Commitments honoured
How can you make commitments explicit and address departures from them without creating a blame culture?
3500 € per session, excl. VAT
In short
Two days, totalling 14 hours excluding breaks, to design an accountability framework suited to a team. Participants practise clarifying commitments, delegating with explicit decision-making latitude and conducting challenging conversations. They develop a prototype for collective working, test it in a simulation and prepare a workplace pilot.
Why this training?
Assigning responsibility without decision-making authority encourages people to wait for approval or look for someone to blame. Clarifying decision-making latitude, resources and dependencies makes it possible to hold people accountable for commitments that are genuinely within their control. Managers demonstrate exemplary behaviour when a deadline slips: acknowledging their own contribution, listening to the obstacles and deciding on remedial action. Practice helps them maintain this standard without humiliation or routinely taking back delegated work. Running case study: At Aveldor Conditionnement, a fictitious company, production and dispatch blame each other for delayed orders. Urgent demands change priorities without explicit decisions on trade-offs. Participants must rebuild cross-departmental commitments and test a regular follow-up routine. Transfer to the workplace: In the following month, propose a pilot with a volunteer team: formalise two commitments, hold two reviews and gather perceptions of fairness. Compare commitments met, early warnings and blocked decisions before adjusting the prototype.
Objectives of this training
- Distinguish between individual responsibility, collective dependency and organisational shortcomings.
- Formalise a commitment with an outcome, deadline, resources and warning arrangements.
- Conduct a conversation about an unmet commitment.
- Test an accountability routine in a simulation.
- Define a pilot with observations and conditions for revision.
Who is it for and what are the prerequisites?
Roles and tasks concerned
- Team managers facing unclear or regularly renegotiated commitments.
- Cross-functional managers and human resources managers preparing a collective pilot.
Prior skills
- Have experience of coordination or management.
- Be able to describe a situation involving an unmet commitment and its consequences.
What you will work on
Identify diluted responsibilities
Objective: Identify avoidance mechanisms. Responsibility, blame, agency and constraints.
Clarify interfaces
Objective: Allocate decisions and contributions. Decision-maker, contributors, dependencies and trade-offs.
Formalise a commitment
Objective: Replace implicit expectations. Expected outcome, acceptance, deadline and warning.
Delegate without abandoning support
Objective: Adjust autonomy and support. Resources, boundaries, checkpoints and escalation.
Address a deviation
Objective: Hold people accountable without accusation. Facts, impacts, listening, managerial contribution and remedial action.
Receive an early warning
Objective: Encourage early reporting. Acknowledged error, structural obstacle and refusal to commit.
Write the collective rules
Objective: Prototype a fair framework. Reciprocity, disagreement, remedial action and exemplary behaviour.
Facilitate the commitment review
Objective: Monitor without micromanaging. Progress, obstacles, decisions and explicit renegotiation.
Put the prototype to the test
Objective: Assess its behavioural robustness. Urgency, external dependency and unrealistic commitment.
Define the scope of the pilot
Objective: Organise a limited trial. Scope, support, observations and stopping conditions.
What you take away
- Map of responsibilities and dependencies
- Commitment and delegation template
- Prototype charter and collective routine
- Pilot plan with an observation grid
Method and assessment
- Short input sessions followed by simulations and role plays based on the case used throughout.
- Structured observation and peer feedback using a shared observation framework.
- Guided debrief: what worked, what will be adjusted, individual commitment.
- Preparation: Prepare an anonymised situation, without personal or confidential information. Identify existing delegations of authority and the supporting resources authorised by the organisation.
Observable criteria: Each commitment specifies the person responsible, the outcome, the deadline and the alert threshold. ; The scope for decision-making matches the available resources. ; Feedback describes facts and leads to an agreed remedial action. ; The prototype allows an obstacle to be reported without assigning blame. ; The pilot provides for observations, a person responsible for follow-up and a decision on revision..
Frequently asked questions
Are real situations used?
Only in anonymised form; the main simulations are based on the fictional case.
Does fostering accountability mean imposing sanctions?
No: clarification, listening and remedial action precede any decision under the internal framework.
What can you do without line-management authority?
Negotiate contributions and clarify the process for resolving competing demands.
Will the approach be rolled out in two days?
No, a tested prototype and a pilot plan will be prepared.
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