High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.
—Charles Kettering
Hey Steve. I wanted to take the time to welcome you to the company and tell you how excited we are to have you onboard.
Thanks. I’m really happy to be part of the team.
Well, you’ve made a great decision to join us and I wanted to take some time up front to clarify a couple of things. That okay with you?
Of course. Being on the same page I think is the best way to start my career here.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. So, let me tell you a bit about my management style. Still good?
Absolutely!
Well, the first thing I want to share with you, and in fact I think you will be happy with, is that I am a hands-off manager.
Okay. What does that mean?
It means that we hired you because you are a smart guy and a go-getter.
Yes, I’ve always been proud of my past accomplishments.
And we are paying you really great money and giving you really great benefits.
And I appreciate that.
So my approach is to support your efforts, whatever they may be.
Can you be a bit clearer, please?
So let me cut through the BS and just tell you what I want from you, okay?
I expect you to go out and figure out what needs to be done as quickly as you can. Then I want you to work hard and get as much done as you can. I support your efforts unequivocally and am excited to see what you come up with.
Okay.
So get out there and create your future. I am excited about your future with our company.
Is there anything else?
Good question. Yes, one more thing. I am known around here as a motivator and I am proud of that label. I expect you to have a good attitude and a can-do approach.
Okay.
And because I don’t want you to feel as though I’m leaving you out there totally on your own, we’ll meet from time-to-time to course-correct. Got it. . . . Great!
I’m not sure I fully understand . . .
I assure you that you will. OJT takes time, get it?
Well, can we talk about specifics?
Hey Steve. Don’t crash my high so soon. You’re not becoming ‘high maintenance’ already, are you?
Well, I . . .
Cool. Hey, gotta run to another meeting. I’m already twenty minutes late. Like I said, unconditional support. Later Gator.
All too often, a dialogue like this is the standard operating procedure to welcome new employees. And it immediately creates problems, some of which are unforeseen and unanticipated.
For one, the responsibility for understanding and accomplishing the things that are expected rests solely on the new employee. If something goes wrong, then it gets blamed on the new employee, not the manager/leader. After all, this person’s manager provided direction, right? Just figure out what needs to be done.
But if the new person makes a mistake or confuses priorities, it never becomes the lack of clarity of expectations. So, it is never the manager who is at fault; it is always the employee.
And on another note, sometimes, despite unclear expectations, an employee may be a “quick study” and get most things right. And that’s great, except for the fact that most of the time he or she had to figure things out on a trial-and-error basis, which is less effective and less efficient than if he or she had clearer direction.
And the fact that this laissez-faire approach works sometimes feeds the belief that a “hands-off” management approach is effective. But this conclusion fails to consider how many people just “didn’t get it” who could have “gotten it” with a bit more clarification from his or her manager. Or even how much time and effort a new hire had to expend that could have been saved by a bit more coaching.
But the ends justify the means, right?
So, this makes the first and most important question regarding the management dilemma and Charles, which is: “Does Charles know explicitly what is expected of him by his manager and company? Is he or was he clear on what was and is expected of him?”
So there I was, one hour before my first meeting with Charles. This would be my first opportunity to begin the process of attempting to turn around his performance. His previous manager had a confidential file where he kept notes on Charles’s issues and challenges. It wasn’t a personnel file per se, but more of an informal collection of notes, none of which had been documented in an HR written warning or anything like that. Which meant that despite these cryptic notes, there was no paper trail of incriminating evidence I could use in case things with Charles didn’t go as I was hoping they would. So, I was basically starting from scratch, which in a way was the best for both Charles and me, no assumptions from me and a clean slate for him.
I wanted to make sure to address the issues that will impact Charles and his contribution to the department the most. In his file, I identified three complaints that seemed simple enough to remedy and a good initial indicator of how difficult this project would become. First, Charles is consistently late for work an average of two days out of each month. Coworkers complain that this behavior interferes with their ability to hold early meetings. Also, those who depend on Charles’s work are upset that they can’t reach him at critical times. Second, Charles doesn’t return voicemail messages for days. When he does finally answer them, he often leaves incomplete or abrupt answers. Third, Charles only partially met his objective last year of introducing two new products to the market. He did introduce one new product, but it didn’t meet customer requirements. He never got around to introducing the second product.
Charles’s previous manager left some notes in Charles’s file concerning his responses to these problems. Regarding his chronic lateness, Charles is a single parent and has a problem with his daycare. The daycare sometimes falls through and he must make last-minute arrangements.
About the voicemail issue, Charles feels overworked. When his manager tried to hold him accountable, Charles pointed out that it sometimes took his manager a long time to answer voicemail messages. Charles also indicated that he likes to wait until he has all the information necessary before returning messages.
When asked why he introduced only one product to the market during the previous year, Charles said that the marketing department didn’t get the research data to him in time to introduce more than one product. Additionally, he stated that the product that was introduced met all the internal specifications before release. He felt that it wasn’t his fault if the market research was wrong.
As Charles’s manager, where do I start? How do I define and clarify expectations for Charles without controlling him? How do I use expectations to facilitate the learning process while meeting my own objectives?
To answer these questions, we must look at the underlying assumptions managers have about expectations.
