Since Team Up releases to bookstores nationwide TODAY, it feels appropriate to return to a familiar phenomenon: We often do more to follow-through on commitments to others than we do to execute commitments to ourselves.

How many times have we, in the moments immediately prior to a meeting, suddenly kicked it into major gear to make sure we’re on top of things? Maybe it’s an attempt to avoid deep-seeded feelings of guilt. Maybe it’s a powerful internal visualization of disapproval upon comrades’ faces. Whatever is going on there, there’s no denying the power of a little accountability.

To tap into this power, the characters in Team Up decided to make their friends their bosses. Each week, they shared with each other their personal goals and progress against committed actions…with dramatic results. But they were no means the first or the last to enter into such arrangements. Pythagoras, Holy Clubs, Alcoholics Anonymous, Weight Watchers, Mastermind Groups—all of them tap into the same principles. Each group found that when one converts personal goals into group commitments, the force behind a commitment grows.

In fact, Dr. Gail Matthews, a psych professor at Dominican University, performed some research that quantitatively substantiates this concept (which is encouraging, after Fast Company and Sid Savara resolutely debunked the oft-quoted Harvard written goals study).

In the study, 149 individuals were separated into 5 groups who took their goals to differing levels of commitment. Group 1 merely thought about their goals, while group 5 wrote down their goals, committed to actions associated with them, and shared a weekly progress report on those actions to a friend. The results? The goal-thinkers accomplished 43% of their stated goals, while the accountable-folk accomplished 76% of their goals. Impressive!

Science backs up what we all experience. Just one more reason to team up…

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