Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive

coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be

perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today

we're talking about being impeccable with your word.

At the end of our second session, Sharon told me she'd have her assistant call me to

schedule our next appointment.

When I hadn't heard from anyone a week later, I called the assistant myself and we set up my

next coaching session. My personal experience of

Sharon was that she was a kind person who was eager to please others. As her coach, I was concerned that

her desire to please had taken her into dangerous waters. her Her feedback had reflected that. One person summed it up with two words and an exclamation point.

Stop over-promising.

Another client, Dave, got feedback that also reflected erosion of trust but for a different reason.

The issue popped into focus for me the day I heard him on the phone with Janine,

the division president in Atlanta.

He'd apologized to me about having to make the call during our session. I told him it was no problem and asked if he wanted me to step outside.

He said, no, actually I wish you could be on the call so you can hear how irrational she can be.

Dave and I had discussed his relationship with

Janine at length. I thought Dave did well on the call. I wrote down some questions I

had about things I heard, but in general I thought he'd avoided his big pitfalls of

over-explaining and sounding defensive. When I asked Dave a question about one

particular exchange he replied by telling me what Janine had said, and then quoted his own response.

His response sounded excellent, except for one thing.

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