Everyone has expectations, it’s human nature.  Expectations can vary from high to low, met to unmet, spoken to unspoken, and reasonable to unreasonable. When expectations are met in life and at work, we experience a level of satisfaction and contentment.  When they are unmet, our emotions can quickly shift to surprise, disappointment, anger, blame, and even fear the expectations will continue to be unmet.  

Employees have expectations of their leaders.  So does the business.  But, there’s a danger when we expect something from leaders and automatically assume it will be fulfilled.  It can lead to performance stagnation or decline, anxiety, disengagement, and even higher turnover.  Are expectations of leaders in your organization -- reasonable or unreasonable?  What are you actively doing to manage these expectations?

Expectations have a powerful impact on trust and respect.  And, trust impacts performance.  For example, in PwC’s 2016 global CEO survey, ‘55% of CEOs thought that a lack of trust was a threat to their organization’s growth.’  Ken Blanchard Companies’ research found that ‘45% of employees said lack of trust in leadership was the biggest issue in work performance.’

Some of you might be thinking ‘but we already have values, leadership competencies, and job descriptions.  Isn’t that enough?’  Maybe – maybe not.

Expectations are simply beliefs that a certain outcome or event will happen (we apply assumptions). But, expectations are not agreement.  That only takes place with consistent execution of an aligned set of repeatable processes that communicate, teach, and reinforce desired outcomes and behaviors.    
Is your current process for managing leadership expectation effective and efficient in:

• Providing straightforwardness and transparency to both leaders and employees?
• Driving more consistent use of standard methods & techniques?
• Providing specifics on timing, frequency, duration, processes to use?
• Creating more consistency regardless of location, experience level, personalities, or level of supervision?
• Driving higher levels of accountability?
• Sustaining momentum regardless of leadership changes?
• Improving both performance and development of leaders?  

Understanding, creating, and managing expectations is critical for sustained success.  Pushing leaders to achieve their best can lead to very positive results. But, unrealistic expectations can backfire and be dangerous.  Is it time for your organization to do a reality check of how it is managing leadership expectations?

One final thought.  It’s widely acknowledged that leadership has a significant impact on performance and competitiveness.  Research has found organizations with the highest quality leaders were 13 times more likely to outperform their competition in bottom-line metrics.  In addition, as much as 35% of the variability in employee discretionary performance is a result of managerial styles and behaviors. When it comes to managing leadership expectations, let’s be respectfully relentless and relentlessly respectful.  It will pay BIG dividends.

Interested in Leadership Expectation best practices (beliefs, plans, and execution)?  If so let’s connect at Brian@BrianGareauInc.com or at 309.634.9137 USA    

For over 56 million kids in America, it’s that time of year – back to school. It’s also a time filled with many emotions – excitement, anxiety, and even a little sadness.

Our school days are also a great laboratory to go back and ‘unwrap’ some foundational principles about performance management in the workplace. These principles are not complicated. But, they do take practice, discipline, and reinforcement to consistently do.

Consider in school:

• Performance management starts the first day. Easing into it later only creates confusion, frustration, and stress.     
• Classroom expectations are consistent with school expectations.
• Two assumptions are avoided - ‘kids are smart, they should already know the rules’ and ‘kids resent the time spent on reinforcing the rules’.  Kids like predictability (adults do too).
• Two sets of expectations are set – performance and behavior. 
• Performance and behavior expectations must be communicated clearly. A teacher who says, ‘speak quietly’ is more likely to get the desired result than saying ‘act appropriately’. 
• Everyone wants to know ‘how they will be graded’. This includes progress reports and final grades.
• Giving feedback is continuous. Creating new habits takes lots of reinforcement. Thank goodness for all those smiles, words of encouragement, little notes, smiley faces, and stickers.
• Measurement of performance must be meaningful, specific, and enforceable. For example, is it more important that black ink is used or that the hand writing is legible?     
• There are natural consequences for a student’s performance and behavior – both positive and negative. 
• Expectations can change depending on the teacher’s style. One teacher might be more project-based and another more focused on memorizing facts. So, it is critical students know the style.

Let’s take a quick quiz (assessment) from lessons learned going ‘back to school’.  Rate each either 1 (consistently done) or 2 (inconsistently done). 

In our organization, most leaders:

1. Start performance management in a timely manner by setting clear expectations of goals, objectives, and behaviors at the start of an employee’s performance cycle – not weeks or months later.
2. Follow the organization’s standards for key performance process steps (frequency, timeliness, quality of).
3. Avoid making assumptions that employees are ‘smart and already know that stuff’ about performance management – without thoroughly checking.
4. Discuss and document both what needs to be achieved (goals & objectives) and how it should be achieved (processes & values-based behaviors).
5. Seek clear, concise employee understanding of what they should continue doing, start doing, or stop doing.
6. Tell employees upfront ‘how performance will be graded’ and keep those rules throughout the performance year.
7. Give continuous feedback through timely, dedicated reinforcement and coaching.
8. Measure success with factors that are meaningful, specific, and enforceable. 
9. Allow the natural consequences of employees’ performance and behaviors to play out.
10. Provide clarity as to what style of documentation and measurement they prefer when the performance cycle begins.

Performance management is so much more than an end of year appraisal. It’s a critical job responsibility of each leader to help plan, develop, monitor, grade, and reward employees for their contributions – not their activities.

It has been said, ‘No one rises to low expectations.’ When we tolerate taking short-cuts, skipping steps, and allowing countless exceptions to the rules in performance management, we lower the bar on potential higher performance. How ironic! Maybe it’s time we go ‘back to school’ and stop making things so complicated.