When a person, especially a leader, can no longer be relied on for important tasks within his or her organization, a breeding ground for frustration, dissension and chaos is created. No one wants to reach a point in their leadership where their followers (be it volunteers, employees, etc.) become disgruntled because of the leader's lack of follow-through.
If you find yourself to be a leader lacking in dependability, here are three suggestions to get you on track.
- Develop a Do-It-Now-Not-Later attitude. Procrastination is an enemy to all of us. I'll admit that I'm bad at procrastinating. The solution to procrastination is to do a task when it is assigned rather than putting it off until later. It's easy to reason in our minds that we always have until the deadline to get it done. But, we invite Murphy's Law to bite us in the rear. The best course of action is to complete the task at the beginning of the assignment. Not only will you be done quicker, but those reliant upon you will be happier, too.
- Don't make excuses. If you blow it, admit it and apologize for it. A cavalier attitude about your unreliable nature will anger and frustrate those who have to deal with you. Recognizing you have an issue with dependability is the first step toward correcting this bad character trait.
- Evaluate your work load. Sometimes, leaders become unreliable when they have too large of a work load. It may be necessary to delegate some responsibilities in order to free yourself to do the necessary tasks.
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