Inspect What You Expect for Healthier Teams and Cultures

Whether you are leading a company or managing your own business, you as a leader will have a host of expectations laid out for you. Boards and owners have financial expectations you need to meet. They expect you to be continually growing the business while managing expenses and resources to produce a healthy profit. If you run your own business, your customers and employees have expectations too. Customers expect a quality product at a fair price. They expect quality customer service. Employees expect to be treated and paid fairly while growing with the company over time. And as a leader, it is your job to manage those expectations and see to it those expectations are met. 

Recently I was doing some coaching with one of the managers on my team, and we were talking about managing these types of expectations. He was saying all the right things but he wasn't getting the results needed from his team. Upon further investigation, I realized he was communicating some of his expectations to his team, but he wasn't inspecting what he expected. I quoted the old adage, "inspect what you expect." This was a concept unfamiliar to him, and I have found it is an uncommon idea to many who are new to leadership. It is crucial to understand this concept if you hope to lead healthy teams and establish healthy cultures. It is nearly impossible for any team you are leading whether in the church or the business world to be successful if they don't know what to expect from you as a leader. However, that is just one half of the equation. The other half of the equation is inspecting and evaluating how your team is following through and aligning to your expectations. If you are new to management or leadership, here are some ways you can establish and maintain a healthy culture with your team by inspecting what you expect.

Be Clear on What is Expected of You

Stepping into a leadership role for the first time can be overwhelming. The magnitude of your responsibility has often times quadrupled. You are trying to learn new systems and new processes while trying to get to know your new team (or those who were your prior peers in a new way). It is possible you have also taken over a unhealthy team or culture and there are so many things broken, you are struggling to prioritize what is most important. The often chaotic pace of being new in a role can muddy up our minds and we can lose focus on, at least initially, on doing accomplishing all the tasks that are expected of you. It seems counterintuitive in the chaos, but slowing down and getting clear on what is expected of you as a leader from your boss or board will help you better prioritize the things you need to be focusing on daily to meet expectations. Once you are clear on what is being expected of you, you are now ready to communicate expectations to your team.

Clearly Communicate Your Expectations to Your Team

You front line employees that interact with your customers and clients are where business happens every day. Do your frontline employees know what it takes to grow the business daily? Do they know what your customers expect? Do they know what you expect? Clear, verbal, face to face communication is how this transfer of information happens and how your employees know what you expect. You also have to be modeling the same behavior. Sitting behind your computer and firing off email directives 24-7 is not going to return the desired results. Management by walking around (MBWA) is helpful in this stage as your team needs to see you modeling expectations and hear from you consistently. 

Be Consistent in Your Inspection of Your Expectations

Consistency is the key to accomplishing anything great in life. When managing a team, consistent, clear communication is key in maintaining a healthy culture. So also is consistently inspecting the work of your team to make sure they are meeting your expectation. This does not mean micromanaging your team! This involves coming alongside your team members and supporting them as they work towards your expectations. What obstacles are they facing? Do they need more training? Do they need more autonomy to get the job done? Are they making progress or falling behind? The only way you will learn the answers to these questions is by inspecting the work they are doing, consistently.

Reward Right Behavior

This aspect of leading a team can often be overlooked. "The paycheck is the reward," is the mantra of some leaders. While there are job responsibilities laid out for all team members that need to be met consistently to continue working for your organization, some team member go above and beyond for the customer or client and exceed your expectations. They should be recognized or rewarded for such actions.

Measure the Results 

Finally, you have to measure the results of your expectations. I have seen far too many managers sitting shocked in quarterly business meetings when their numbers are shown on the big screen for the leadership team to see and they realized they fell short of expectations. Measuring the results of your expectations to your team in real time will keep you from having future surprises. At the very least, you will know why your team is not meeting expectations and have an intelligent answer as to why. Don't skip the measuring the results step after you have laid out expectations for your team!

Conclusion 

Hopefully this short article has helped you better understand what it means to "inspect what you expect." It is also important to understand that these five steps are not "one and done" type items. They have to be worked through constantly as you grow and develop your team. You have to consistently be evaluating your own understanding of the expectations laid out for you. You also have to be consistently evaluating how well you are communicating expectations to your team. And you need to be inspecting and measuring how well they are meeting or not meeting your expectation. It is process you are continually working through until you get the results you want and need from your team. Consistency is key!

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