Your Word. It’s All You Have.

I think this is one of the most important and overlooked things today; “your word.” Your word is ALL about following through on an engagement, a meeting, a show, a lunch, a service or anything with ANYONE on a specific day or time that you each commit to. Pretty simple right?

Just recently, someone taught me a BIG lesson on this, after confirming two speaking engagements with professional organizations. Asking someone close to me to take off a day to help me to sell books in the back of the room, little did I know that after I called to confirm the dates a week before each engagement, they had someone else speaking that day (or other things that took up the whole meeting – despite having the date booked in my calendar two to three months in advance).

A few simple and unconventional insights on this:

1 – You never want to be the one that is responsible for breaking a commitment. Why? It just looks bad. How to NOT make it your fault? Save all email communications. I was able to show them where they confirmed this date months ago. In short, it was on them, not me (and had the proof).

2 – Realize that not following through on your word SHOWS someone more about the organization or service than what the ACTUAL organization or service provides. They wanted to reschedule the date, but after a few communications back and forth I just decided I couldn’t set another date with their organization. Why? First, because of HOW it was handled.  Second, because of the OTHER opportunities I would have to say “no” to. After all, how would I know that they wouldn’t do the same thing after booking another date? I didn’t want to chance it.

3 – Understand that when you cancel something, you inconvenience more than just one person. Now I’m not talking about rescheduling something (I’m fine with that, if the person you scheduled things with had given you enough time to do that – which gives you time to communicate to anyone else involved, so they aren’t inconvenienced as well). The problem lies when someone calls to confirm a date and they respond, “Ummm… who are you.”

Furthermore, I had a problem with my last book printing and the printer had to do a rush order to print these books so I could have them a few days before the actual engagements. They also had to spend more money to overnight them, and do a “rush order,” just so I could have them in time for both engagements that were cancelled. Not only did you inconvenience me, I would venture to say that you probably inconvenienced 6 separate people from two different organizations BESIDES me.

In short, follow through on your word (it’s more important than you think). Why do I say that? Not only do you look bad, you ruined it for everyone else whose life could of been changed by the product, service or individual that you just broke “your word” to.