STUDY BOOK The power of language and actions, the basis for

COACHING: El poder del lenguaje y las acciones

Sometimes we come to the conclusion that the promiser is one person, but in reality the promiser was someone else.

The key is to remember that promises are context dependent and different people sometimes operate from different contexts.

They always carry executive (execution) risk: You think you can always do what you promise, but there is always the risk of something unforeseen preventing you from delivering. The riskier the promise, the more likely it is that something will fail. It is impossible to eliminate executive risk, but you can reduce it by promising only what you can deliver. Obscure promises generate misunderstandings: One of the ways to reduce executive risks is to increase interpretive risks by making ambiguous promises or hedging in order not to experience risks. Commitment is always a commitment to produce an outcome, not to try to produce.

As making promises requires mutual consent between the parties, to reach this consent we can proceed through two different actions: offers and demands.

• Offers .

An offer is a promise with a condition of reciprocity. In other words, one can promise something, if another helps him to carry out something. In this case the acceptance of the offer implies a commitment, both for the one who offers and for the one who accepts. A company's success depends on its ability to offer value to its customers and to get these customers to return that value with more money than it costs to generate it. The offer is aimed at the interests of the other, it is essential to listen and understand their situation in order to make proposals that generate value for them.

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European Open Business School