Fear of Commitment
A foundation of vulnerability-based Trust enables a team to have productive Conflict. Why is that important?
Because without productive conflict, without hearing the fears, objections, opposing viewpoints, and competing, conflicting, or just plain different approaches to the challenge at hand, it is impossible to gain real Commitment.
Why Commitment Matters
Partrick Lencioni’s observations regarding commitment resonate so well with my real-world experience that I will share them here, verbatim, from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team:
A Team that Fails to Commit…
- Creates ambiguity among the team about direction and priorities
- Watches windows of opportunity close due to excessive analysis and unnecessary delay
- Breeds lack of confidence and fear of failure
- Revisits discussions and decisions again and again
- Encourages second-guessing among team members
A Team that Commits…
- Creates clarity around direction and priorities
- Aligns the entire team around common objectives
- Develops an ability to learn from mistakes
- Takes advantage of opportunities before competitors do
- Moves forward without hesitation
- Changes direction without hesitation or guilt
As you read that, you might be thinking, sure, my team runs into some of those problems from time to time, but it’s not because we’re not committed.
Perhaps, but consider that there is a wide gamut of non-commitment.
At the extreme, there is full-on “I don’t give a @#$%” lack of commitment. Hopefully you’re not there. If you are, that’s a different problem.
The distinction between the type of commitment we’re looking for—and the lack thereof—is more subtle, more insidious, and much more widespread.
Committed vs. Committed-ish
Consider two equivalent cross-country trips.
Trip One is your dream vacation, whatever that might be.
Trip Two is business. You agreed to it, maybe even initiated it. You believe it’s important. But you’re not exactly looking forward to it, and you might have some lingering feelings that it could have been done remotely.
You set off on your trip and then—and bear with me, because this requires a real stretch of the imagination—your flights are delayed, maybe even canceled. (I know, totally implausible, highly unlikely).
What do you do? Well, if you’re anything like me, it kind of depends which trip you’re on.
If I’m on Trip One, my dream vacation, I will be pretty unstoppable in my efforts to rearrange, rebook, and reorganize to get myself there. I will tolerate long delays, crowds, endless hold times, whatever it takes to overcome the travel obstacles that block my path.
For Trip One, I am Capital “C” Committed.
But if I’m on Trip Two, the lengths I’m willing to go to are probably different. Sure, I’ll try. I will make a reasonable effort. I won’t just give up. But at some point I will be tempted to bag it and say, “wasn’t meant to be.”
For Trip Two, I am committed-ish.
In any organization, there is a deep, dark chasm filled with the nightmares of stakeholders between Committed and committed-ish.
When there is even a dash of “-ish” in the commitment level of a leadership team, it compounds exponentially downward through the organization. The tiniest speed-wobble at the front of the train will resonate into an uncontrolled whipsaw productivity wreck at the caboose.
Small gaps in commitment between leadership team members become major discrepancies in direction and clarity further down in the organization. Commitment becomes impossible.
Commitment in High-Performing Teams
In high-performing teams, Commitment results in:
- Clear and timely decisions
- Moving forward with complete buy-in, even from those who disagreed
- Confidence that no one is doubting or second-guessing the chosen direction
This type of real commitment requires two things: clarity and buy-in.
The Source of Committed-ish
What most often stops us from achieving the necessary clarity and buy-in are two temptations:
- Desire for consensus
- Need for certainty
Consensus
It’s nice when everyone agrees, but it doesn’t happen that often.
High-performing teams recognize that reasonable people don’t always need to get their way. What they need is to feel heard.
They therefore focus their energy on getting all the viewpoints out in the open and engaging in productive conflict until everyone feels listened to and understood.
When people feel heard, they can authentically move forward, even if they see it differently.
Even then, an impasse is possible, so high-performing teams also recognize that if they can’t reach a decision in a reasonable amount of time, the leader makes the call.
Certainty
People have varying responses to ambiguity and uncertainty. Like so many of our behaviors, how we respond to uncertainty is shaped by our experience and environment, but much of the difference between individuals is innate.
Some of us are hard-wired to be less comfortable with uncertainty than others.
Knowing where you land on that spectrum is important, because high-performing teams find a way to unite behind decisions and a clear course of action even when they have little assurance that their decision is correct.
We’re not advising recklessness here, but the truth is, time spent researching and evaluating options yields rapidly diminishing returns.
Dysfunctional teams try to hedge their bets and delay important decisions until they have enough data to feel certain they are making the right call.
Although this feels safer, these teams fail to recognize the danger. The paralysis and lack of confidence it breeds ultimately expose the team to far more risk than simply being wrong.
Creating Real Commitment
Commitment cannot exist without the ability to engage in productive conflict.
Productive conflict cannot occur absent vulnerability-based trust. If your team is still shaky on either of those behaviors, start there.
Even with trust and productive conflict, commitment does not happen automatically. Here are some concrete ways you can increase your odds of getting there:
Cascading Messages
A simple discipline for creating real commitment is to take time at the end of every team meeting and decide what key decisions need to be communicated to others, both internally and externally.
Write them down. Writing requires clarity.
This accomplishes two things:
First, a clear and aligned communication helps create commitment throughout the organization.
But second, in attempting to craft this cascading message, you will inevitably find that you are not really on the same page.
The practice of creating cascading messages will force you to confront the reality that you have more work to do to create clarity and buy-in.
Time Constraints
To resist the temptation to seek consensus and higher levels of certainty, teams must impose time constraints for making decisions.
Avoiding or delaying decisions only leads to increased ambiguity that will ripple outward through the whole organization. If the core team is unclear, people two levels removed will be really unclear.
Pre-Mortems
The desire for certainty is driven by the fear of what will happen if you’re wrong. To defuse this very natural anxiety, it can be helpful to conduct a “pre-mortem.”
What are the consequences of a bad decision? What risk are you taking, and what contingency plan can you put in place if that risk becomes reality?
Most often the result of a pre-mortem is the realization that the consequences of a mistake are not as bad as you thought, and seeing this helps teams build the confidence to move forward boldly.
Exposure Therapy
It’s not that research and analysis are not important, but rather that teams that struggle with commitment tend to overvalue them.
To overcome this habit, teams can practice quick decisions in lower risk situations.
In doing so they can begin to see that the quality of decision making is better than they expected, and more importantly, that extensive additional time spent gathering more information would not have made their decision substantially better.
The Role of the Leader
Again, to lead is to go first. A leader cannot expect decisiveness from their team if they themselves are prone to waffling and second guessing.
Once you, as the leader, have gotten comfortable with the reality that some number of your decisions will be wrong, you must push your team for closure on open issues and adherence to their time constraints.
Isn’t It Ironic?
Vulnerability, conflict, and uncertainty are things we generally try to avoid. They scare us. They feel like weaknesses.
The irony is that the teams willing to embrace vulnerability, engage in productive conflict, and commit fully to decisions—even uncertain ones—find that the very things they feared become their greatest strengths.
Vulnerability builds deeper trust, conflict generates better solutions, and commitment creates the confidence to move forward boldly.
Together, these behaviors create a foundation for the fourth behavior of high-performing teams—an even scarier topic: Accountability.
Until next week,
Greg
