I was recently thinking about what would I have wanted to know when I was first starting out as a consultant. So I decided to write about it. Then I realized that these principles aren’t just for consulting work. They’re relevant to all work relationships.

So here’s the first of 5 foundational practices for success at work!

1. Keep your promises—reliability is king

The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises.

—Hannah Arendt

Keeping your promises means being reliable. Being reliable means building trust, and trust is the glue of all relationships, including professional ones.

Do Excellent Work—Under promise; Over deliver

The best way to be reliable to your clients and collaborators is to do excellent work. While quality might not be an explicit promise, there are implicit standards that the world expects. If you want to stand out, then you should strive to outperform those standards. But you also have to know what you're capable of doing without burning out, and you have to make promises that you can ultimately deliver on-scope and on-time.

If you're getting behind, or under-delivering on your promises, your clients and collaborators are going to suffer from it, and your relationships and reputation will suffer as a result. This can be a painful lesson to learn, and it's only really learned through experience. But by being aware that this dynamic exists, you can know to watch out for it, and organize your life in such a way that you maximize the value you're offering while also delivering work efficiently and on time.

Keeping promises is all about trust, and trust is all about shared reality. If you make an agreement, that means you’re all on the same page. Everyone has the same reference point. We share a reality and feel that we can rely on each other. When promises are not kept, this reality is destroyed, and trust along with it. People don’t know what they can count on you for, and this has dire implications for your work going forward. Often times stress is a result of this dynamic.

Punctuality—On time is late; Early is on time

One aspect of reliability is being punctual. It’s important to be on time. Now this might seems simple, and not doubt for some people, punctuality comes naturally. But for the rest of us, a bit of punctuality-strategy goes a long way.

The problem is that life is complex and chaotic and there’s often more going on than we realize. As a result, it’s easy to under-estimate the amount of time we need to do something. So, it turns out that being on time is actually being late. In fact, even if you are exactly on time, you’re still late! Let’s say you arrive at the cafe to meet your colleague to discuss a project, and you’re right on time. But then you need to order your tea or coffee and there’s a line. You might not start your meeting until quarter after. In the professional world this is unacceptable. Time is of the essence and wasting others’ time is costly.

So if being on time is actually being late, we need to be early, if we want to be on time. We need to build a little buffer. Now how much of a buffer you need depends on your own personal time management margin of error. You basically need to do the work necessary to be slightly ahead of schedule. I like to calculate all the different things I need to do to, in order to arrive on time. Parking, getting water or a snack, preparing my notes or deliverables for the meeting etc. Then I add an extra buffer for the unknowns. But, I also shoot for an arrival time that’s 10-15 minutes early. So I have a buffer for my buffer. This means I’m almost always early to my engagements, but that time is never poorly spent. It allows me an opportunity to drop in and get centered, and review notes from a previous meeting, and prepare myself to relax into excellent-work-mode.

If you’re going to deliver on time, then you always need to establish when you’re going to deliver something. This means laying out an explicit “by when” for every task, agreement, or promise that you make with another person.

Your calendar is reality

I used to think of my calendar as a tool. One of many digital services that I could use to organize my life and get things done. And that’s not wrong. It is a tool. The problem was, I was still sometimes showing up late to meetings, and even now and then completely missing one. This was extremely stressful and was bad for my reputation. This was a big reality check.

So I came to realize that a calendar is not just a tool. A calendar is reality. A calendar is time itself. Time doesn’t exist, but your calendar does. Your life doesn’t even exist. You’re just a consciousness living inside the box of your calendar. If it’s not on your calendar it never happened, and it was never going to happen. That’s extreme, I know, but it needed to happen, and it was hard to reprogram myself that way because it went against all of my “nature boy” tendencies, my desire to “go with the flow” and “be here now”.

But over time, I realized that this lens of calendar-as-reality didn’t take away from the present moment. It actually gave me more access to it. By living by the calendar, I could actually relax into the present moment with depth and ease because I didn’t have to think about what else I might be doing. It was right there on my calendar. Boom. Stress evaporated from my life.

Follow up & stay in touch

Andres Marquez-Lara, CEO of UFacilitate (a small but mighty global facilitation consultancy and training company) has a reputation. He’s known for following up. He’s reliable AF, and everyone around him knows it. That’s why his clients come back to him again and again.

After every call he has with anyone, he types up the agreements and to-dos (in fact I suspect he takes notes directly in his email). 10 minutes after every meeting, you can pretty much bank on Andres sending you a warm note, thanking you for your time, and including an accurate breakdown of to-dos and agreements.

This helps him keep track of his own work, helps his clients and colleagues keep track of theirs, and builds a badass reputation of reliability. It engenders trust. It’s one of the qualities that makes him a joy to work with.

Reliability comes in a lot of forms. But all of them are about building shared realities through agreement and trust. This is the social fabric of professional relationships. It takes a long time to build trust, but it can be destroyed very quickly.

So above all, be a person of integrity and keep your promises!