How to Consistently Start with Your Most Important Task First

If you’re even remotely interested in productivity, you’ve heard this advice a thousand times — start your workday with your first priority. And if you’ve tried to follow this advice, you know it does make you more productive.

It works for many reasons…

• We get fewer interruptions in the morning.
• We have more willpower/discipline in the morning.
• If we finish the hard task first, the following easier tasks feel like a reward.

However, if you’ve tried to start with your MIT (most important task), you know it’s not that easy. Sure, you can do it for a day or two, or maybe even a week. But after a few weeks, you’re back in your old pattern. Doing busy work in the morning and what feels easy and quick, instead of what is important.

It’s not your fault though, that’s just how our brains are wired — to look for the path of least resistance.

In my experience, just saying to yourself, “I’ll do it” doesn’t work. At least not long-term. What does work is setting up a system that will force you to start your day with your MIT.

Let’s explore a few systems that will help you to do this long-term without having to discipline yourself and use willpower.

1. Set ONE Priority at The END of Your Workday
Two important points here:

1) set only ONE important task to work on in the morning and 

2) set it on the day before

If you pick a task that is really important for you, it will probably be a difficult one. Even if it’s just one, it will probably be plenty to occupy your morning time.

If the task is just one, you don’t have the option to procrastinate with easier to do, less important tasks. You have just one thing to do in the morning and no excuses. No justifications.

If you set the MIT at the end of your workday for tomorrow, it helps you relax, let go of work, and enjoy your evening knowing that everything is taken care of until tomorrow. Then when you wake up, you don’t have to make any plans or schedules, just start with your MIT.

Again, it gives your brain no wiggle room for excuses and justifications.

2. Mark Your Mornings as “Busy” On Your Calendar
Make sure that your time is reserved and nobody can “book” you while you’re doing your MIT.

Even if you don’t use a calendar, you can tell everybody that typically interrupts you, that this is not a good time for you.

Also, this helps program your brain that the morning is reserved for productivity. No busy work, no socializing, no procrastination, no funny business. Just the MIT until it’s done.

3. Use an App to Get Rid of Distractions
Nowadays it’s easy to set up a few simple apps that will help you get rid of all distractions and keep you in check. I recommend two types of apps: internet/phone blockers, and social accountability.

Internet/Phone blockers
Unless there is something set in place to prevent you from getting distracted, you probably will. Don’t bother trying to use your willpower when it’s so much easier to set up an app. Here are the apps that I recommend:

iPhone/Mac/Windows: freedom.to
Android: focusme.com

In case you need an internet connection while you work, the apps let you block only specific websites and mobile apps that are distracting.

Social Accountability
It’s so much easier to postpone and procrastinate when you’re not accountable to anyone. Even if you have a boss or somebody to report to, typically that report is on a daily or a weekly basis. Usually, nobody holds us accountable to be there in the morning, start on time, and only work on the right thing.

And the problem is even worse if you work for yourself and you have nobody to report to. That’s why setting up social accountability with someone is crucial.

A great app that a colleague shared with me recently is focusmate.com.

The way it works is, you schedule a date and time on the app, and you get matched with a “productivity mate”. Your mate is a stranger that also wants to work in a focused way at that time. During the scheduled period, you both show up on camera, share for a minute or so what your most important task is, and start working.

Your camera is supposed to be on during the session, so if you suddenly disappear without notification and a good reason your mate can hold you accountable.

For me, that’s a great system that always works. I know that if I schedule a meeting with someone, I will be there. Every time, on time, just because I don’t want to stand someone up.

Note: to use the app you need to have an active camera and mic. (you can turn off the mic after the initial brief chat)

4. The Productive Morning Starts On the Night Before
One thing that can screw up all your plans is lack of sleep. If you don’t go to bed on time and get plenty of sleep on the night before, your morning will probably be wasted.

Even if you manage to get up on time and work on your task, your productivity while you’re sleep deprived will suck.

So if you set up an internet blocking app, a good idea is to include your evenings in the blocking period too. That way you don’t get distracted watching YouTube late at night or get a random phone call that lasts until 2 am.

5. Set Up Your Workstation for A Fast Start
One extra “ninja” trick you can use is when you’re done for the workday, take a minute to set up your workstation so it’s ready to go for tomorrow’s MIT session.

If you have a dedicated work computer that’s easy. Just open up the apps/websites/software that you need and close everything that is unrelated. Then put the computer to sleep (or hibernate), so that when you open it up on the next morning, there are no distractions and you’re ready to go.

If you don’t have a dedicated computer, it’s a good idea to create two user accounts — one for work, one for leisure. Then you can easily remove everything distracting from the work account and set it up for productivity for the morning.

