Are fuzzy promises stealing your power?

Imagine, you are sitting on a packed aircraft when a friendly voice announces:

“Good morning passengers, welcome onboard! We are intending that this plane will arrive in London, some time today. Have a great flight!”

What do you think? How do you feel? How confident are you that this flight will actually get to London? Clearly there a good intentions, but are good intentions enough to get you to your destination? And, aren’t you just a bit concerned that the airline seems unwilling to give you an exact time of arrival?

What if you heard any of these variations:

“If everything goes to plan, this plane should arrive in London.”

“We are aiming for this plane to arrive in London.”

“My goal is that this plane will arrive in London.”

Would you travel on that flight? Or would these ‘fuzzy promises’ give you pause for thought? Goals, intentions and plans are nice, but frankly I’m not willing to bet my life on a good intention.

The road to hell …

If good intentions sound ludicrous in the context of catching a flight, why is it that we think we can get away with making these kinds of wishy-washy promises to our clients. Have you ever heard yourself say things like:

“I should be able to get that done by Friday.”

“My goal is to be complete next week.”

“My intention is that it will be done tomorrow.”

Fuzzy promises sound like real commitments, but they are not. They are loose promises with huge backdoors that let you off the hook if things don’t work out as planned.

Consider the lack of confidence that is created by fuzzy promises. If you wouldn’t trust an airline that makes them, just think about what they say about you.

Worse still, is that we are less likely to keep fuzzy promises. Yes, we might keep our promise. In fact, we have every intention of keeping that promise. But, if circumstances arise that push us off course and we miss that deadline, well too bad.

Real promises create powerful relationships

When you say “I’m going to deliver this by 5pm on Friday” that’s a real promise. It’s the kind of promise that someone can count on. There is no doubt, there just is your pure commitment.

It also puts your ass on the line for keeping that commitment. Now, you have to deliver and you will do everything in your power to keep your promise.

Making real promises takes courage. It’s a no-excuses way of doing business that leads to powerful relationships with your clients.

Will you slip up from time to time? Will you break your promises? Almost certainly, yes.

Sometimes flights get delayed due to bad weather or mechanical issues. The airline has no choice but to say right away that there is a problem and by-when they expect them to resolve it. The airline takes responsibility for their commitment to get their destination.

When you take responsibility for broken promises there are no excuses, simply a commitment to  your client and following through to completion.

In Conclusion

We all make fuzzy promises from time to time. Watch out for promise killing words like should, intend and aim. Replace them with concrete statements of what will actually be done and when it will be done by.

Concrete promises provide certainty and will ultimately create better relationships, more business and a confidence in your own abilities that can’t be faked.