Leaders Must Clearly Define Expectations

Every manager and every employee should sit down each year, at a minimum and agree on expectations for the job. These expectations should include “The What” expectations. One can define these as the actions that need to get done, such as reaching a sales goal or a level of profitability. This agreement should also include “The How” expectations. These could cover issues like how you will interact with customers, responsiveness, timeliness of reporting, interactions with internal employees and a host of other expectations.

The setting of expectations, including “How” and “What” is the most powerful of actions that can be taken by a manager to drive performance in a company. It is also one of the most underused. We often see goals that include only the “What” with no attention to the “How” and yet, employees are often evaluated on these ill-defined goals. We hear that “These are long time employees; they know what they are supposed to be doing.” After ignoring the important step of setting expectations, company executives are then surprised that their evaluation system is broken or weak. Should they be surprised when they have allowed managers to skip the initial step of setting expectations but require conversations around how well direct reports are meeting these never defined expectations?

Once we agree that expectations are a good idea, there needs to be follow-up and continual feedback to compare performance to these expectations. This continuous feedback is the responsibility of the leader or manager but the person held accountable must be the direct report. It is their performance and therefore they must have a plan to demonstrate how well they are tracking to meet or exceed these expectations.

Accountability - Advocate for your People

Often leaders are asked to recommend someone who reports to them for a promotion, an increase in pay, recognition for a job well done or some other honor or accolade.  As a leader, if you have not been in this position, you will be.  Though we do not always realize the impact of this situation, I have found that advocating for your people has a large impact that is more far reaching than one understands. 

When you have a deserving individual who reports to you, it is critical that you make the best case for their selection.  Let’s use a promotion as an example, though almost any type of recognition demands the same attention.  When one of your direct reports has gone above and beyond the call of duty to contribute to the success of your team, they deserve your best effort to be recognized in an appropriate fashion.  If they have demonstrated their capability for greater responsibility, you must take up their case for promotion.

As a leader rises in the ranks of their company and responsibility their assessment is based more on their ability to recognize and cultivate talent than their skills at the operational level.  Amazingly, many leaders fail to see this and short circuit their success.  Whether it is due to personal dislike, envy, that someone reporting to them is more capable than they are, or the inability to recognize potential, when leaders fail to step up, their higher leadership takes notice.  The alternative is also true.  When your direct reports are selected for higher positions and excel, in good organizations, you are also rewarded.  The best leaders surround themselves with talent, develop that talent and reward it with additional responsibility.  

Accountability - Make your direct report responsible

Every manager and every employee should sit down each year, at a minimum and agree on expectations for the job.  These expectations should include “The What” expectations.  One can define these as the actions that need to get done, such as reaching a sales goal or a level of profitability.  This agreement should also include “The How” expectations.  These could cover issues like how you will interact with customers, responsiveness, timeliness of reporting, interactions with internal employees and a host of other expectations.

The setting of expectations, including “How” and “What” is the most powerful of actions that can be taken by a manager to drive performance in a company.  It is also one of the most underused.  We often see goals that include only the “What” with no attention to the “How” and yet, employees are often evaluated on these ill-defined goals.  We often hear that “These are long time employees; they know what they are supposed to be doing.”  After ignoring the important step of setting expectations, company executives are often surprised that their evaluation system is broken or weak.  Should they be surprised when they have allowed managers to skip the initial step of setting expectations but require conversations around how well direct reports are meeting these surprise expectations?

Once we agree that expectations are a good idea, there needs to be follow-up and continual feedback to compare performance to these expectations.  This continuous feedback is the responsibility of the leader or manager but the person held accountable must be the direct report.  It is their performance and therefore they must have a plan to demonstrate how well they are tracking to meet or exceed these expectations.

Your Actions Really Do Speak

In every walk of life, one must lead by example when put in charge.  If the leader does not uphold the standards that are set, everyone will look to cut corners.  This is a recipe for failure individually but also for one’s team.  It is really a rather simple concept.  There is one standard that everyone must meet and they are all looking to the leader to see if meeting the standard is actually important.  Once a leader stops modeling correct behavior, the organization will begin to fail.  For leaders actions are far more important than words because they are always on display.

