Agreements– A Key to Extraordinary Results (Pt. I)

By: Robert White Friday November 29, 2013 comments

Some aspects of success are less obvious than others and often “show up” in seemingly minor attitudes, habits and behaviors.  My books, speeches, recorded programs and executive coaching work all stress the importance of building extraordinary relationships in order to live an extraordinary life.

Here’s the context:

Relationships are built on trust and trust is built on a number of “I’ll trust you if you _________” sentence completions.  One of those “fill in the blanks” is

“I’ll trust you if you keep your agreements.”

Here’s the personally embarrassing reveal that motivated this essay:

Recently I’ve created circumstances where I chose to break agreements with several close friends.  It has been, as difficult choices often reveal, a challenging learning experience for me and put some very important relationships at risk.  I work hard to live what I teach so I’ve been forced to reflect, take responsibility for my bad choices and communicate honestly.  More about how I did that later in this piece.

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life…. learn about agreements!

Over the years no subject in our public and corporate seminars, my books and speeches seems to have attracted as much “heat” as the making, keeping and breaking of agreements. 

How many people do you know who consistently show up late for lunch or a meeting or whatever?  How often doyou show up late, even by a few minutes?  A simple meeting for coffee, and you're ten minutes late – as usual.  You give your usual feeble and mostly phony excuses, blaming the traffic or a meeting you couldn’t get out of, while the person you kept waiting nods approvingly and says that it's OK.

Unfortunately, it's not OK – and deep down you both know it.

People sometimes follow the same pattern around work projects, family promises, marital vows and many, many other areas where we make agreements.

There are prices to pay for those broken agreements, prices paid by you and prices paid by others.  Every time you break an agreement you lose self-esteem, self-respect and self-confidence, and you lose at least some of other people's trust in you.  Every time you keep an agreement you increase these same valuable assets accordingly; you are rewarded.  It is just the way things are.

Let’s review some prices and rewards for breaking and keeping agreements:

Prices for Breaking Agreements           Rewards for Keeping Agreements

Lose trust from others                                 Gain trust from others                    

Destroy relationships                                  Build relationships 

Lower self-confidence                                Increase self-confidence   

Damage self-esteem                                   Raise self-esteem   

Undermine self-respect                              Enhance self-respect

Create confusion, loss of clarity                More clarity, focus

Lower energy level                                      Higher energy level

Are some agreements less important?

Contrary to what many people think, there is no such thing as an unimportant broken agreement.  There may be bigger external consequences for breaking some agreements than others – however there are no broken agreements without a price. 

If you break your agreement to drive at or below the speed limit, and you hit another car and kill someone, the external consequences will be big. You will have vivid awareness of that consequence the rest of your life.

Less obviously, if you tell your daughter you’re coming to her soccer game and then don’t show up, you will pay an automatic but often unnoticed price.  You’ve inevitably lost some of your daughter’s trust in you; you’ve damaged her self esteem and your own; you’ve undermined the respect she has for you as a parent; and your relationship is a little less close.  Break your agreements with your daughter enough times and you’ll do serious damage to your relationship.  Broken agreements and the resulting deterioration of trust seriously weakens many marriages, friendships, corporate relationships and family ties. 

Broken agreements always hurt other people. 

Every time you break an agreement with your children, there’s some pain created and usually suppressed.  And what do you think your children then decide about themselves?  The same thing you or I or anybody would decide: that they must not be worth very much if their own parent couldn't be bothered to keep their agreements.  Self-worth suffers.  Broken agreements are a lose/lose game.  Nobody wins; everybody suffers.

And, they damage YOU!

Breaking agreements with others is bad enough.  Breaking agreements with yourself can be even more damaging.  Because agreements with yourself are often private promises that only you know about, they are that much easier to break.  Hey, make an agreement with yourself to lose weight or stop smoking or get up early and exercise and you can break it any old time.  Nobody knows.  Well, not quite nobody.  You know.  And the damage to your self-esteem is incalculable.

I keep all of my agreements – so I’m in the clear here, right?

If you are an obsessive/compulsive agreement keeper, does that mean your life will work infinitely better?  Not necessarily. It might be just another compulsive behavior done without consciousness though it will still build trust from others.

The upside of keeping your agreements and what it can do is to clear the fog of confusion; allow you to see more clearly what’s working in your life; and more importantly, what is not. 

Keeping your agreements with yourself and other people is a positive way to live.  And remember: there is no universal law on agreement keeping – just consequences.  So don’t get angry and upset and become a victim when you keep your agreements and other people didn’t keep theirs.

It simply works when you deliver work on the date you promised it.  It works to keep your marriage or relationship agreements.  It works to keep your promises to your children.  It works to match your behavior to your commitments.

So what am I to do if I want this new awareness to work for me?

My personal “take” from being exposed to these ideas for over thirty years is to make few agreements and keep the ones I make.  Observing myself and others informs me that agreements are often made too casually.  Often they are made for purposes like being liked or avoiding criticism or delaying a problem hoping there will be some miracle before the agreement falls due.

We all know people who never break agreements, create terrible results in life and make everyone around them crazy.  We also know people who break lots of agreements and generate mistrust, lousy relationships and sub-par results.

Are there circumstances when it alright to break agreements? 

In the real world outside my book or a seminar room or ashram, YES.  Of course there are prices and rewards for broken agreements, just like there are for keeping them.  However, the world and human existence are fluid, changing entities.  That’s the world we live in and the world in which all accomplishment takes place.

My Extraordinary Action Steps will include my suggestions for those times when you need to break an agreement.  Read on!

EXTRAORDINARY LIVING ACTION STEPS

A quick review on agreements:

1. Make fewer agreements and keep the ones you make!

2. When you must break an agreement...

• communicate your decision to break the agreement clearly, specifically, and directly with anyone affected even indirectly by the decision.

• deliver the broken agreement communication without righteousness, defensiveness, shame or guilt.  Adding your emotional charge tends to call forth an equally emotional response.

• know that you’re going to pay a price in terms of reduced trust and credibility – thus the needs for # 1 and # 2 being handled with the clear intention to take responsibility and “clean things up.”

• Commit to not repeating the practice.  You’ll be watched with new awareness by all involved and judged purely on your results with keeping future agreements.

When you get right down to it, your word is all you've got if you want to build trust and therefore deepen and expand relationships.  Beyond your word there is nothing; no basis for trust and no foundation for self-worth.  Keep your word and you enjoy the trust and respect of others.  And you'll find the automatic by-product is that you trust and respect yourself more and more every day.  That leads to increased confidence and that leads to living an extraordinary life!

About the Author: Robert White

Robert White is a Speaker, Author, Leadership Trainer and Executive Mentor who teaches the art and science of mastering executive challenges. He specializes in integrating a heart centered, result-oriented and transformational leadership approach to being effective. His experience includes founding and leading companies doing high-impact experiential learning events with over one million graduates.

Robert’s culture change work has been praised by corporations like JPMorganChase, Progressive Insurance, Duke Energy and The American Cancer Society.

Additionally top business experts and authors Ken Blanchard, Jimmy Calano, Kathy Gardarian, and Robert Wright, plus thousands of training and mentoring clients, have endorsed his professional knowledge and skills.

Robert authored the best-seller “Living an Extraordinary Life” available in English and Mandarin. He is a contributing author to “Being Fuller” a compilation from students of Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller and “One World, One People,” a photo journal of mankind’s journey to oneness.

Today you’ll find him speaking at conferences, hosting masterminds, mentoring today’s emerging business leaders and teaching everything he knows about fostering entrepreneurial success and building an entrepreneurial mindset in established, growth-oriented companies.

Find on Google+