Even if your MIT is not on a computer, you can still set up your workspace for a fast start. E.g. clean up your desk, get all the books and journals that you need and open them up on the right page.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Should leaders focus on their employee's strengths or weaknesses? (Hint: Yes)

There is much talk about strengths and how we should play to them. The wisdom is learn about your strengths, and once you know them and use them, you will become more effective. This is a fine approach, and while I agree with it in general, there is a problem. A problem that might be bigger than we realize. The problem is exposed when we realize that there is a flipside to the strengths coin. Yep, we have both strengths and weaknesses.

Let me tell you a story.

Many years ago, on the way to lunch, an obviously upset friend asked me if he was stubborn, explaining that someone had told him that a few minutes earlier.

Rather than immediately answering him, I paused and asked a question instead. “Do you think you are persistent?”

His immediate response was “Of course.”

After a brief pause, he hit me on the shoulder and said, “Stubborn and persistent are the same thing, aren’t they?”

So, are persistent and stubborn the same thing?

Pretty close.

If I told you someone was stubborn, would your first thought be positive, or negative?

But if I told you someone was persistent, would your feeling be different?

I bet I know your answers. In fact, persistence is often listed on researched lists of strengths, but I doubt you would ever find stubborn on a similar list.

So what is the difference between them?

Timing, amount, and context, mostly – and the perception of those viewing the behavior.

So “persistent” is a good trait, but used too often or used (as perceived by others) at an inappropriate time or place, and it becomes “stubborn.”

Suddenly, strengths and weaknesses aren’t quite so clear-cut.

So What?
Here is a practical principle to remember: a strength overused can be a weakness.

Too much of a good thing isn’t always a good thing.  A strength used in excess can actually become a problem.

                                           

When it’s just right	When it’s overdone
“Her flexible thinking really helps everyone think outside of the box.”	“Our weekly meetings are a total waste of time because of her lack of structure.”
“He’s organized and meets deadlines no matter what.”	“You mean old steamroller.”
“He’s a great negotiator.”	“It wouldn’t hurt him to compromise once in a while.”

Strengths have a dark side. Getting in touch with the implications of too-much-of-a-good helps to enhance self-awareness—and ultimately effectiveness.

This means that when looking at the results of a strengths assessment or when applying feedback from others, we must be careful. If you get too excited, proud, or even smug about a strength, it could cause unintended consequences.

This doesn’t imply that we shouldn’t understand our strengths. It just means that we must put them in a bigger and more complete perspective before using them as the basis for how we interact with others or lead.

Now What?
The idea of strengths vs. weaknesses can be useful to you as an individual, or as a leader. Here are some ways to use this insight in both situations.

As an individual you can . . .

• Make sure you understand your strengths (make a list and ask others for their input).
• Ask others what they see as your strengths.
• Think about the risks associated with over-using those strengths.
• Identify specific situations where you over-use a strength (again, asking others can be helpful here as we might have a blind spot in this area).
• Make sure you understand your weaknesses (again, make a list and ask others for their input).
• Think about how your weakness can be a strength.
• With these new insights, make an improvement and growth plan based on a balanced focus on both strengths and weaknesses.

As a leader/coach you can . . .

• Help your team members understand their strengths and weaknesses, using an assessment or the process I suggest above.
• Examine your own perspective and the labels you use to describe your team members to make sure you are truly seeing people’s strengths as well as weaknesses.
• Help your team members do the other steps listed above – leading to a plan of action for maximizing strengths, as well as working on weaknesses.
• Taking this balanced approach will give you (and others) a more accurate view of how they operate in a given situation and can be a great way to focus your personal and professional improvement efforts.

We cannot become our best as a leader unless we have an awareness of our strengths and weaknesses. This is just one truth that sits underneath any success in leadership development. 

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

What’s your sales superpower?

Can you leap tall gatekeepers in a single bound? Fly faster than a speeding objection? 
What’s your one unique sales strength, your hidden power, that enables you to inspire your customers to trust with you with their (choose one) a) business; b) money; c) career; d) all of the above. 

Have you even thought about it? 

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” So said Socrates (pre-hemlock cocktail, of course.) 

Regular introspection is an essential part of being human. 

What makes me who I am? And what I am? What makes me tick? What makes me click with another human? 

The sales superpower question is a simple way to determine a seller's level of self-awareness and mindfulness about who they are and what they do that helps them win deals. And, what they need to learn to win more frequently. 

This level of mindfulness is a hallmark of top performers. Identify your strengths and work hard to make them stronger. Assess your deficiencies and invest in improving them. 

I want you to identify your sales superpower. In 4 easy steps. 

Step 1: Grab a notebook and pen. Write this down by hand. It will help you to think more creatively. 

Step 2: Review the last 5 deals that you’ve won. Write down why you won each of those orders. The "why" can’t be about your product, features or price. 

What did you personally do that made a difference and won the deal? What’s the common denominator among your wins? That’s your superpower. 