Understanding Expectations
Most managers do a poor job of communicating expectations. They often assume that people should know the proper rules of conduct and the usual lines of communication. In addition, many “hands-off” managers believe that everyone has or should have the same value system as they or their company. Another contributing factor may be that managers find it easier to manage by exception to avoid potential conflicts that might arise from defining expectations. The last reason managers do a poor job of setting expectations is that they often don’t know what they need to communicate.
In addressing the first reason, it is important to realize that assumptions can quickly become problematic. As anyone who has had to defend the firing of an employee knows, the first and most important question asked by legal counsel is “Did you explicitly tell your employee that this was part of his or her job?” The manager should answer that question with a simple “yes” or “no.” Assumptions won’t work. So, poor management approaches can increase a company’s legal exposure and complicate hiring and terminating practices.
Managers who avoid setting expectations due to fear of potential conflict may do so because of their own underlying belief system. If managers perceive expectations as rules and regulations established by management and imposed upon employees, then it is understandable that they avoid them. If, however, managers perceive and set expectations as guidelines that are mutually agreed upon from the start, and implemented to facilitate efficient work processes, then there is less of a reason to fear conflict. Rules and regulations are meant to control; guidelines are intended to provide just enough direction to help people make decisions.
Lastly, if managers avoid communicating expectations because they don’t know what to communicate, then the rest of this chapter should help.
But before we move on, one question needs to be answered: When managers avoid setting expectations, where and from whom do employees get them? They get them from many different sources.
The most influential source of employee expectations is the behavior of other employees, including managers. From observing behaviors people assume that if it is permissible for one person then it must be permissible for everyone. Recent business scandals in the United States point to a breakdown in a company culture that is communicated more by management behavior and reward systems than by the mission and vision statements “on the wall.”
Even though a company may have the best set of corporate values and vision set out in the company handbook or posters in the hallways, it is the inappropriate and even illegal behavior employees see every day that sabotage those same corporation’s values and vision. “Do as I say, not as I do” is no excuse and is not legally defensible, as we have seen in some of the recent corporate meltdowns.
When people develop their own set of expectations based on observation, they often reinforce the behaviors that most satisfy their needs and not necessarily those in the best interest of the organization. That is human nature.
Employees develop their expectations from previous managers as well. This can be good or bad, depending on the previous manager’s ability to set expectations that meet organizational needs. And especially today with the multicultural and global business environment, people bring into the workplace their cultural background, work history, and personal beliefs. These factors also influence expectations. If managers do not set clear expectations, people will develop their own set of assumptions.
In Charles’s example, he may believe he did everything in his power to meet expectations that he assumed were correct. If his manager did not clarify and obtain agreement to the expectations beforehand, Charles won’t feel responsible. And as anyone would, if he does not feel responsible, there is no way he will hold himself accountable.
Standards or Goals?
In the corporate world, expectations can be broadly characterized as falling into two categories: standards and goals. Standards are general expectations of conduct that help businesses function in an efficient manner. A set of mutually agreed-upon standards help companies provide direction for day-to-day behavior and conduct.
Standards cover everything from things as basic as work hours, drug, and alcohol policy and vacation policy to the complexities of the company vision and mission. I am often asked the difference between leadership and management. And I point out that from a manager’s perspective, the more basic standards like code of conduct and work hours are more likely to be the domain of first-line supervisors and middle management. But mission, vision, and values are also expectations, and while not always considered “management” in the true sense, they do create an environment specific to a particular company and organization.
The purpose of goals or objectives (I use the words interchangeably at least in this book) is intended to stretch individuals, departments, and corporations into the future. Goals make groups and individuals push themselves to rise higher, to become and attain more than they can in their day-to-day activities. In short, standards are process-focused, while goals are future-focused.
One problem I often run into is the overemphasis on goals and objectives. In a results-driven culture, goals take precedence over standards almost all the time. But when you think about it, the most common reason employees are terminated, especially at the first-line to middle management level, is standards being violated, and not falling short of goals or objectives. But goals without standards become demotivating. When managers neglect the process of identifying and coming to agreement on standards, they overlook the first step in facilitating the learning process.
As previously stated, standards can be perceived as rules and regulations or guidelines. The more a manager sees his or her job as controlling behavior, the more likely he or she is to dictate or avoid setting standards. Often this type of manager will try to extrinsically motivate people to change unproductive behavior through goal setting.
Bryce and Genie Industries
You may not have ever heard of Genie Industries, but most of you know their products. On any given day, on any given construction site, there are multiple what are called “aerial work platforms” or as sometimes referred to as “cherry pickers.” One of the best-selling and most reliable is made by Genie Industries. They refer to it as a Genie Lift. These cherry pickers can reach as high as 180 feet in the air.
Genie was founded by a couple of University of Washington graduates in the 1970s, and its growth has been phenomenal mostly due to their incredible quality and excellent leadership. Several years ago, I was brought in to establish an “engaged” management culture throughout the entire company. Despite a fairly enlightened and respected leadership team, employee turnover and other personnel issues were increasingly causing middle management problems.
