Setting Expectations With Employees: Performance Improvement Techniques

The single most common missing ingredient in employee interactions is that of setting expectations. It's one of the many performance improvement techniques that many of us fail to focus on.

Why is it that employees don’t do what they’re supposed to do? Surprisingly, most often it is because they don’t know what’s expected. One of the biggest problems with supervisors’ communication is that they assume they’ve communicated clearly when they haven’t.  Getting the performance you want is fundamentally dependent on

• Clear, specific, and unambiguous communication about what you expect, and
• Getting a definite commitment from the employee to do what’s expected

Another challenge for supervisors is communicating not only what is expected, but how it is to be done.  Finally, most supervisors leave out an important piece of information: why all that matters – to customers, to the Company, to the team.

Ensuring that supervisors have the skills and tools to meet these challenges helps you achieve important benefits:

• Employees who need less supervision because they understand and are committed to not only achieving important goals but exceeding them
• Greater alignment throughout the organization
• Fewer performance problems
• Increased employee engagement
• Increased productivity because employees are internally motivated

Setting Expectations With Employees Training highlights:

• How to create SMART performance expectations that are linked to important company goals
• How to spell out the behaviors you need – the things you can’t quantify, such as teamwork, initiative, customer focus, communication, accountability, leadership, etc. – and include them in the performance contract
• How to engage employees in a dialogue to set performance expectations
• How to know if they really understand – a nod is not enough!
• How to get their commitment to accomplishing what’s expected
• How to monitor and measure their performance – especially the things that are difficult to quantify
• What to do when expectations change

Setting Expectations With Employees Methodology

Participants in Setting Expectations With Employees spend most of their workshop time in customized, hands-on practices applying the tools and skills, with coaching and feedback. They bring their own real situations to use in the practice sessions.

Setting Expectations With Employees Customized Solutions

To ensure that training is not just an “event,” but instead produces enduring results, we customize Setting Expectations With Employees to fit your unique situation, business strategy, culture, and people.  After discussion with you and other experts within your organization, we select the emphasis, specific skills to be developed, key learning points, exercises, and case studies for practice to create a solution tailored just for you.

Setting Expectations With Employees Applications

The following are some of the ways our clients have used custom versions of Setting Expectations With Employees:

• To align employee performance with critical business objectives
• To prepare team leaders for roles as first line managers
• To align and integrate performance objectives throughout the organization
• To reduce performance errors
• To change to a more customer-focused culture

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