The promises we’ve made to each other drive our culture. The commitments, the expectations we agree to uphold, and the trust we choose to build together.
These are more than formal contracts. They’re the everyday agreements that create the reality we share. The promise to show up and speak the truth, to consider others, and do what we say we’ll do.
When we keep our promises, we create a sense of safety and trust. But when we break our promises without consequences, culture gets affected, trust dissolves, and values lose their meaning.
Some promises, though, need to be broken if we’re to change our culture—those that support and maintain harmful cycles, those that protect toxic behaviours and values that don’t serve us anymore, like the unspoken promise of staying silent about important problems or always prioritizing comfort over truth.
Perhaps our most important job is not only to break the old promises that keep the status quo but also to make and keep new, stronger ones that will allow us to change culture for the better.
The culture we’re setting out to create isn’t defined by what we say or our intentions but by the promises we keep – and the ones we don’t.