After taking the executive team through the “Card Game,” they concluded that lack of clear expectations and regular feedback might be the core issues. The company decided they liked my approach so well (expectations/feedback/accountability) that anyone who manages people should go through a short one-day workshop. So for more than a year, I lead everyone from the CEO to first-line supervisors through the program.
After the initial training launch, I continued to consult with individual managers struggling with day-to-day management of their team. At one point, a first-line production supervisor named Bryce contacted me for some advice. He said that having attended the workshop, he was inspired to embrace the principles and wanted to show me a “tool” he created to help manage his team. Now keep in mind that Bryce had never had any previous management/leadership training and had a 12-year history at Genie. I was flattered that someone so experienced would find a new way to use my ideas.
Here is what Bryce came up with and began using with his team. He called it his “Expectation Letter” and related that it was very much helping to straighten out his team’s performance issues.
Expectations Letters
Author: First Shift Manufacturing Line Supervisor
First Shift Services Team Member
What you can expect from me:
• I will give you 100 % in heart and effort
• Clear expectations, timely feedback and fair accountability
• To listen and help resolve problems and issues
• Provide the necessary resources to accomplish our goals safely and on time
• Provide an environment where your ideas and concerns can be heard and discussed with team members and myself
• That I will ask you why until we find the root of the problem then set out to correct it
• Provide and environment which encourages education and learning
• To relentlessly pursue “Continuous Improvement” throughout our work area
• I will follow company policy and in doing so help to create an environment based on true teamwork
• To make safety your highest priority
• That you treat all other team members with the same respect and trust that you would want
• To meet production goals while upholding quality standards
• To support team decisions; it is your right to disagree but support all decisions based on the good of our team
• To cross train in all areas
• To pursue your career goals with focus
• Do what you say you will do
• To leave a clean work area with all tools stored in their place for the next shift
• To provide adequate notice when you will be absent or late
• To find you in your work area on time and ready to get the job done
• To fill in for absent team members when required to do so
• To let me know early if you do not have the material or will not meet production in the time allowed
• To aggressively attack all forms of waste
• To be an effective problem solver; present solutions not just problems
• Embrace the principles of “Lean Manufacturing” and actively use and promote its processes
• To know your customer needs and meet them
• To understand and follow all company policies as laid out in the Team Members Handbook
Date: |
_________________________ |
Team Member Name: |
_________________________ |
Team Member Signature: |
_________________________ |
Supervisor Signature: |
_________________________ |
Bryce’s Expectation Letter format was a stroke of genius. The idea of starting with the things his team could expect from him set a great tone and communicated his belief that both managers and individual team members are accountable. I next noted that the list of expectations was longer for team members than for Bryce. Not a big problem, but you can see how that might be perceived as authoritarian.
As of that day, all managers at all levels at Genie Industries have an agreement with their teams in the form of an Expectation Letter. And since the company is in the construction industry, it is expected that team members sign-on as a commitment or contract with their managers and company.
Another thought I had upon reading this was that Bryce’s Expectation Letter contained only standards, no objectives.
I asked him how he used this in his day-to-day management activities, and he told me that he uses it most often for new hires. With his current team, he sat down with each individually and reviewed it. Of course, signing it was a bit of negotiation with some, but he positioned it not so much as an accountability tool as much as a communication document.
He also shared with me an unexpected, but, I think, positive result. Now whenever Bryce has a performance discussion with one of his people, they give him feedback on his performance as well. His team members often bring their copy of the Expectation Letter to performance reviews and discussion.
Bryce says that this has made him a better manager and eliminated a number of less-than-desirable behaviors and ultimately improved morale.
So, after this experience, I began to show Bryce’s Expectation Letter to my clients in other industries at differing levels of management. Many CEOs admired Bryce’s work and developed their own set of “expectations” for their team. IT leaders, construction supervisors, sales managers, and executives, using Bryce’s as a template, developed their own Expectation Letters for their teams.
This example was developed by a sales manager of a large software company in the Seattle area.
Sales Representative Expectations
What I expect from you:
• Deliver results by meeting quarterly financial goals
• Take initiative and ownership in regards to your job responsibilities
• Understand and use the five-step sales process as laid out by Steve for each client including blue printing, cold calling, presentations, customer management review and Opportunity Map
• Accurately update all Sales information for your clients by end of business Friday including notes about activity in each account you contacted that week. All info in Salesforce.com must be current
• Demonstrate a strong ability to understand and articulate the business needs of your prospects, existing clients and industry within your territory
• Provide me prompt communication ear-to-ear about issues and problems before they escalate into unmanageable situations; no surprises
• Can present, articulate and demonstrate all features, value and benefits of our products and services
• Focus on selling the Consulting end of the business
• Commit to your continuing education by attending training and internalizing and applying all skills
• You are expected to win when engaged and be prepared to explain your losses and a game plan for preventing them in the future
• Present issues and problems outlining circumstances, recommendations and potential solutions
• Provide leadership and example to your fellow employees through your work ethic, attitude and fiscal responsibilities by adhering to our Corporate and Sales policies
What you can expect from me:
• Frequent communication of our mission, values and corporate direction
• Assistance and guidance in achieving your goals and meeting expectations
• The opportunity to discuss and clarify my expectations of you
• Weekly feedback on your performance relative to my expectations
• Timely attention to your issues and challenges to help you successfully fulfill your responsibilities
• To go to bat for you when we mutually agree upon a plan of action
• Push ownership, responsibility and credit to you
• Establish support training and educational opportunities for your career development
• Provide value by assisting you in developing your account strategies and tactics as we review your funnel activity
• To travel to targeted or problem accounts when given sufficient notice
As you can see, this example has much more detail than Bryce’s letter and clearly oriented toward a sales environment. And in this industry, there isn’t a need for a signature if the salespeople agree to commit to these expectations.
