You

If you do not feel that your commitments (objectives/tasks/responsibilities) are as ambitious and challenging as you would like, consider the following questions:

• Could you change or adapt the way you solve your commitments so they become more challenging?
• Could you take on new relevant commitments that are more challenging and ambitious? (Note: If this changes existing commitments you might need to clear this with your team/leader)

If the challenge is more on the clarity of your commitments try the following 3-step process:

1 Prioritize your commitments

• Make a list of your commitments (objectives/tasks/responsibilities)
• Prioritize the list in order of importance (add #1, # 2, #3 etc.)
• Prioritize the list in order of time spend (add A, B, C etc.)

2 Assess the individual commitments on your list

• Focus on the most important commitments: The ones that are high on both importance and time spend
• Which aspects of the commitment are clear or unclear? (Note: When it’s clear, formulate an answer – when it is not, formulate a question)
  • Why is this important for the team?
  • Why is this important for the organization?
  • Distribution of roles/responsibilities?
  • Process questions?
  • Questions on deliverables?
  • Other questions?

3 Align your commitments with the relevant persons

• Reach out to the person(s) who can help answer your questions:
  • Share your assessment on importance and time-spend
  • Share your most important questions openly and get input from the person
  • When needed, discuss and challenge the input until you have achieved clarity
  • Note: sometimes this is best achieved over a number talks over a period of time if commitments are complex or involve several stakeholders

Your team

In a high performing team everyone must be ambitious and challenge themselves. If just one team member is getting away with mediocre performance, there is evidence that this can pull down the whole team.

So, as a team, it’s important that high ambitions are shared, and that the team helps out if individual team members performs under par, for whatever reason:

• If a team member shows low performance, who can help and how?

In a strong and empowered team it is usually not necessary to share commitments across the team in great detail, as the team members know and are perfectly capable of playing each their part.

But, if a team is low on commitment, and if lack of clarity is identified as a challenge, it can be worthwhile to spend time agreeing on, and sharing, commitments. To do this, the following process can be put in place:

1 Commitments on team level (see also “Shared results”)

• Agree on shared intent/goal/objectives
• Agree on how team commitments relates to organizational mission/vision

2 Individual commitments

• Share an overview of most important individual commitments
• Share how the commitments involve individuals/groups of individuals
• Recommendation: Allow for open idea generation/discussion under the headline “What can be improved?”

3 Decisions/actions

• Which changes are decided as a conclusion to the process?

You

If you feel a low responsibility for one or more of your commitments look for causes – and define appropriate actions. Focus on the commitments that are most important and/or time consuming.

Below is a list of typical causes for low responsibility – and a few possible questions and actions that can inspire you to approach the commitment challenge:

• You find commitments unimportant
  • If you are right, figure out what could be done to make it important or, if not, find a way to release you from the commitment
  • If the commitment is important to the team, but unimportant to you – maybe because you have other priorities – try to make certain that the commitment is passed on to someone who does care about it.
• You do not feel that the outcome of your commitments is utilized as it should
  • Figure out why this is the case, and consider to propose a way where outcomes are better utilized
• What used to be important, has lost its value
  • Formulate why this commitment should be altogether dropped, and work to create agreement from team members/leader of the team, so it is.
• Other team members do not find the commitment important
  • First: If it is important to the team and to you, it really does not matter what other people think. So maybe, simply ignore this?
  • If ignoring is not a good option, figure out ways to help your team members appreciate why the commitment is important
• Your leader does not find the commitment important
  • First: If it is important to the team and to you it really does not matter what your leader think. So maybe, simply ignore this?
  • If ignoring is not a good option, figure out ways to help your leader appreciate why the commitment is important

Your team

If low commitment is a general challenge in your team it can be valuable to spend time agreeing on, and sharing, commitments. To do this, the following process can used:

1 Commitments on team level (see also "Shared results")

• Agree on shared intent/goals/objectives
• Agree on how team commitments relate to the mission/vision of the organization

2 Individual commitments

• Share an overview of the most important individual commitments
• Share how these involve individuals/groups of individuals
• Recommenndation: Allow for open idea generation/discussion under the headline "What can be improved?"

3 Decisions/actions

• Which changes are decided as a conclusion to the process?

You

If you have low expectations to all, or specific members, of your team, have a look at the following list of typical causes for low expectations and possible actions.

Walk through the list below for each team member in question -- starting with the person you have the lowest expectations to:

• The person is unambitious or dis-engaged

  • It's almost impossible to make other people more ambitious, but you can look for factors that causes your observation:
    • Low commitment to SHARED RESULTS ?
    • General challenges in COMMITMENT ?

• The person is incompetent

  • If you find another person incompetent, start by asking yourself what you can do to think differently about the person. It's a proven fact that you can help a person grow, simply be showing confidence and helping the person finding areas to perform and excel
  • Do note that it's also in your interest to re-build at least a basic level of trust and mutual respect. So, maybe also look for inspiration here:
    • Do you and the person have a TRUST issue?
    • Are the person simply very low on COMMITMENT ?
  • In extreme cases, where a specific person simply do not function in a team it is sometimes better to split, than to draw out a mutually painful relationship

Your team

If low expectations have grown into becoming a general challenge for the team it can cause low performance as well as general disengagement.

