A friend asked this question today. And it comes up at software conferences a lot, in the hallways, over a meal, or in Open Space or Lean Coffee. It’s a current flowing under all our technical and methodological discussions. Negotiating and keeping commitments is how we build trust. Without trust, a team is a team in name only.
What do you do when someone breaks a promise? A lot of us grumble and let it go. Or we fight and complain. Or we fret and worry about the confrontation, the moment of conflict. Some of us never get past worrying, and we just let the broken promise go unexamined.
But what can we do that’s constructive, and gets us what we want, which, I hope, is rebuilding trust?
There are lots of books and approaches that deal with difficult conversations like this one, including the wonderful book, Difficult Conversations. But the following is what I do, and I learned it from Michele McCarthy.
Let’s say I asked you to give me some information by 10 am this morning. You said, “Yes.” 10 am came and went, and you were nowhere to be seen. I checked my email, voice mail, Twitter stream, Skype, Facebook, desk, anywhere you may have left the information for me. Nothing.
I feel mad and afraid and sad. I’m mad because there’s a problem between us – trust has been broken, and I don’t have the information I need. I’m also mad at myself because I trusted you, which the evidence suggests was a bad idea. I’m afraid because I don’t know if I can trust you in the future and because this reminds me of other situations that ended badly for me. And I’m sad because something has been lost in my relationship with you and in my optimism about the world.
With all of that emotion swirling around, I’m probably not going to be able to keep the Core Commitments to perceive more than seeking to be perceived, to ask for help, and to never do anything dumb on purpose. Before I do anything, I need to calm down. So the first thing I do is whatever will help me calm down: go to the gym and work out, have a cup of tea, ask someone for help, or take a walk.
When you arrive at work, I Check In with you, and then say,
“You said you’d get the information to be by 10 am. I didn’t get that information from you at 10. What happened? And what will be different next time?”
It’s important that the tone of your voice conveys a genuine desire to understand. We can’t make assumptions about the reasons people break promises, we have to ask. What if you had an emergency? What if you lost your computer and didn’t have my phone number? What if you were kidnapped? There are lots of possibilities, only one of which is that you are a jerk and I should never trust you again.
I’ve broken promises – lots of them – and every time there was a reason. Sometimes it’s because I didn’t understand that I’d made a promise. Or because I forgot, or misunderstood the details, or there was a crisis that interrupted me, or a technical glitch, or because I didn’t have the skills or knowledge to accomplish the task.
And I hate to admit it, but sometimes, I just didn’t care as much about getting the task done as I cared about saying yes. I said yes because saying yes was easier in the short term than saying no. Sometimes I thought I’d have to fight about my reasons for saying no, or I wanted approval for “stepping up”, or admiration for being the hero, or personal satisfaction for trying something new. I’m not proud of that, and I’ve learned over the years that saying yes when I know I mean no is very costly for everyone. So now if I know I don’t want to keep the promise, I’ll take the up-front discomfort of saying no, even if it means a loss of status or admiration or some other short term benefit in order to avoid the mess of a broken promise later.
So, in the midst of your conversation, as hard as this is, remember that we all have complex reasons for doing or not doing things. Some of those reasons are even hidden from us. So really listen, and ask questions with the long term relationship in mind. For me what’s interesting is what will happen in the future not what happened in the past, so I focus on that.
When you find out what happened, and you negotiate what will be different in the future, take it at face value. Let the person meet their next commitment without micromanaging it. If they break their promise again, have the conversation again.
If this person regularly breaks promises and you don’t have this conversation when it happens, you’re telling them it’s ok to break the promise and you don’t care enough to talk to them about it. If you’ve done that, and they’ve become used to your lack of follow-up, you may need to reset both your expectations about promises and how you’re going to behave in future. “You said you’d do x, you did y, I didn’t call it out. Now I’m going to call it out when it happens.” And check with yourself what you really want, because if you’re tolerating broken promises, you want something else more than you want the promise to be kept.
Finally, if the person keeps breaking promises after you and the rest of the team have done everything you can to understand and negotiate, it may be time for them to find somewhere else to work. Trust is too precious to let it be neglected.