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I have a friend and colleague who always asks to get together. Great guy. Fun. Interesting. It’s always enjoyable to see him. We eagerly schedule something.
Without fail, he either cancels or has to reschedule. He routinely schedules other things during the time we’ve planned to meet. It could be that he’s just disorganized. It could be that he’s just super busy. It could be that he’s balancing too many things. It could be that he’s flaky. It could be that he doesn’t value his time with me as much as he values his time with others. It could be a lot of things.
It could be that I don’t want to schedule anything with him anymore.
It’s become a running joke at home. “I’m meeting John Doe for XYZ….”
“Sure you are. I’ll believe it when it happens!”
Truly a nice guy, my friend and colleague. But I wouldn’t trust him any longer with anything important. And my time is pretty important.
And anyone to whom I might connect or refer him is pretty important.
And any business on which I might consider collaborating with him is pretty important.
Or referring to him.
There’s a lot that’s important, that I don’t trust him with now. And that makes me sad, because he’s a great guy.
We make assumptions about people. Thinking that “they’ll understand”. And they do. People are great that way. They’ll be very understanding for quite some time. They’ll cut us a lot of slack. But not forever.
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If we don’t keep our commitments people stop trusting us. And if our results are in direct correlation to the relationships we keep, is that a smart move?
From a leadership perspective, this is huge. I can’t tell you how many leaders don’t show up to the meetings they’ve scheduled or show up 20 minutes late. When it happens once, everyone of course understands. We’ve all been there! The second time, they’re apologizing on your behalf because they know you’re so busy. The third time, they won’t say it out loud (probably), but they’re pretty sure that you just don’t care.
About them.
No commitment. No trust. No results.
Because we know. We know that people make a point to show up on time when it’s important. And if our relationships don’t make it through the filter-of-what’s-important, then we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t either.
And we can’t get much done alone.