The challenge can be linked to unclear commitments and therefore it can be valuable to spend time agreeing on, and sharing, commitments. To do this, the following process can used:

1 Commitments on team level (see also "Shared results")

• Agree on shared intent/goals/objectives
• Agree on how team commitments relate to the mission/vision of the organization

2 Individual commitments

• Share an overview of most important individual commitments

• Share how the commitments involve individuals/groups of individuals

• Recommendation: Allow for open idea generation/discussion under the headline "What can be improved?"

3 Decisions/actions

• Which changes are decided as a conclusion to the process?

If this is not the right cure, maybe have a look at one of the more fundamental TeamDrivers:

• TRUST
• HEALTHY CONFLICT
• COMMITMENT

You

The best approach for addressing underperformance is to be very specific at defining clear ambitions and expectations early in the process, so you can point to objective deviations in deliverables and/or process.

Criticism is generally not a constructive route. Therefore you should look for ways to formulate the observed deviations as objectively as possible, and make it clear that you are focusing on meeting ambitions – not on criticizing individuals.

Discussing underperformance can be challenging and lead to conflict and disagreement. Therefore, many people avoid them altogether.

But, from a performance perspective, this can be quite damaging on the longer term, as underperformance will simply become the norm. So, the guiding principle is that we all owe each other to call out when underperformance occurs.

Your team

If low performance is rarely called out in the team, this has become part of the team culture.

This can be highly damaging for team performance as it will teach everyone that it does not really matter if people live up to their commitments. And that’s a slippery slope that will gradually undermine individual as well as team performance.

As for some of the other challenges related to Commitment it can be linked to unclear commitments. Therefore, it can be valuable to spend time agreeing on and sharing commitments. For this, the following process can used:

1 Commitments on team level (see also “Shared results”)

• Agree on shared intent/goals/objectives
• Agree on how team commitments relate to the mission/vision of the organization

2 Individual commitments

• Share an overview of most important individual commitments
• Share how these involve individuals/groups of individuals
• Recommendation: Allow for open idea generation/discussion under the headline “What could be improved?”

3 Decisions/actions

• Which changes are decided as a conclusion to the process?

If this is not the right cure, maybe have a look at one of the more fundamental TEAM-Drivers:

• TRUST
• HEALTHY CONFLICT
• COMMITMENT

You

To quote the leading expert on team development, Patrick Lencioni: “The most effective means of maintaining high standards of performance on a team is peer pressure from respected teammates” (From: The Five Dysfunctions of Teams)

Key question to you:

• Are you actively giving feedback at the moment where it is called for?

If not, you are missing a golden opportunity to drive performance.

Below is listed a set of common reasons for not sharing spontaneous feedback – and the argument against them:

• I do not want to make other people feel bad
  • Yes, but: Constructive feedback at the right moment can be very helpful
• I avoid the risk of conflict
  • Yes, but: Healthy conflict and constructive disagreement are pre-requisites for teams to improve performance and being innovative and adaptive
• I want to be seen as a positive person
  • Yes, but: Would you not prefer being valued for your professionalism, honesty and high ambition?

Giving positive feedback is an art form that you will need to practice if it’s not part of your everyday behavior.

Start by practicing your feedback skills with people you trust and know well, and work your way up.

The ground rules of giving feedback:

• No judging
• No criticism
• Focus on a shared ambition
• Look forward: What can we learn – what can we do better next time?

The ground rules of receiving feedback:

• Feedback is a gift – start by saying “thank you”
• If you feel your blood boiling buy yourself time to think before you respond (can be as simple as to ask for a few minutes to think)
• If you do not like the feedback, do not say that. Instead, ask into the reasoning behind it
• Look forward: Try to end on something forward looking that the parties can agree on

Your team

The feedback culture is a team is highly contagious. This is true both for poor and for excellent feedback cultures.

So if this is a challenge in your team it can be worth spending time on.

A good starting point is to establish specific situations where feedback is actively asked for, for example:

• Fixed agenda point on team meetings such as “Anything we should do differently?” or “What have we learned in the past week?”

It is always helpful if team members talk about their own learnings and mistakes openly – especially highly respected team members and/or the leader of the team. This makes it more socially acceptable not to pretend that everyone is perfect.

To drive an open feedback culture forward think of ways to weave in open questions that inspire alternative viewpoints and perspectives at as many occasions as possible, for example:

• “What have we not talked about?”
• “What can I do better next time?”
• “What’s you best advice to me, if I want to do improve?”
• “Does anybody have viewpoints that you feel has not been heard?”

Finally, remember the ground rules for feedback (repeated from last section):

The ground rules of giving feedback:

• No judging
• No criticism
• Focus on a shared ambition
• Look forward: What can we learn – what can we do better next time?

The ground rules of receiving feedback:

• Feedback is a gift – start by saying “thank you”
• If you feel your blood boiling buy yourself time to think before you respond (can be as simple ask for a few minutes to think)
• If you do not like the feedback, do not say that. Instead, ask into the reasoning behind it (questions are much better than comments – you even risk learning something you did not hear in the first round)
• Look forward: Try to end on something forward looking that the parties can agree on