Lessons

Lesson Info

Setting Expectations

So let's get into setting expectations and boundaries. Oh, exciting one. Back off! Or, maybe not we don't want to do it that way, right? So, I wanna hear how do you set up you and your team for success? What about expectations is really important? So, any thoughts on what makes for a good kind of like, how do you set yourself or your team up for success? It's gonna be important. Mmmhmm, talking. And what kind of communication? Any like, traits to that kind of communication that's really important? Open. Open, yeah. And open between like, everyone, not just one person communicating their thoughts and ideas but, the entire team. Maybe if you're the leader, you're only giving expectations but receiving them, huh? Right. Oh, that's rare. But very important. Good answer, anyone else? You think is important, yeah? I studied about good culture for you team? So that, they can collaborate and work together well. And I would say some, one way to look at culture is a set of bounda...

ries. It's like in our culture, this is okay and this is not okay. Here's the line. And for different cultures those are vastly different lines. But that's really what culture is, a set of lines that we agree to exist in, or transgress. And if we transgress, then what's the consequences. Huge, so we'll say, also setting expectations clearly. We're gonna work on that. Make sure that we know how to do that, and actually make it clearly. Delegate thoughtfully, you can not do it in yourself, and the more thoughtful you delegate, the more impact and leverage you're gonna have. 'Cause you're gonna give the right tasks to the right people at the right time, and then you'll be focused on the highest impact work for yourself as well. And uphold boundaries. You gotta set culture and you have to defend culture. So if you're not willing to have the tough conversations, or how to say no, or give feedback, things like that, there's no way you're gonna be able to uphold culture, because culture will decay over time. You have to figure out a way, what are we gonna do when someone steps outside of our culture. How do we communicate and educate? Make sense? So, to start us off, I want you to write down an expectation you have for your team. Just one key expectation. If you are really fast writer, you can write two. I'm gonna have someone share, and I'm gonna coach them to make sure it's up to standard. We'll talk about what that means. I'm purposely not gonna teach you how to write a good expectation first, just gonna see where we're at. So who has an expectation who will share with us, out for their team. Yeah, there we go. I expect everyone to do their part. Do their part. So that's great. So, what a great, do we all feel like that's something that we could buy into? Doing our part, yeah? So what I want from you though when we set an expectation is, all of us, and I'm glad this is a perfect example, I was hoping for this. Look out for coded language. This is the number one thing that gets in the way of clear expectations. So in this case, what's the coded language she's using? The part. Yeah. Yeah. Doing your part. What does that mean? For you, that's gonna mean something different than for you, for you, and for you, right? So let's ask you. What is doing your part mean to you? Doing your job, what you're expected to do. And sometimes, going beyond if needed. Ah, okay, so we're getting a little deeper. Your expectation is actually now, I want you to do what we've talked about doing, plus going the extra mile when it presents itself. When you can. Yeah. So, for you actually, 100% is like 110%. You want people who are really passionate and engaged, and go above and beyond, yeah? That's inspiring to you as a leader. That's the culture you want, great. So now we're getting a little closer to your expectation. Now when it comes to people doing their part, or sort of doing their work, doing their job plus some, what does doing their work look like in your world? What does that mean? For us, customer service. Yeah, so number one priority is customer service. Is that right? Yes. And what are the major components of customer service for you, keys? Peas? What do you mean? Keys! Keys! That's okay! Giving them the best service when they walk into the shop. Great, so now we're getting a little bit more specific. Now we're getting a little clearer, we know what we need to do to make this leader happen. Maybe also, make the organization happy. I expect you to be focused on customer service especially in the beginning of a customer interaction. Great, that's a clear expectation, yes? Yes. Kinda get that, that's the first part. What is going above and beyond look like in your world? So for example, we don't have the foot traffic, what are you gonna do to get sales in? Great. 'Cause that's usually what we have to do. Like, there's not always gonna be the foot traffic, so we have to think outside of the box. So as a team, what are we gonna do. Great, and so maybe like, I would love to see you create a problem solve. Maybe that's a way to describe it. So I want you to focus on customer service whenever that's there and really at the beginning, and also at other times, I want you to be focused on adding creative solutions to challenges we have, especially around things like foot traffic. So now, we can imagine, if that's the expectation, in a one-on-one, we might wanna make that an item. We might wanna do two items in every one-on-one, update you on how the customer service is going, some of the key interactions or things we're learning, or successes we're having, right, or challenges. We also might want to tell this leader in that one-on-one, about what creative problem solving have I done this week. Right, does that make sense? Yes. So you're helping people learn how to win with you by giving them more clarity and decoding your language, unpacking coded language, and really explaining what that means. Erica, thank you for sharing, that's beautiful. That's for everyone. So if you look at your paper and your expectation, where's your coded language? What are you gonna need to describe properly, so someone actually knows what you mean. And if you're not clear, maybe you need to do a little bit of a peer coaching session with another leader, manager, like, what do we mean by this? What does customer service mean here? And that might end up with like a customer service handbook. We had this conversation and we decided to do a customer service handbook, you know? Who knows where this stuff will lead, but that clarity is gonna be what really gives you power. Specificity of language is power. Specificity of language is power, great. So we talked a lot about this stuff. Achievables is one thing we didn't