the results, revise it with me, and then share it with the whole organization. I spent many hours over the next few weeks, outside ...