INTRODUCTION
What Is a Commitment?

“First say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do.”

—EPICTETUS

Think of an average day for you. You get up, shower, perhaps eat breakfast, go to work, open emails, take calls, go to meetings, write reports, have conversations with colleagues, and participate in many other activities that seem to consume—and usually exceed—all your available hours. Then, you probably bring work home.

We know that some of these activities matter more than others. We also know that we don’t always do what is probably the most important thing to do. In your every action, conversation, and decision lies a central, inescapable truth that can open the door to a new way of thinking about leadership intention and action: Behind everything you do is a real commitment of one kind or another. Your actions reveal with 100 percent clarity what your real commitments are.

A simple example from everyday life helps make this clear. If you ask people what they care about most in their daily diet, the list might be topped by health, then cost, convenience, and taste. The exact order may vary, but people will usually identify the long-run implications (health and cost) as the most important.

When you shift the focus from what sounds right to what people actually eat every day, our behavior as a fast-food nation points more in the direction of a twin commitment to taste and convenience, then perhaps cost, and probably at the very bottom, health. That’s why many people are overweight, suffering from diabetes, high cholesterol, and a variety of other health problems. This simple example highlights the gap between stated and actual commitments. The guilt or unease we feel when we make a commitment that does not serve us well in the long run is part of a built-in intelligence that lets us know when we are not operating in our own best interests.

At work, when you decide to take a call and be late for a meeting, you have made a de facto commitment to whoever is on the line and failed to make a commitment to the people waiting down the hall. When you check email rather than get busy on a dreaded report, you have made a commitment to the email rather than to getting the report done. When you decide not to take the risk to speak up in a meeting even though you think something is going wrong, you have made a commitment to your own personal comfort or safety and failed to make a commitment to say what needs to be said.

As in our fast-food example, when people are asked about their commitments at work, they often produce good-sounding lists that may or may not correspond to what’s actually happening.

Leaders asked to talk about their commitments often lace their language with all the right-sounding words (open communication, teamwork, respect for differences, diversity), but examining the everyday workplace reality can yield a much different picture. It is easy to say we are open to feedback, inclusive, appreciative of differences in how others think, and willing to hear other points of view, but our actions can be at odds with our words.

In my conversations with hundreds of leaders in leadership development programs, courses, coaching, and assessments, a gap has become clear. Think of someone who professes a commitment to people, but who never seems to have enough time left over after the “real work” is done to help develop them. Or a leader who says he or she is committed to the truth, yet greets questions or criticisms of a prized initiative with defensiveness or hostility.

A better way to understand an organization’s, or any leader’s, real commitments is simply to focus on what actually happens, regardless of what is stated for public consumption or framed and displayed in the office. Understanding this distinction, the question then becomes: What are leaders—specifically, great leaders—actually committed to? One useful way to regard leadership is to distill it to five essential commitments:

To the self—how much you work on developing yourself as a human being.

To people—how much you really focus on connecting with those around you, in order to work effectively with them.

To the organization—how much you are devoted to the intentions and performance of the place where you work, so that you show up with maximum energy and conviction.

To the truth—how much you tell and invite the truth, even when it is hard, in order to keep yourself, others, and the organization on a right course.

To leadership—how much you answer a call to lead and choose to engage in proven, effective leadership behaviors.

Through this framework, you have the opportunity to step back to reflect and ask yourself, at a basic level: Am I really committed to this? In what ways? In what ways am I not? What are my real intentions? What am I actually doing?

The word I is important here. When we talk about leaders or leadership, we are not only referring to people “at the top.” The emerging view of leadership and leaders is that anyone can lead, from any place. It may seem instinctive to think about a CEO on the cover of a magazine when reading the word leader or leadership, but while reading this book keep the focus on how the commitments and messages apply not only to designated leaders, but potentially to anyone, and most interestingly, to you.

Think of a time when you saw someone step up and speak up when it was difficult but necessary, articulate a new and different perspective, take the initiative, help get a group organized, or otherwise demonstrate leadership in actual, real behavior. Maybe that was you. This is the new leadership model in action. It can happen anywhere. You can make it happen.

This opportunity to be a leader is linked to a change underway in organizations today that is nothing short of tectonic in nature. The shift from industrial to knowledge work means that the primary unit of production is no longer a machine, but a person. As social, self-organizing beings who have as their lifeblood communication and ideas that create value, people—particularly talented, high-performing employees—want and even insist on leadership that creates shared meaning (they care about the work), connection, and motivation. In leadership development groups the phrase that always resonates is: “Talent walks.” People understand this at an intuitive and experiential level. They want great leadership.

This leadership can come from anywhere, not just the corner suite. When such leadership emerges, people are much more willing to contribute their maximum, which far exceeds “paycheck performance.” People’s devotion to, and energy around, effective, self-directed work teams is an example of this.

Leaders who hold formal power in organizations are caught in the early stages of this transition from an old style of leadership, based on command and control, hierarchical structures, and simple power— “might makes right”—to a much more difficult, complex, and sometimes hard-to-grasp leadership context. Most workplaces are just not there yet, and relying on old, tired mental models of what leadership should be has led to widespread, palpable dissatisfaction.

Nevertheless, from the ancient divine right of kings to today’s egalitarian and democratic structures, the shift is underway. As with any large-scale social shift in assumptions and expectations, it is messy, disruptive, difficult, and met with resistance every day—but it is underway nonetheless, and it is unstoppable. Effective leadership today bears little resemblance to what was considered legitimate or right even a few decades ago.

Another driver of this specific change is the concept of change itself. The old leadership models based on Frederick W. Taylor’s notion of a factory with as few humans as possible assumed some kind of steady, predictable state. Today, our organizations are in anything but a steady, predictable state. Most are facing severe competitive threats. There is no way that organizations today can cope with the volatility and chaos they face with a static, machine-age mentality—and with leadership from only a few select individuals.

Make no mistake: The future belongs to leaders at all levels who figure out how to engage the workforce. These workplaces will ultimately win the competitive race. This is why it is an exciting time in which to exercise leadership.

How does this affect you? For you to succeed as a leader at any level, it is important to directly address your true commitments. By focusing on these commitments at a deep, fundamental level, you can grasp the big levers of change. Once you recognize and confirm your commitments, the manifesting behaviors, actions, and techniques can fall into place. For example, listening to someone deeply is easier, and really possible, only when you hold a commitment to people. Hearing what is hard to hear is enabled and fueled by a commitment to the truth.

So we begin this journey, appropriately enough, looking at you. We start by examining at some length what it actually means to be committed to one’s self—the key instrument of leadership.