This next one comes from an executive in a computer networking company in the San Francisco Bay area.
Author: Executive Vice-President of Global Customer Support for Optical Networking Company
Customer Service and Support Clarification Memo
What you can expect from me:
• All that I expect of you
• To communicate management decisions on a timely basis
• Provide clear expectations and an opportunity to discuss
• To hold you and your team accountable to all deliverables, milestones and behavior
• Guide you to help solve you and your team’s problems/issues
• Push ownership, accountability and credit to you
• To create an environment where constructive disagreement, questions and teamwork are encouraged
• Provide you with my rationale for decisions that do or do not support/fund your requests or proposals
• Timely attention to your issues and challenges
• To provide leadership and examples to the rest of the Customer Support organization through my work ethic, attitude, commitment, honesty and teamwork
• Paging—Response within 15 minutes for critical issues
• Voice mail—same business day
• Email—within 24 hours if not traveling
What I expect of you:
• To weigh quality and customer satisfaction more heavily than cycle time and CS revenue
• To use personal initiative to continue to add to your technical and product expertise
• When in doubt to error on the side of the customer—both internal and external. Look at all issues from their perspective
• To take personal ownership and initiative if you see a problem—regardless of functional area or organization. Solve it if you can, escalate it to the proper level if you can’t and follow up to ensure resolution and closure
• To internalize and evangelize that one of Customer Supports’ role is to help sell more product
• To motivate your team to become champions of product quality
• Present issues and problems outlining circumstances, recommendations and several potential solutions
• Continuously strive to broaden you and your teams’ perspective to include areas outside of your functional area
• To establish meaningful and realistic personal goals and objectives and review them on a quarterly basis
• To set reasonable but aggressive business goals
• Communicate to me in person if you will miss a deadline as soon as it is clear you will miss it
• To continuously strive for performance improvement and delivery innovation—establish a new paradigm. Make us “legendary”
• To provide leadership and examples to the rest of the Customer Support organization through your work ethic, attitude, commitment, honesty and teamwork
• To solicit feedback regularly
• Paging—Response within 15 minutes for critical issues
• Voice mail—same business day
• Email—within 24 hours if not traveling
Areas evaluated at Yearly Review
• Technical Skills
• Teamwork
• Interpersonal Skills
• Planning and Organizing
• Professionalism
• Decision Making Skills
• Leadership
• Adapting Skills
• Business Knowledge
This manager even went to the level of detail on response time, which as you can imagine in a customer service role is critical. The addition of the key review areas that tie the document to the yearly performance appraisal process is a nice touch.
How to Effectively Use an Expectation Letter
First, in most companies unilaterally developing a set of expectations and e-mailing them to your team is not recommended. A manager should give careful consideration not just to the list of expectations but how best to communicate them in a collaborative and respectful manner. If you have an experienced team with few issues, a more collaborative approach works best. A tenured employee might get the idea that he or she isn’t currently meeting expectations without some explanation.
One of the best demonstrations of leadership I experienced was with a VP of sales for Bay Networks (a networking hardware manufacturer) when I attended a meeting with him in France. I had recently shown him the Card Game, and he got the idea of expectations/feedback/accountability and bought completely into the idea of clear expectations as a tool for creating self-managing employees.
In a conference room with his 12 direct reports, he asked them a simple question, “What is it that you think I expect of you?”
To which they all replied, “To hit our numbers!” To which he asked again, “No, really. What do you think I expect from you?”
The sales executives all stared at him in a confused way. And their boss said, “Well, that’s a good place to start.”
And he spent the next two hours discussing and agreeing on a set of mutually agreed-upon, realistic, and clear expectations they could all live with and become accountable to. Impressive.
