Leaders in every growing company face a common challenge: creating momentum and increasing revenue while maintaining integrity. The key isn’t in adding more strategies or increasing complexity—it’s about aligning actions with promises and ensuring that integrity is the foundation of every step. Without integrity, nothing works. Here’s how leaders can use it to create immediate momentum, increase profits, and cut costs.
Step 1: Challenge Vague Commitments
One of the biggest reasons teams fail is because their commitments are too soft. Leaders need to challenge vague agreements and hold people accountable for their “yes.” When a team member says “yes,” it must be a firm commitment, not a way to end a conversation or avoid conflict.
One of the most overlooked issues in companies is when team members say “yes” out of politeness or a desire to please their bosses or clients, without fully committing. Leaders must challenge these “polite yeses” to ensure that what’s being promised can actually be delivered.
Politeness and humility often come in the way here. We don’t want to seem rude or incapable, so we nod and agree. But these half-hearted commitments are the cracks in your team’s integrity. When politeness gets in the way, your team ends up overpromising and underdelivering.
Example:
Imagine a project where the marketing department promises to deliver a campaign by the end of the month. Everyone assumes it’s a done deal, but the marketing lead hasn’t nailed down all the resources. By the time the deadline approaches, the campaign isn’t ready, and the sales team scrambles to fill the gap. That “yes” was never solid. If leadership had challenged it, asking for clarity on available resources and potential bottlenecks, this could have been avoided.
Action: Make sure every “yes” is backed by clear, actionable steps. Ask follow-up questions like:
- “Do you have the resources?”
- “Are there any risks we need to know?”
- “How confident are you in delivering this on time?”
- “What do you need to make this happen?”
- “What risks might prevent you from completing this?”
This way, you challenge ambiguity and turn it into concrete, dependable action. It’s uncomfortable, but integrity requires it.
Step 2: Stop Relying on Hope
Hope is not a strategy. Yet many leaders allow their teams to rely on hope when there’s uncertainty. Hope may give a temporary sense of comfort, but it doesn’t create results. You cannot build a business on “I hope this works.” Replace hope with action and certainty.
Example:
A tech company hopes its new product launch will meet customer expectations, but the feedback channels are weak. Instead of hoping the product works, they could have set up a structured feedback loop early on. By not relying on hope, they would have caught user concerns faster, saving them from bad reviews and a costly relaunch.
Action: In every meeting, challenge your team to stop using “hope” and focus on real actions. Ask:
- “What are the concrete steps we’re taking to ensure this happens?”
- “How are we monitoring progress?”
- “What’s the backup plan if this doesn’t go as expected?”
This approach reduces risk and prevents costly surprises down the road. It forces your team to be accountable and proactive.
Step 3: Track Every Promise—Even the Small Ones
Promises get forgotten in the chaos of growing a business. One missed commitment can derail a project, frustrate a client, or cause unnecessary rework, which costs time and money. Leaders must implement a simple system to track promises made across teams and departments.
Example:
A software development company promises a client they’ll deliver a new feature by a certain date. But there’s no system in place to track this promise internally. When the deadline arrives, the feature is nowhere near ready. The client is angry, the team scrambles, and costly overtime hours are put in. If that promise had been properly tracked and followed up, this entire mess could have been avoided.
Action: Use a simple tool—whether it’s a spreadsheet, project management software, or even email—to track every commitment. Make sure there’s clear visibility on who is responsible, what the deadline is, and what needs to be done to follow through.
This keeps the team accountable and ensures that nothing slips through the cracks. The result? Less rework, happier clients, and reduced costs.
Step 4: Encourage Open Conversations About Overcommitment
Teams often overcommit, thinking it shows dedication or ambition. But overcommitting only leads to missed deadlines, burnt-out employees, and projects that don’t deliver results. Leaders need to create an environment where it’s okay to say, “I can’t take this on right now.”
Example:
A startup was on the verge of launching its new service, and the CEO asked everyone to pitch in. The head of operations took on additional tasks despite already being overloaded. As a result, mistakes were made, the launch was delayed, and the team had to fix costly errors. If there had been an open conversation about capacity, these mistakes could have been avoided.
