Danielle V. Minson — Raising the Bar
Fundamental #20 — Honor Commitments
For the better part of two years, our Federation team has been making a deliberate effort to define what drives our work and how we do it. The four core values of Community, Inclusivity, Learning, and Integrity rose to the top. The next step was to identify a list of fundamentals: actionable, daily core behaviors that bring our core values to life and define our culture. Each week, we make a point to focus on practicing a different fundamental, and I kick off that effort by sharing my thoughts on each one at the beginning of each week. Here are my thoughts for our twentieth week:
HONOR COMMITMENTS — There’s no better way to earn people’s trust than to be true to your word. Do what you are going to say you are going to do, when you say you are going to do it. If a commitment can’t be fulfilled, notify others early and agree on a new time frame to be honored.
The Federation’s job is to connect leaders, organization, resources and ideas to each other to strengthen our community. To be effective in strengthen organizations and our community we need to earn trust. And we can only earn trust if we honor commitments. As noted, sometimes time frames and deadlines may need to be renegotiated. We all take take on a lot and have ambitious goals. So we need to determine which goals and deadlines to prioritize. If you have built a track record of meeting commitments and have maintained strong communication, renegotiating occasionally will not undermine trust.
See here for Shep’s comments on all the fundamentals so far.