Which looked like this:
Author: Vice-President of Sales for Technology Company
Regional Manager Performance Expectations
A) Business Volumes (Weight 50 percent)
• Quota—achieve 100 percent of your annual assigned revenue goals. Effectively utilize all company resources including SE’s, AE’s, OS, Corporate HQ, Regional Support Team and any other resources required to accomplish your goals
• Forecast—provide a monthly summary of anticipated sales over the next 90 days using 3 Month Revenue Forecast and the Top 20 format. Accuracy should be within a range of –10 to +25 percent on a quarterly basis
• Pricing—review account activity to ensure that the proper discount category has been used, and if necessary manage the account towards the proper pricing level
B) Territory Management (Weight 20 percent)
• Geographic Management—Actively develop the potential in each territory within your region for all products and services. Utilize the proper mix of company and third party resources to insure territory coverage, account penetration, relationship management and customer satisfaction
• Document, distribute and ensure follow up on all leads generated by Marketing. Monitor customer satisfaction numbers generated by technical support
• Account Targeting—within each territory identify Target Account opportunities and develop a plan to establish an account relationship. Actively utilize the Advanced Sales Process as designed by Steve and Performance Focus. Provide specific management focus on competitive accounts
C) Personnel Management (Weight 15 percent)
• Performance Plans—develop a Performance Appraisal Plan for each employee and review the plans at the beginning of each year. These plans must be specific, realistic and measurable. Conduct quarterly and annual reviews on a timely basis
• Employee Management—actively work with non-performing employees to ensure they are receiving maximum assistance in improving their performance. However, where improvement is not occurring take decisive and documented steps with the assistance and guidance of Human Resources to manage the employee out of the business
D) Expense Management (Weight 5 percent)
• Territory Travel, Entertainment and other Business Expenses—conduct your business in a prudent manner and manage your Regional Expense Budget to minimize Sales Expenses without sacrificing business volume. Ensure expense reports are submitted on a weekly basis
E) Personal (Weight 5 percent)
• Development—establish a set of personal goals to improve your professional and technical skills. Prepare plan with specific objectives and recommendations by June 30 and review with your manager
F) Other (Weight 5 percent)
• Company Knowledge—be the company corporate spokesperson for your region and can present the Corporate Strategy/Vision and relating key advantages and benefits of our products and company in terms that a customer executive can understand
• Communications—use voice mail, email, and other established communication systems to make sure you and your staff are aware of product developments, announcements and requests for information. Use the monthly Operations Report to effectively communicate with other managers
• Confidentiality—recognize that much information (i.e. customer names and contacts, order rates and discounts, product development and release schedules, new products, etc.) provided to you to accomplish your job is considered confidential. Use this information carefully for Regional and account planning purposes. Do not disclose confidential information to anyone outside the company without specific approval of your direct Vice-President
• Company Assets—recognize that you manage and have access to significant company physical and information assets. Use these assets to improve your productivity and professional presentation of our company and our products. Manage the information assets carefully by providing security and establishing backup procedures as required.
Whether you decide to develop your set of expectations as a team or on your own, it is important that you go through the exercise. Having them clear in your own mind allows you to remind and reinforce them in your daily management activities.
More about Standards
The first responsibility a manager has to his or her people is to communicate and agree upon clear standards. Standards are general expectations of conduct that help to facilitate business processes and decisions. Standards establish guidelines within which employees can make decisions. Standards address day-to-day activities and how people conduct themselves.
Unlike goals, employees are not rewarded for meeting standards. If the standards are agreed upon, realistic, and measurable, then people are held accountable to them. Without clear standards, it is impossible and unfair to hold people accountable.
A manager helps create an environment for learning by coming to agreement on a code of conduct with his or her employees. Managers will have the most success holding people accountable to standards that are realistic, measurable, and agreed upon.
Accountability . . . again!
Expectations need to be realistic if people are going to buy into them. People will not hold themselves accountable or feel responsible for unrealistic expectations. If management defines expectations that are unrealistic, management will be responsible for holding people accountable. If employees do not buy into expectations, management will be forced to use an autocratic-behaviorist approach to keep employees “in line.”
Effective expectations are better when they are behavioral, but they don’t necessarily need to be. For instance, a company’s set of values are typically not behavioral. Values like respect, cooperation, and continuous improvement don’t tell employees how to behave. They do, however, provide guidelines for conduct, decision making, and other behaviors.
Behavior expectations like a code of conduct can be observed and measured. Telling an employee to be a better “team player” sends the wrong message even if the manager’s intentions are noble. Usually, terms like this can be broken down into behaviors if you simply give it enough thought.
One manager made this exact complaint about one of his people to me so I helped him clarify it in the behavior of this person. “What is it that he does that makes you think he is not a team player?” I asked. “He just doesn’t support the team in a way that makes us look like we are on the same page.”
“You said, ‘in a way.’ Can you give me an example of this?” He thought for a while before finally realizing. “So here is what he does. We have these team meetings to discuss progress on our deliverables and goals for each month. And he never says anything, but when we think we have all agreed I find out later that he told another person outside of our group that he thinks we have made a mistake.”
“Got it. Here is the behavioral expectation that should fix that: In our team meetings, we all respect the right to disagree. But once we reach agreement we present all decisions as team decisions. And if anyone disagrees it is his or her responsibility to hash it out either in a group or one-on-one. We are a united front.”
Clear standards that make sense to employees help build a foundation for learning. An ambiguous standard can demotivate employees, especially if the manager is responsible for defining what behavior falls within the standard.
For example, let’s say a standard exists for all employees to have a good attitude. If the manager is the judge of what is or isn’t considered a good attitude, then employees will feel that they have little control over what behaviors fall within the desired standard. This can demotivate. A better standard might be for people to leave their personal problems out of business discussions.
Agreement on standards is the key difference between autocratic behaviorism and facilitative leadership. Managers who believe they are “in charge” will most often define and communicate standards unilaterally to their people. Excluding people from control over rules they are expected to live by will affect the amount of responsibility they take for them. By forcing standards on people, managers may get compliance but rarely commitment.