say, but just make it reasonable. If you're expectations are unachievable, you have to ask yourself is this actually capable? And maybe it's that it's achievable for someone at some point but not for this person at their level. Maybe not in the first six months are they gonna be at the person who's been here five years. So you have to then scale so is this achievable for this person given the context, okay? That's a key consideration. And can be translated to action. If your expectation can't go directly to action for someone and be put in their to-do list, then it's probably not clear enough yet. Okay, so how do we manage expectations. Have the person say it in their own words. If they can't say it back to you, or the way they're saying it is kind of deviating from yours, you need to coach that. Manage the outcome not the process. Hey, if someone does it a little bit different than you, their style with customers is a little dry, like you're really warm, someone else is kind of dry and funny, but it works and people love them? Let them be dry and funny, you know? There's different types of approaches. And, last one, and thank God, Lauren I think said this, find out your team's expectations for you. If I made you write expectations that your team has for you, only ones that you've specifically heard from them, it'd probably be a pretty short list. So think about that. Ask specifically for what their expectations are. Some people might need a manager that gives them a lot of praise, some people want a manager that teaches them a lot, find out what's gonna matter to them so you can give it to them, and you're not investing in things they don't care about. Okay, we're talking about like delegation here. We're talking about really figuring out who's gonna do what when, what are the expectations? The goal is to optimize for highest value work starting with yourself, okay? Arrange and distribute the work for the highest value, let your team take important tasks. Don't just give them the little ones. Trust them to expand and grow, and also build in time for coaching and skill development. Play the long game. You may have to let some rubber balls drop, catch the glass ones, right? But a rubber ball that drops, you just pick it up, right? And we talk about what went well, what went wrong. Glass balls we might need to step in. That's the confidence, that's the sort of learning mindset, rather than perfection mindset at play, okay? So here's some key areas for delegation. I'm just gonna whip through these. Meetings. If there's recurring meetings that you're attending that someone else can attend and bring the notes to for you, let someone on your team go and do that for you. Get out of as many meetings as possible if they're not essential. If you're the main point of contact on a project, and you don't need to be, let someone else be that main point of contact. You can support and guide them, but they can take a lot of the basic questions, and only the important stuff throw to you. Work that supports development. Find the thing they really want to grow and develop, and really need to develop or really want to develop, and give them that work. Because we get better at what we practice. You can't expect someone to get better if you don't let them practice it. When we're delegating, offer the why. Start with that. Why is this an important task? Why am I giving it to you? Why are you the one to take it on? Sometimes your why's gonna be really strong, sometimes it's gonna be pretty weak. Even if it's weak, give the best one you have. At least shows that you're trying, you're thinking about, something to acknowledge. Hey this task isn't always the most fun, but it's one we have to do, I know you're capable of doing it, you're really smart and organized, and I know you're gonna kill it, and the team really needs us to be, like, where we are right now? We really need someone who's really on top of it to take this planning piece and the structure piece. Alright? That's the why. It's not the most fun, maybe, but they're a rockstar. They're gonna kill this and we need that as the basis. As an example. Get buy-in. If you are delegating, don't leave the room until there's some form of buy-in. And if there's not, investigate it. Don't hide from that. Hey, it seems like you're not feeling this one too much, what's going on over in your, you know, what's going on over there for you? How are you thinking you're feeling about this? Then we can at least handle the objections rather than pretending they don't exist and just Heismaning them. You're like, ah, take it, uh! And just walk away, right? We actually lean in and figure out what's maybe the resistance? And by looking at them they might be scared 'cause they don't know how to do it. So maybe then you can design, okay maybe they could do it with another person who's maybe an expert. They'll take lead, but they have someone who's gonna be their support, or you're gonna be able to coach them. So you find out what the resistance is. Leave with the buy-in. Passion is one of our number one values, we want to cultivate that. Okay, be a daoist. Do not micro-manage the process, but don't advocate your responsibility. Find that balance. Set up the milestones and the check-ins even if the check-in gets hey we're gonna do it for five minutes because the person is on point, knows everything, it's not that needed, we at least checked in. And they could tell us if something was off, okay? And if you see that it's off, that gives us a chance to coach and course-correct. Don't be like, I'm not gonna be a micro-manager, I'm just giving people ownership and then taking your hands off the wheel completely? That is not good management. That is not good leadership. Help people be supported. And you can have the convo, what would make you feel supported? Alright, how much check-in do you want? And you can use your intuition. They may say, oh you don't need to check-in with me at all, and you're like, mmm, that seems wrong. Let's do one or two, instead of five then. Someone's like hey, I could use a lot of support, you could do five then. Maybe a little shorter, but more frequent. Smaller chunks, okay? That's the setting of check-ins. And, adjust as you go. This is not gonna be static. Use your mindfulness seem, feel into your global listening to feel into, is it going well, is it off? If it's off, get curious instead of frustrated or like you have to have the solution right away, just get curious. What's off, what do I need to do? That's delegation. Now, in order to delegate, you have to have boundaries, because sometimes the work wants to flow back to you. It has this funny way of boomeranging. You throw the work out, hey you got it! And it comes right back to you.