Commitment is a powerful driver of success in business and in life. Those people that are more than casual participants, the ones truly locked in and committed to the cause, will be much more successful and much more valued in the working environment.
The hair-pulling key is how to get team members or anyone else for that matter, committed to something.
The answer is you can’t. You can’t buy commitment. You can’t threaten commitment or else and you can’t incent anyone to be committed either (for the record, splashy animated MS PowerPoint presentations won’t get you much in the way of commitment).
This leadership challenge sounds daunting but you must create an environment where commitment can be nurtured and you must recruit team members that have a high propensity for commitment.
The Environment Piece
Successful leaders will always connect commitment with a team member’s desire to be there. Commitment, engagement and satisfaction are strongly connected. Engaged team members are more likely to demonstrate a situational commitment to a mission, idea or project. Conversely, disengaged team members will demonstrate a significant lack of commitment. You must create a highly engaged environment with a satisfied team to achieve commitment.
Another driver of commitment will be input and voice. Does the team member believe that their ideas are valued and encouraged. Nothing will jump –start commitment in a team member when his or her idea is valued and supported. An additional angle of this piece is if there is negotiation room from a team member’s needs and position and the position and needs of the organization. This level of input and voice will dramatically raise commitment.
The Nurturing Component
Commitment does not happen like a revival tent meeting. There are no instant conversions and huge “I’m committed” come to the altar moments.
Rather commitment grows (and sadly wanes) over time. As the environment continues to support team member needs, voice and provides high levels of engagement, commitment will grow. Leaders recognize that commitment needs room to grow and provides hefty doses of praise and encouragement to help this process. Those same leaders also intervene when commitment seems to waiver or when clouds appear on the horizon.
Finding the Potential for Commitment
The last piece of the commitment puzzle is finding those team members where the potential for commitment is highest.
Here is the first clue; if they are more interested in what they will be making or their days off, you might want to consider someone else.
The one key for finding commitment is to discover mission and vision congruence. What that means is does the potential candidate get excited about what you do, how you do it and where the organization is going? If so, the potential for their commitment will be high. Without that excitement about your mission and direction, you will struggle obtaining commitment from that potential team member. Quite simply, do they want to be with you and by your side or is it just a job?
Team member commitment remains elusive in many working environment but those organizations and individual leaders who have discovered how to unlock it are reaping the rewards of those efforts and will ultimately be labeled as successful.