Standards can be broken down into formal and informal. Formal standards are rules to ensure a safe, effective company environment, while informal standards are the tools managers can use to facilitate the learning process.
Formal Standards
Formal standards are defined either by the company or by government regulations and apply to the entire organization. An example of a formal company standard may be standardized work hours. A formal government standard is the OSHA requirement to wear hard hats in construction sites. Formal standards establish a safe and effective corporate environment within which all employees must operate.
Formal standards are usually codified and printed in a company handbook. It is the company’s and the individual manager’s responsibility to ensure that all employees are aware of these standards.
Managers can communicate formal standards as rules and regulations or as guidelines identified by the company and government to facilitate processes and protect people. While managers have little direct control over formal standards, they can control how they are communicated.
Informal Standards
Informal standards are the guidelines an individual manager and his or her employees have identified as necessary to accomplish day-to-day tasks. They are within the manager’s span of control. Informal standards are best defined and agreed to collaboratively by the people who are expected to live by them. Informal standards help build an environment that reflects the department’s business and personal values. Examples include guidelines for holding meetings, how conflicts are resolved, and general communication ground rules.
While job descriptions are individual standards and define what is expected of employees, informal standards define how employees are expected to fulfill their responsibilities in the context of working with others.
It is a manager’s responsibility to ensure that all his or her employees understand and agree to these standards. Managers ultimately have the authority to define and implement standards, but to encourage people to make their own decisions, it is critical that managers get their people to help define and agree to standards.
An autocratic-behaviorist manager will dictate standards he or she feels are important without getting input from the people who are expected to live by them. A facilitative leader lets his or her group define the most important areas in which standards facilitate work processes. Then he or she allows the people affected by the standard work out the guidelines to improve these processes.
To collaboratively define standards, it is critical to know the difference between rules and guidelines.
Rules vs. Guidelines
Many managers see standards as hard-and-fast rules that they are supposed to enforce. Facilitative leaders see them as guidelines for decision making. The purpose of rules is to control. The purpose of guidelines is to guide.
Rules are normally set in the context of what isn’t allowed without any indication of what is allowed. They tend to limit the amount of judgment a person has to use to evaluate compliance to the rule. Rules limit the choice to either compliance or noncompliance.
Guidelines allow judgment and choice by the person expected to live within them. Broad guidelines give people a wider range of choices, and therefore, people will need to exercise more judgment. Narrow guidelines provide less choice and judgment.
Formal standards are more likely to be set as hard-and-fast rules because the consequences of violating them can have a severe impact on others. A strict Drug and Alcohol policy is an example of a formal standard in the form of a rule. The consequences of an employee showing up to work under the influence of drugs or alcohol and then operating heavy machinery can be severe. Some rules are necessary to ensure that a business functions properly.
But too many unnecessary rules can interfere with a manager’s ability to be effective. Using effective guidelines instead of rules in certain situations may save a manager time and help employees learn. Informal standards are the best tools managers have to help people become better at making decisions.
We can use a parenting analogy to illustrate how a standard can be used in a way to help people learn. Parents who see their primary responsibility as ensuring that their children obey may define a rule like, “No bike riding in the street.” This only tells the child what he or she cannot do. Using this rule when the child rides into the street, the parent will hold the child accountable by taking away his or her bike-riding privileges. This is seen by the child as punishment, which it of course is.
Parents who see their primary responsibility as helping children learn will define guidelines like “You may ride your bike in the driveway until you can ride without falling down. Then you can ride in the street.” The child will then practice learning how to ride before approaching the parent to ride in the street. Which approach will the child be more motivated to follow?
In the first example, the parent will spend time monitoring whether the child is in the street. In the second, the parent will spend time tracking the child’s learning process.
A comparison can be drawn between the parent and the manager. Telling employees what they can and cannot do affects their motivation. When they have guidelines within which they can make decisions, they may be more likely to motivate themselves.
Below are examples of how an informal standard can be defined as a rule or a boundary:
Rule:
“All meetings will start on time regardless of the excuse.
“Meetings will start at the published time regardless of whether all attendees are present. Anyone showing up late will be responsible for coming up to speed without interfering with the meeting’s progress.”
This gives people the choice to show up late, understanding that choice has added responsibilities.
Rule:
“Yelling at or threatening another employee is inexcusable.”
Guideline:
“People are expected to try to resolve issues they have with their coworkers before escalating the issue to their manager. The process of resolving issues must be done with respect for each other. If conflict becomes difficult to manage, the issue can be brought to a manager’s attention. Employees are expected to use their best judgment.”
By stating this standard in the form of a guideline, a manager provides the employee more control and discourages unnecessary escalation of trivial issues.
Rule:
“E-mail is to be used for necessary communication only.”
Guideline:
“The e-mail system may not be used to communicate missed deadlines, critical customer issues, tardiness excuses, or anything that has a critical response time attached to it. Use your best judgment.”
This better defines what is and isn’t “necessary communication” but leaves room for employees to make their own decisions.
Rule:
“Employees must meet deadlines.”
