I once had a boss who was a powerful listener.
Or so I thought.
Whenever we met one-on-one, he constantly took notes. He kept reformulating my key points and highlighted our respective action items.
At first, I loved these meetings. I felt empowered and supported.
But, soon enough, I realized that action items were just written notes that stayed in his notebook. There was ZERO follow-through on his end.
I started to feel bad about the situation. Was I bringing unimportant or irrelevant topics to the table? Should I change my approach and stop asking for help on certain items? Should I confront him on missed action items?
After all, my boss was one of the rockstars in our company. A stellar visionary, he was excellent at motivating the teams. Yet, he was a poor listener and unreliable partner.
The story didn’t end well. Trust broke. Eventually, I left with a sour taste in my mouth.
Yet, it taught me a crucial lesson.
From now on, I tried to understand who I could trust to follow through when they said they would be doing something and who I couldn’t.
Once I got trained in approaches like Agile, I even started to look at the famous concept of the say/do ratio. In other words, keep track of the promises (things we SAID we’d do) to the promises we kept (the things we actually DID) that we said we would DO.
I started with myself and soon expanded this to bosses, peers, and team members.
Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t track every occurrence in an Excel spreadsheet. But, if I observed a good ratio of someone doing what they said they’d do over time, they would earn my trust.
Observing how fast the compound effect can affect earned trust has been fascinating. And it goes both ways.
It soon acted as a way for me to spot strong-potential individuals and more problematic poor performers or lone wolves who were not good team players.
I wish I would have been more explicit at times on the importance of follow-through. Fortunately, those struggling with their say/do ratio could improve with some help. It started with them being diligent about their to-do list and effectively tracking it.
In the end, it mattered. People built or destroyed their reputations because of their reliability. We even decided on promotions based on the simple dependability criteria.
Reliability has become the foundational quality that sets the best team players apart, whether they are bosses, peers, or team members.
So, step back a moment and think about your and your team’s say/do ratio. How solid is it? For those struggling with it, what do you think the causes are? How can you help them improve on it?
The more energy you put into understanding this say/do ratio, the faster you will discern greatness from mediocre talent.
Good Luck!