Reflections on 'The Six Counterintuitive Rules' - 5

RULE #5: SET EXPECTATIONS, BUT KNOW THAT YOU’RE NOT ALWAYS THE ONE WHO NEEDS TO BRING THE CLARITY.

If there’s a new role that’s been poorly defined, providing clarification is the first step. Once you define it, you’ll usually find that someone who’s in that role isn’t actually a fit for what the business needs.

• Do people’s roles make sense?
• Do they know how they fit in?
• How they align to the business?
• Do they know what’s expected of them?
• Do they know what success looks like?
  80% of the time when I go into a team that’s struggling, the answers to those questions is no.

Be realistic about what you can offer, but remember that it’s BYOC (Bring Your Own Clarity). I actually need people who bring their own clarity and structure. And that’s because I don’t have a lot of the answers right now. To be a better manager, you have to be really realistic about what you can control and what you can offer — and what you can’t.

Often a low performer isn’t someone who is inherently low performing. It is someone who has the wrong set of circumstances around them — they’re in the wrong job or in the wrong organization. A lot of times when people are struggling it’s not because they’re bad at stuff, but because they don’t know what’s expected of them. Give them the chance to see the gap and say, ‘I know I can do it,’ or ‘This really isn’t for me actually.’

Inspiration 5: Set expectations is important

Setting clear expectations is essential for both high-performing and low-performing employees. In the past, I did not do a good job of setting clear expectations, which impacted high-performing employees’ motivation to achieve even greater goals and low-performing employees’ direction in making an effort to improve.

To Be Continue…