When I graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, I was commissioned into the Australian Army as a twenty-year-old lieutenant responsible for leading around thirty soldiers. Like most young leaders stepping into their first significant leadership role, I quickly discovered that while I had been given the authority to lead, I still had an enormous amount to learn.

Not long after arriving at my unit, I was given the task of preparing an exercise instruction for my Battery Captain. It was due on his desk at 10:30 that morning, but by the time he asked me where it was, I had to admit it wasn’t finished.

I apologised and explained that I only needed another hour or two to complete it. In my mind, that seemed like a reasonable explanation. The work was nearly done, and I intended to finish it as quickly as possible.

Instead of accepting my explanation, he asked me two simple questions.

“Did you sleep last night?”

I told him I had.

“What time did you go to bed?”

After I answered, he looked at me and said something that has stayed with me throughout my career.

“That’s your problem, Patterson. You’ve got an excuse for everything, but you can’t be relied upon to get results.”

He went on to explain that I should have stayed up the night before, completed the task, and arrived at work tired but with the job finished. His point wasn’t really about the sleep I had lost or the report itself. It was about reliability. If people can’t depend on you to deliver what you’ve committed to, they’ll eventually stop trusting you with important responsibilities.

At the time, I didn’t particularly enjoy hearing it. Looking back, however, it was one of the most valuable leadership lessons I’ve ever received.

Reliability Builds Trust

That conversation fundamentally changed the way I thought about responsibility. The Battery Captain wasn’t interested in my explanation. He wasn’t questioning whether I had intended to complete the task; he was questioning whether I could be relied upon to deliver on my commitments.

As leaders, we often assume that our good intentions should count for something. We meant to finish the report. We meant to return the phone call. While those intentions may be genuine, they aren’t what builds trust.

Trust is built when people know that if you say you’re going to do something, it gets done.

What It Means for Business Owners

Running a business is demanding, and there will always be unexpected interruptions. What I’ve learned, however, is that people rarely remember the reasons something wasn’t done. They remember whether they could rely on you.

The strongest leaders I’ve worked with weren’t remembered because they had all the answers. They were remembered because people trusted them. They knew that when those leaders made a commitment, they would do everything in their power to honour it.

In the end, that’s what leadership comes down to. Not perfection. Not clever explanations. Just becoming someone that other people know they can rely on.

Can your team rely on you?

The next time you make a commitment, don’t focus on explaining why it might not happen. Focus on delivering the result. Reliability is built one commitment at a time—and so is trust.

If you want more practical leadership lessons drawn from the military, business and real-world experience, follow Daimien Patterson social media pages and subscribe to the YouTube channel.