For decades, possibly centuries, we have heard that you need to “Practice what you preach.” Or one must “Walk the walk and not just talk the talk.”  There are probably hundreds of these statements and they all make sense, yet there are many leaders who are not following this sage advice.  I don’t know if they believe that they are too smart for people to figure out who they really are and what they are really like but in my experience, they are rarely fooling anyone.

I have worked with a company who brought in a new President for North America and the new president, as is usually the case, replaced most of the senior executives with those with whom she was more familiar and therefore more comfortable.  One of the senior vice presidents, who she hired gave the entire division a speech telling us how the company had been barely keeping its head above water and the new executives were going to instill values in the company.  It turned out that the values they tried to instill, allegedly included violating some government policies in an attempt to increase profits.  The result, as expected, was that many of the good people decided to leave the company.  Good people it seems, always have other options.  The company profits did not improve and the stock price lagged its competitors by about 20% per year for the eight years of the president’s tenure.  Though it took far too long, she was eventually replaced.  Only time will tell if the new president has learned this lesson.

Setting Expections

Sometimes the simplest of solutions produce the greatest results.  We have found that managers could have a profound impact on the success of their companies if they would find time to sit down with their direct reports or team members and agree on expectations.  It is important not only for the manager to insure that their direct reports understand these expectations but those being managed also have expectations for their manager.  It is shocking how often managers hold the belief that, “team members have been doing this job for a long time; they all know what they are supposed to do.”   This discussion includes not just what people need to do such as reach a sales quota but also How they are going to accomplish these goals.

 Is it any wonder why reviews with employees have become so difficult and uncomfortable?  We are charged, in many companies to sit down once a year and provide an annual review.  Often, these reviews are based on a standard that has never been discussed.  It should surprise no one that the manager is uncomfortable delivering an evaluation on an unknown standard.  If managers would have the first conversation, agreeing on expectations and laying out what is outstanding, average, below average, or unacceptable then the annual review would be much easier.

When one understands the requirements of doing a good job, it has been my experience that most people will strive to reach or exceed the goals.  I have not met too many employees or managers who are thinking, “Boy, I cannot wait to do a lousy job today.”  Most are trying to do a good job but they need clear guidance on what that looks like.  If I could get every company to do one thing to increase performance, it would be to follow a process for every manager to set clear, written expectations.  This has to be done every year and there needs to be progress reports on these expectations throughout the year. 

With clearly defined, written and agreed upon goals, organizations have a much greater opportunity to achieve success.  One simple solution to produce greater results.

Leaders Needed

Leaders in almost every company understand that the difference between success and failure in an organization is often the quality of their leadership.  One would think that this understanding would influence decisions and cause organizations to provide development that would ensure the continued health of the enterprise.  Amazingly, companies both large and small often ignore the necessity to develop their next level of leaders.

Many organizations spend a great deal of money creating training programs.  Often these programs are built on large and expensive infrastructures where current employees provide the leadership lessons for their colleagues.   Amazingly, even the U.S. Military realizes that if you want to provide leaders and emerging leaders with new ideas on leadership, it requires those with experience outside of the organization.  That is why many of the military courses at the Senior Leader Institutes are taught by civilians and outside experts.  Why is it that companies persist in the idea that they can train their leaders using only those who are “Drinking from the same trough?”

Clearly, there is a need for training on internal processes that will increase a managers’ efficiency within the company.  This is not the same as developing leaders.  As John Kotter, Harvard Leadership Guru, puts it, “Leadership is about change.”  One cannot train the next level of change agents by reinforcing current practices.  Companies that want to really develop leaders need to find a set of instructors with a program that provides a new view of leadership with techniques that expand their employees skill set.  Real leadership must be about change and the first issue to be addressed is a change in attitude by senior leaders.  A new outside source of training and development might be the best prescription to develop your next level of leaders.