If You Don’t Set the Expectations Others Will

Sometimes leaders share that setting clear expectations for the people on their teams is patronizing. They want their teams to feel free to be creative and to find solutions and clear expectations about everything from timeliness to messaging that we’re “problem-solvers” feel too much like being “Big Brother” for their taste.

You might feel the same.

But here’s the thing: your workplace will NEVER be a place of total chaos where anarchy reigns. It can’t be or you’d be shut down or out of business in a year.

Expectations will be set.

If not by you, by others.

Think of this example.

You, the leader, decide that it’s babying your team to tell them that they need to set and meet deadlines. They’re professionals, so they should know that setting and meeting deadlines matters. Except they don’t. Or they do, but because they have so many competing priorities, they don’t set and meet them. So now, person A is waiting for days for something that person B is working on. Person A should have had it already. They should have been able to refine it and send it to Person C who is also waiting on it. But they can’t because Person B hasn’t sent it yet.

So Person A starts bashing Person B to anyone who’ll listen.

“They’re lazy.”

“They don’t care.”

“They should have been fired years ago.”

This would be a great time to have expectations around going to the source and not gossiping, but you, the leader, think that people will feel like you’re treating them like children if you do that.

Now, Person C, furious that their work will be late, reaches out to Person A. Instead of having a professional dialogue to inquire about the state of the work (remember, Person A doesn’t even have it yet), Person C is angry, making accusations and focusing entirely on themself and how this delay affects them.

“This is ridiculous. I can’t do what I need to do because of you.”

Person A, rattled by the accusations, unloads on Person C about their behavior in meetings.

“You think we don’t all see that you’re always on your phone and checked out?”

Ideally there’s an expectation that people are off tech during meetings. But not at your company. People are on phones, checking email, and even sending email invites while others are talking. All because you don’t want to squelch everyone’s creativity by setting ground rules.

Person A then shares that it’s actually Person B who’s the issue here. So Person A and Person C approach Person B. They believe Person B should have shared the project three days ago. But again, no deadline was set, so Person B sees it very differently.

Instead of taking responsibility for being behind, instead of remembering your value of “Extreme Ownership” because you reference it consistently, they’re defensive, and totally passive-aggressive. They listen and shrug their shoulders at the end of the diatribe and say, “I’m swamped because Person D didn’t get me what I needed, so what do you want me to do?”

In this simple scenario we see gossip, lack of collaboration, blame, anger, aggression, lack of responsibility, and more!

These are the expectations, and they’re happening everywhere.

The team has created them without even realizing it. Maybe without the leader even realizing it.

Think about that. You will have expectations at work. That’s undeniable. So, who do you want setting them?