Last week I shared 5 Tips to Increase Your Team’s Performance using the Leadership Without Excuses model. I focused on the area of “making your expectations clear.” Today I’m sharing the next 5 tips on “making your expectations credible and
reasonable.” I hope you find these tips valuable and doable in your organization.
1. Make crystal clear your conditions of satisfaction about the activities they are supposed to perform or not perform. If you aren’t clear than it is not your employee’s fault when they do an unsatisfactory job.
2. Communicate the rationale for why they are supposed to do the things they are supposed to do. “Because I said so” is old school and doesn’t cut it (not even with children).
3. Ensure they have the capacity with time and resources to do what’s required of them. I work with a lot of human service leaders who are stressed by this concept, but the fact is, the task won’t get done in time or to your satisfaction if the person
assigned to complete the task doesn’t have the time to do it.
4. Ensure they have the capability to do what is required (technical or professional training). I have made the mistake as a leader in assuming a competent employee knows how to do a certain job activity and then find out they never learned that skill. Oops!
5. Be sure that they receive credible guidance when a choice they make will support one organizational value at the expense of another (Example: Quality vs. productivity or compliance vs. speed and cost management). This comes up in documentation requirements – if there’s a choice between rushing to meet the documentation deadline vs. being late but having better quality documentation, which do you
choose?
I would love to hear your feedback on this material. Please e-mail me at chris@chriscoward.com