Blog: Leading & Living Courageously

I was coaching a senior management team of a successful technology…

What is a high performance team? A lot has been written about…

Commitment often plays center-stage in our lives. Whether we are trying to lose weight, get in shape, get a promotion, make more money or achieve objectives, we often think in terms of being committed to the cause. If we want to achieve an objective we know “we have to be committed.” When our friends and colleagues give us advice they often accuse us of not being committed enough, and they tell us to be “more committed.” And, when we fall short in our desired outcomes, we often beat ourselves up and feel guilty about the fact that we are simply “not committed enough” On the other hand, some of us take commitment to the extreme opposite. We are so obsessed with carrying out our commitment that we often act with extreme intensity and drive ourselves to serious stress. We plan our every action, measure our every milestone or intake, announce our every achievement and fall apart with every setback. Our friends and colleagues often look at us with worry. They regard us as obsessive and fanatics and their advice is often to lighten up, chill or simply “stop taking your commitment so seriously!” So, the question is: “How committed do we need to be to succeed?”

Have you ever heard someone say: “Talk is cheap”? Well, nothing is further from the truth! Talk is one of the most powerful capabilities we have to create and make things happen!

I was debriefing a session with the CEO of a European division of a global technology company. Just before we parted ways, the CEO, who through our work together had also become a friend, turned to me and asked me a seemingly simple question: “Who are you inspired by?”