Managers and the Problem with Unknown Expectations

It’s hard to meet expectations when you don’t know what they are. Yet, that’s exactly how many organizations and managers behave—as if their employees do not have any expectations. We can assure you that they do. These organizations move along without a care, thinking that employees will figure it out. Some managers claim they are “empowering their employees to exercise autonomy” by not setting clear boundaries or expectations. In reality, they are simply setting employees up to fail.

As we study managers who have derailing behaviors, we find that one of the most prevalent and damaging is the failure to set clear expectations. 

The purpose was to identify common behaviors among those managers who had teams that performed well as opposed to those teams that weren’t meeting standards. We weren’t surprised by the results. They clearly showed that managers who had teams of engaged people were far more likely to deliver stellar performance than those who didn’t. These results are what we expected (in fact, we wrote our last book about that very topic). 

However, when we broke them down, it was interesting to see one of the key reasons strong teams were engaged was because they had clear expectations. In fact, the need for clear expectations outweighed factors like compensation, working conditions, perks, and training. The results were unequivocal: Teams performed well when performance expectations were clear. The only other area that even came close to the need for clear expectations was recognition. Interesting, as it’s hard to recognize and reward for good performance if you don’t know whether targets have been hit. (Hint: Recognition and expectations go hand in hand.) This principle is so basic yet so misunderstood (or at least not practiced): Stellar performance without clear expectations is like hoping to hit a target without knowing what that target is, and doing it blindfolded.

The Expectation Gap is the most significant source of employee performance problems organizations face today. Many employees simply don’t know what’s expected of them. And, by the way, managers: Remember that just because you think expectations are clear doesn’t necessarily mean that they are clear to employees, or that expectations are aligned.

THE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE EXPECTATIONS ALIGNMENT AND CONTRACTS

By

Tracy Maylett, Ed.D, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, is the CEO of DecisionWise

Matthew Wride, JD, PHR, is the COO of DecisionWise.