What to say if they’re not committed?

How many times have we been part of a project where people haven’t been following through on their responsibilities? 

If your team isn’t committed to a decision, here’s some language from Patrick Lencioni, author of The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, that you can use to get things back on track, even if you’re not in charge. 

In the next team meeting, you can simply ask how committed everyone is to the plan or decision. 

You can say, “I just want to ask everybody how confident are we that everyone here is going to go out and actually act on this.”

You’re not pointing any one person out, and you’re not calling out the leader. 

“I would just like to know if anybody else is feeling that maybe we're not that confident that we are truly committed to this answer/path/decision/etc.”

This does take some vulnerability, but you can make it about the team, rather than about you.  

If people aren’t being honest you can say: “Maybe we could just hold up a number on one hand. Five fingers mean you’re 100% committed and into it, and a fist means you’re 0% committed to it. We could even put our heads down so we can be honest, and only the leader looks at our answers if that makes everyone more comfortable.”  

What you’re doing by calling this question is giving everyone else permission to acknowledge that they may not be entirely on board. If that’s the case, the team should know what to talk about next.