Expectations Go Both Ways

You want to have a world-class organization. You want the best employees. You want them to work hard. You want them to do great work. You want them to be the best they can be.

Guess what? They want that too. From you.

When we step into leadership positions we end up leading and managing others and, of course, evaluating their performance. We set expectations for them and we expect our employees to live up to them. Every year, or every 6 months, or every quarter, we go over those expectations and examine whether their performance has lived up to them. It is a central part of leadership…but it goes both ways.

When we take on the authority to lead, we also take on the responsibility to do it right. If we want to create a world-class organization, our employees expect us to be qualified to lead such an organization. We do not get a free pass to meet only our own expectations for ourselves once we hit a higher position; instead, we have a lot more people looking at us now than we did before. Think about it: as a boss, you might evaluate 50 people, but then you have 50 people evaluating you, too.

Few things are more demoralizing to talented people than bad leadership. If you get the right to tell other people what to do, you better deserve it. If an employee sees that someone above them is incompetent, or seems uninterested in doing a good job, or is holding them to high expectations while not doing so well themselves, it makes them wonder if their hard work is going to matter to the organization since a poor leader might not make good use of it. You also have to wonder about the culture of an organization that puts incompetent or uninterested people into positions of leadership. Once your employees see problems, they start to wonder what else is going on that they DON’T know about. And then they start updating their CVs.

It is very hypocritical to stand in front of a group and demand good work, and then not turn in good work yourself. Telling your employees that the organization demands a lot from them implies that the organization demands a lot from YOU, too. If they do not see that, if they hold you to equally high expectations and you fail to meet them, that is incredibly disruptive for your working environment and causes all kinds of tension that you do not need.

Realize that being the boss is not easier; it’s harder. Even though your employees may not be writing your performance appraisals, they still have certain expectations of you. If you are not listening to those and trying to meet them, you are just setting yourself up for some unhappy, and unmotivated, employees.