As someone learning about leadership, you are often asked to describe the characteristics of a good leader and/or the characteristics of a bad leader. A worthwhile exercise perhaps and one that often gets us focused on several important leadership behaviors. As you learn more about great leaders and how they led, however, it quickly becomes clear that although they may have some things in common, they also have things that are unique about their approach to leadership.
One of the lessons myself and others have learned is that knowing my expectations and communicating these expectations is a key to building, developing, and growing a high performing team.
At the root of this lesson is a genuine belief that people want to do a good job and if they aren’t doing exactly what you expect of them, one of the explanations for this performance gap may be that your expectation and their expectation of what needs to be done may not match.
This lesson is actually not as easy to apply as it may seem at first glance. This is because as leaders, and as humans, we are often very unaware of our expectations as they have become an unconscious part of ourselves. A good way around this is to ask people questions about what they heard you say.
Another approach is to talk with a person who has worked with you for a while and ask “What tips would you give someone about working best with me?”
Of course there are other explanations for a performance gap, but before moving on to other reasons, it doesn’t hurt to create a solid communication process built on mutually understood expectations.
As a leader, what processes do you have in place to make sure your expectations are effectively communicated and understood?
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Kris Krueger, Ph.D. is an Associate for a global strategy & technology consulting firm
She works with clients to transform their organization and deliver results
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For me, effective communication requires feedback from the other person(s) to be sure we’re on the same road. As a career coach, I often tell people the story of how a friend and I agreed to meet at Olive Garden for lunch. She went to the Olive Garden she liked, I went to the one I thought was midway between both our offices (but they weren’t the same restaurant). Feedback at the time we made the appointment would have corrected this.
I learned a lesson, but I also now have a good story to tell clients about the importance of feedback and communicating clearly.
For the record, we both went ahead and ate lunch. When I called her to see if she was okay – – we had a really good laugh on ourselves.