Are You Being Clear?

One of the most common issues I hear about is an individual or team not meeting expectations. The focus is on the person or team, and how to get them to improve their performance. I never hear a leader say ‘I haven’t been clear with my expectations and my employees are under-performing as a result’. Interestingly, this is most often the reason for the performance issue. The issue responsibility rests with the manager not the employee.

What’s Going On?

You may wonder why this is. We don’t come to work planning to be vague and ambiguous with our expectations. I observe leaders truly believe they are being clear. It makes sense to them so why don’t other people understand as well? One of my coaches told me a leaders job is to generate listening in the people around them. I take this one stage further. The leader is responsible for generating understanding in the people around them. Do you see how this shifts the responsibility to the leader. How do you feel about that?

Context

Why do leaders struggle so much with this? I believe it comes down to context. When we think of an idea, the background is clear to us. We have a mental image of what we want to happen. Perhaps not very clear, but clear enough to know what it is and what it isn’t. The other person is coming into this cold. They have to form their own picture of what is needed. The more context we can provide when making a request, the clearer it will be received.

So what do I mean by context. It is a shared understanding. An article in Harvard Business Review does a great job of outlining how to do this. The author shares an example from Amazon. “Teams should not be made up of more people than two pizzas can feed.” This is simple and very clear. It doesn’t need to be precise and it provides enough clarity to know what is intended.

A Simple Test

If you still need convincing, here’s a simple test. Write down your expectations for one of the people who work for you. Share this with your partner and ask them what it means. What behavior would align to this and what wouldn’t? Can they tell you? Did they point out where it could be ambiguous? I suspect it is a lot less clear than you thought it was. If not, great job, you are one of the small minority of leaders who do this well.