“If an employee determines he or she cannot meet a deadline, this must be communicated to the involved parties including managers as soon as the barrier to meeting the deadline is encountered. Use your best judgment.”
Once again the employee has some control over the process.
Standards defined and communicated as guidelines give people some control over their lives. This makes the standard more effective in the end. People who feel they have some control over their environment are more likely to motivate themselves.
Effectiveness of Standards
The most critical element that impacts a standard’s effectiveness is the manager’s commitment to live within it. Whether managers like it or not, they become authority figures to the people they manage. With this increased authority goes the increased responsibility to set an example by living within the same guidelines as their people. Managers who violate a standard but continue to hold others accountable to that same standard are not being fair. This point must be considered when determining whether a standard is realistic. Managers who believe standards apply only to their people and not to themselves lose respect from employees. With the loss of respect goes a corresponding loss of influence of both the manager and the standard.
Arbitrary application of a standard also impacts its effectiveness. Managers who apply a standard when it is convenient or apply it selectively when they want to change a specific person’s behavior impact the standard’s effectiveness. They also impact their ability to manage. Evenhanded application of standards to both employees and managers greatly increases their effectiveness. Equitable application of standards strengthens accountability to them.
Setting and getting people to buy into expectations without controlling is more art than science. Employees are more likely to buy into an expectation if they believe it facilitates employee and company success and they have some control over the process of setting expectations.
Managers who control often avoid setting clear expectations or dictate the standards they think are important. A facilitative leader communicates and gets agreement upon realistic, measurable standards that are important to help the employee and company move forward. Managers who see themselves as superior to their employees will define informal standards as rules and regulations. Managers who see that their role is to help people become better decision makers will collaboratively set expectations as guidelines within which everyone is expected to operate.
Charles is violating a formal standard when he shows up late to work. He is violating an informal standard when he doesn’t return voicemail messages or gives incomplete information so long as the standard has been communicated and agreed upon. The first step in turning Charles’s performance around is to make sure he understands and buys into the formal and informal standards. A manager using an autocratic approach might simply tell Charles he must do things by the book, “or else.”
Standards vs. Goals
Formal standards are the foundation laid by the organization to facilitate processes and protect people. Informal standards overlay formal standards and create an environment within which people can feel safe to make decisions. Without this foundation, goals can be demotivating. Without a safe base camp, it becomes difficult for people to push themselves to greater heights.
Managers who are good at goal setting but poor at clarifying standards often end up with employees who are reticent to accept challenging goals. When an employee has a difficult time determining whether he or she is doing a good job on a day-to-day basis, it is natural to be reticent to accept the increased responsibility of goals. Managers who are good at goal setting will often try to resolve a nonperformance issue by setting a goal for the employee to improve. This type of manager might try to “motivate” Charles to improve his punctuality by setting a goal for him to go one month without being late. Charles will accurately perceive this as an attempt to control.
Managers who have set a good foundation of standards have also set the stage for good goals.
Goals stretch employees and are aligned with some company or departmental objective. A standard sets the guidelines within which goals are achieved. A goal is future based; a standard is process based. A goal is concerned with where the person, company, or department is going. A standard is concerned with how to get there.
The best goals have the same characteristics as standards; they are agreed upon, realistic, and measurable. But goals have one additional characteristic: a beginning and an end. They are future focused. The problem Charles had with his goal of introducing two new products to the market was caused by unclear standards, not poor goals.
Good goals always have standards attached to them. Charles’s excuse for missing the product introduction because he didn’t get the information on time from market research could have been prevented by setting a standard. The standard might be that employees must notify management in advance if they encounter a barrier to achieving a goal. Standards help clarify the process of reaching goals and help employees manage their own progress toward achieving goals.
Below are some examples of good goals that may be ineffective without standards:
Good goal:
“Improve average response time to customer inquiries from 8 hours to 6 hours by year-end.” (Rational and may be realistic, but realize that implementation of this goal without a quality standard may result in quicker but poorer quality responses.)
Good goal:
“Implement plan to hold weekly meetings with Marketing department by end of first quarter.” (Sounds good, but once again a quality standard will prevent weekly meetings that are unnecessary.)
It becomes obvious that a manager who is good at goal setting can still encounter problems when people achieve the goal but miss the point.
Operational and Developmental Goals
Goals or objectives also fall into two broad categories: operational and developmental. Operational goals are intended to improve business performance, efficiency, and effectiveness, to name a few areas. The idea behind operational objectives (remember that I use goals and objectives interchangeably) is that businesses must grow and become more effective to survive and thrive in the long term. Operational goals can apply to the business, like achieving a departmental metric or increasing revenue or profitability year to year, or they can apply to an individual or a team’s performance metric. A customer service department may be expected to achieve a certain level of customer satisfaction and an individual member of that department might be expected to increase the number of customer calls per day to a certain number.
For purposes of this book and the underlying premise that it is focused on individual performance, I want to further explain the role operational and developmental goals play in the performance management process.
Individual Operational Objectives
In my career as a manager, I always insisted on a few operational objectives from each of my people. For me, I arrived at the number of operational goals after a lot of experience and trial and error, to be three. All my people had three and only three operational objectives, and developmental objectives. But only three of each with a total of six.