Action: Create a culture where team members feel safe to speak up when they are overcommitted. Encourage honesty, and ask them questions like:
- “Do you have the capacity to take this on?”
- “What can we remove from your plate so you can focus on this?”
When you allow your team to have these conversations, you prevent burnout and ensure that projects are completed efficiently, saving both time and money.
Step 5: Model Integrity by Following Through on Your Commitments
As a leader, the quickest way to build momentum and drive performance is to model integrity yourself. This means keeping every commitment you make, or addressing it immediately if you can’t. When leaders are consistent in following through, it sets the tone for the entire organization. This is the cornerstone of trust.
Example:
Consider a CEO who makes big promises in all-hands meetings but rarely follows up on them. Over time, employees start to doubt his word, and morale plummets. But imagine if that same CEO was known for always keeping his word or directly addressing when he couldn’t. Trust would be built, teams would work harder, and the company would save time and energy spent on unnecessary follow-ups.
Action: As a leader, always keep your promises. If something changes and you can’t follow through, be transparent and clean up the situation. Say:
- “I promised this, but things have changed. Here’s what I’m going to do to make it right.”
This builds trust and makes people more willing to give their best effort, which increases efficiency and productivity.
Questions to gently provoke you to see blind spots that are currently producing results in your life that you want to avoid:
- Have I said “yes” to any requests because I didn’t want to seem incapable, even though I knew I couldn’t follow through?
- Have I ever agreed to a timeline just to avoid confrontation, knowing that I had no intention of meeting it?
- Have I ever said “I’ll try” instead of giving a clear commitment, leaving myself an escape route if things get tough?
- Am I allowing myself to back out of commitments when a “better” opportunity comes along?
- In what situations do I agree to things knowing I’ll probably back out or delay without communicating it clearly?
- Am I spending more time fixing problems caused by broken promises than I would if I communicated openly from the start?
- What opportunities have I lost because I failed to fully commit, opting instead to make conditional promises that I later dropped?
- How much stress, anxiety, or guilt do I experience because of promises I’ve made but can’t or won’t keep?
In Conclusion: Integrity = Performance
Integrity isn’t just a nice-to-have value—it’s the foundation for success in any business. Without integrity, teams waste time, money, and energy. By challenging vague commitments, replacing hope with action, tracking promises, encouraging honest conversations about workload, and modeling integrity as a leader, you can generate immediate momentum, increase profits, and cut costs.
Integrity is not about being perfect. It’s about making clear, actionable promises and following through on them. When your team sees that integrity is non-negotiable, they will rise to the challenge. Performance will skyrocket, and your business will thrive.
Take Action Now:
- Challenge the next “yes” you hear.
- Eliminate hope from your team’s vocabulary.
- Start tracking every promise, even the small ones.
- Create a space for open conversations about overcommitment.
- Model integrity in your own actions.
When integrity drives your decisions, everything else falls into place. Without it, nothing works.
If Your Hand Went Rogue? (an example I share often)
Imagine if your hand had a mind of its own. It moves when it wants, does what it feels like, and ignores your commands. You try to drink a glass of water, but the hand grabs a pen instead. You reach to shake someone’s hand, but it fumbles into your pocket.
This hand isn’t bad, but it’s no longer useful. It’s unpredictable. You can’t trust it. In fact, it causes more harm than good. Soon, you’d have no choice but to tie it down or, in extreme cases, consider removing it to stop the chaos it causes. The hand is no longer in integrity with the purpose it was designed for.
Now think of promises in your organization like that hand. When people make promises but don’t follow through, it’s like having a rogue hand. It’s not about being bad, but it makes the team or organization unworkable. A promise is a tool—when it’s out of integrity, the whole system starts to fail.
Just like you wouldn’t trust that hand, you can’t trust promises that aren’t kept. Deadlines get missed, projects fall apart, and trust erodes. The organization becomes less effective, like a body trying to function with a hand it can’t rely on.
When promises are out of integrity, the entire organization becomes less usable to the extent its promises are out of integrity. Productivity drops, frustration rises, and trust erodes. Just like the rogue hand, things fall apart.
To fix this, you don’t need to punish the person or cut them off from the team. You need to restore integrity. Have an honest conversation about what went wrong. Clear up the mess, and get back on track.