Honour your word, even if you can't keep it

The power of insight works something like this: once you have had the insight, then you can see the world differently. For me at least, an insight usually reveals a pattern, the kind of pattern that on some level I always knew existed. But now, thanks to the insight, I can see it clearly and consciously. We have had sight into, we might say, the cogs and machinery of how the world works.

This is the moment of truth in the song that brings tears to your eyes.

It is the piece of advice at the right time that allows you to choose differently.

It is the reflection on the relationship and how it went horribly wrong that fills you with dread at what might have been, until you realise that this insight will change all your future relationships.

Because you can see how it works now. You can see why.

Since I first started thinking about what matters to me in how I live my life, integrity has been central. Sometimes I call it honesty, sometimes honour. But the core is there. We can talk about where that might have come from, but the truth is I have always been fascinated by stories of integrity, honesty and honour. For as long as I can remember.

And I’m not the only one.

But one of the key insights I had around integrity came from Fred Kofman, one of the few authors I have found writing explicitly about bringing honour and integrity into business. Not just saying that it’s important (as any company’s mission or values can do) but talking about how to actually do it.

His book, The Meaning Revolution, which I read five or ten minutes a time over a period of about six months, and which I still think about regularly four years later, was full of insights for me. Full of things I knew on some level but once I could see them I couldn’t unsee them. I saw something about how the world and particularly humans work. One was about death.

Another was about integrity.

There were maybe four key parts to this insight about integrity:

Firstly, that we have to be careful with our commitments. In terms of collaboratively making commitments, there is nothing more damaging than saying yes to something and then later saying no. If we can be careful when we make commitments then we can save time, energy and hurt later. And we can maintain our integrity. We all know how frustrating it is when someone says they’ll do something, keeps saying they’ll do it and then finally says they can't, leaving us to pick up the pieces.

Secondly, we have to make the commitments carefully, so that everyone knows what is committed to and what isn’t. Then we know what we will deliver and so does the other person.

Thirdly, we have to keep our word. If we have done the first two with care, we should be able to do this most of the time.

And then here comes the stop-me-in-my-tracks insight for me. What happens when we can’t keep our word? Because let’s be completely honest: this is likely to happen in our lives. Your sister gets ill, your childcare falls through, there is a flash flood. There are genuine reasons that a person of integrity might not be able to fulfil their commitment.

What do we do then?

Well, if we can’t keep our word, we honour our word.

What does this mean? How do we honour our word? Well, it is relatively simple.

We let the other person know at the first possible moment that we can’t keep our commitment.

And we let them know what we will do to make up for that. What we can do instead to help them reach their goal, or what we can do to make amends.

Once I had seen this insight, this final part in particular, it was impossible for me not to see it everywhere. See the genius service at Amazon where they often surprise me with how far they go to honour their word, and the flaws at Deliveroo, who when they didn’t deliver on their promise to me did nothing to make amends or honour their word. They gave the money back, but didn’t do anything about the fact that I didn’t have any food.

Once you’ve seen it, it’s obvious how a small tweak from them could have changed the energy in the interaction.

I see it with friends, with clients, with partners.

I try to always honour my word even when I can’t keep it.

And I always have to be careful to take responsibility for the clarity of the commitments when other people don’t meet theirs.

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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online. 

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