The number came from my experience attempting to help my team focus and being raised as a Catholic. For Catholics, everything happens in threes: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; three days of Easter; and so on (a joke).
In my role as a former sales manager, there were always opportunities for salespeople to improve their documentation or make more sales calls per week or respond to more RFPs in a year. These are all operational objectives. And yes, salespeople always have a quota to achieve or overachieve. But those are always a given.
I looked for ways to make my folks more effective, efficient, and productive. Which meant that I had to pay attention to their shortcomings and struggles on the business side of the equation.
That was the easy part.
Developmental Objectives
The most challenging part of managing is the idea of developing your people. One issue is the wide variability in sophistication in a company’s performance management process. While mature organizations, like Microsoft or Caterpillar, have a sophisticated and operationalized performance management system, many companies, even very large companies, leave it up to individual managers to use their own approach to people management and guidance. This is especially true in the sales part of many corporations; sales often get a pass when it comes to non-sales HR processes for some reason.
Like their operational goals, each of my people always had three developmental goals, three things they needed to improve upon, regardless of how much they met or exceeded expectations. For those who failed to meet expectations, their objectives were designed to get them back on track. For those on track, their objectives were designed to develop them for the next step in their career path, and for the overachievers, my challenge was to find things that challenged them to take things to the next level. Of course, this was all done in a collaborative and cooperative way. But all my people knew that they were expected to improve regardless of how they were currently performing.
Which is something I don’t find that often in more casual or less-developed companies. When I ask managers about their developmental objectives for their people, they frequently make excuses about being very busy or managing people remotely so it is hard to develop and monitor progress. Once again, these are excuses, not reasons.
SMART Developmental Objectives
Many managers struggle with defining developmental objectives because they are difficult to define in ways that meet the criteria for SMART goals. However, when given enough thought and planning, it is almost always possible to follow the SMART criteria as well with a developmental objective as with an operational one.
The real issue is trying to create a developmental objective for an issue or a problem that is more of a standard than a goal. Standards should be communicated and enforced. Goals should be agreed upon and achieved. For instance, if I have a problem employee who constantly interrupts coworkers when they are especially busy, I don’t want to create a developmental objective for this person to go a month without barging into people’s offices and cubicles without regard for other’s time and workload. That would be lowering the bar for other’s performance as well. I would communicate that this is inappropriate and not respectful of other’s time and then convince the offender that it is in his or her best interest to be more respectful of other people’s space as a proper “standard of conduct.”
You can’t set goals for people to “improve their attitude” or “be a team player” because these behaviors are standards expected of all employees. However, I often see objectives like these included in performance reviews and evaluations in major corporations and of high-level managers.
With enough thought, though, most behavioral and motivational issues can be broken down into actions that can be defined and communicated.
Let’s look at a couple of goals that are better communicated and managed by being more clearly defined standards of behavior.
“Improve your attitude.”
Regardless of how much a manager may want to correct a poor attitude, setting a goal for a person who shows negativity or morale issues is not the best way to make progress. When I ask a manager to explain how this person demonstrates a “poor attitude,” I can always identify a behavioral and observable action that defines the usage of the term. Often a manager will say that this person complains about things but never does anything to try and improve the situation.
So the standard I would communicate is that everyone has the right to bring issues to management’s attention. But when doing so, employees are expected to offer several possible solutions to the problem as well.
I once spoke to a manager who complained that one of his people lacked a “sense of urgency.” When I delved into the issue further, it appears the employee rarely communicates where he is in the process of reaching a decision. Easily fixable with the standard that employees are expected to let managers know if they will miss a deadline “at the time they realize that they will miss the deadline and no later.”
But creating true developmental objectives is a skill that can be acquired as well. There are always several areas that people can improve upon once you begin to give it some thought.
Areas I used to be particularly keen on developing people included presentation skills, leadership abilities (to prepare my people for management-level positions), communication skills, teamwork, decision-making abilities, business communication, and others. When faced with the more intangible abilities like leadership skills, managers get flummoxed at the notion of creating a developmental objective that fits the SMART criteria. But it isn’t that difficult if you think more about process than result, once again.
Expectations and Facilitative Leadership
Expectations can be broken down into two areas: standards and goals. Each is a block in the process of building an environment in which people learn to self-manage. Without formal standards, informal standards become irrelevant. Without formal and informal standards, goals become demotivating.
When employees have a strong foundation of standards and well-written goals, they often motivate themselves. Facilitative leaders set guidelines that allow people to manage themselves. They get themselves out of the way and help people do their work. They facilitate employee motivation.
A manager’s job is to help define the boundaries within which employees can achieve goals and grow. Failing to do so results in lost time due to corrective action or re-clarification of standards. The problem Charles has may be the result of unclear expectations. It is his manager’s responsibility to clarify and get agreement before trying to hold him accountable.
Characteristics of Expectations Settings: Two Approaches
Autocratic Behaviorism |
The Facilitative Leader |
Emphasis on goals |
Emphasis on standards |
Sets standards as rules |
Sets standards as guidelines |
Uses goals to motivate |
Creates environment for self-motivating |
Dictates standards |