Step 3: Define 3 actions you can take to enhance your superpower. What do you need to learn in order to take it to the next level? 

Step 4: Review 5 opportunities you are working on now. For each of these, define one way that you'll use your sales superpower in the coming week to help position you to win these deals. 

For sellers or sales leaders who can’t readily identify their sales superpower, what’s the opposite of mindfulness? Mindlessness? 

Isn't there already enough of that in sales? 

Identifying your sales superpower is just the first step.

Then you have to build it. Nurture it with new insights, perspectives and knowledge. Let it develop into being the difference maker for you on every deal you compete. 

SMART Development exists to help you accomplish that. To become the super version of you. 

To your greater success,

Peter C. Mclees, Principal
Smart Development


We help sales reps and sales organizations accelerate their sales. 

Great Leaders Like Great Athletes Never Stop Practicing the Fundamentals

Leaders can learn from a great coach Vince Lombardi, who reviewed the most fundamental concepts with his team even after making to the Super Bowl as coach of the Green Bay Packers. “This is a football,” Lombardi famously monologued in his first practice of every year.

These people had played the sport for decades and were by every measure among the most talented and developed professionals in their field. Why would Lombardi spend precious time explaining the rules of the game, dimensions of the field, and team makeup to an audience that knew these details like the back of their hand?

As successful leaders in our respective disciplines, we often feel like we know the core of management fundamentals, but how often do we botch an important session of delivering effective feedback or providing support to a direct report in one on ones. How often do we miss an opportunity to coach team mates or delegate a task we should really be entrusting in their care.

Perhaps the most universal sin of all is the frequency in which we misstep in our communication. Maybe we failed to listen actively in a critical conversation, to keep a meeting on track with its intended purpose, or to present an idea effectively to the executive team.

Lombardi reminds us that the best among us may have blind spots or at least room to apply the basics more frequently. New and seasoned leaders are not excused from this reality when it comes to mastering the fundamentals of management and communication.

Check out two related posts:

The Most Important Lessons a Leader Should Learn
Why Should You...And How Can You Grow As A Leader

"Change is the end result of all true learning." - Leo Buscaglia 

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Coaching is the Super Accelerant to Help Achieve Business Imperatives

The transformation of rubber from a useless substance to a resilient product was a simple as adding a missing process—heat, in the form of steam. Charles Goodyear named the process vulcanization after the Roman god of fire, Vulcan.

Today it’s hard to imagine life without Goodyear’s rubber. There would be no electricity, no cars, no computers, no bicycles, no radios, or televisions, no phones. We wouldn’t have airplanes, washing machines, or toasters. We wouldn’t even have our favorite pair of old sneakers.

Scientists have known the secret of accelerants for decades, adding them to speed up chemical reactions, achieving results more quickly. Accelerators work the same way in business, making the things you’re doing work better, faster, and more smoothly, without throwing you off balance.

The relationship between a management accelerant and improved business results is highly predictable. In the workplace, there are few accelerators with more impact than individual and team coaching.

Solid coaching skills are a valuable asset for leaders and managers at all levels.

A 2018 study found that leaders who frequently coached their employees and teams improved their results by 21 percent.

The 4 Realities That Compel Leaders At All Levels To Be More Coach-Like

Reality #1: Change is inevitable. Even the most successful organizations cannot rest on their laurels. They must continually remake themselves or risk falling from glory. Because today’s excellence is not a guarantee for tomorrow’s success, leaders who bask in complacency are due for rude awakening. 

Reality #2: People must learn and adapt quickly. Your people’s skills will become obsolete—in the same way technologies become outdated—if you rely solely on today’s capabilities to lead your company into the future. You cannot just hire talented people, teach them to do their jobs, and leave them alone. To cope with the inevitability of changing work demands, you need a work force that can learn new skills and adapt quickly. 

One way or another, most people figure out how to do their jobs. But development by default is too passive to achieve the standards of excellence and versatility that you must meet. Because the world refuses to wait for those who say “slow down while I gain more experience,” organizations are looking for better and faster ways to achieve breakthrough performance with their people. Experience and time alone are slow and inefficient teachers. You need to jump start learning and make sure it runs full speed in the right direction. 

Reality #3: Employees want to grow. Lifelong employment in the same job is a career path found only in the history books. Millennials at 33 percent, now represent the largest generation in the U.S. workforce, surpassing the Baby Boomer group, which has declined to 31%. And Millennials are not just pursuing job satisfaction they are pursuing development. 

  

Reality #4: People are the real source of competitive advantage. Versatile people—those who learn better and faster than your competition—sustain you edge in the marketplace. Because your people are your most important assets, coaching is your investment vehicle for long-term payback. 

How Coaching Benefits the Entire Organization 

The benefits of coaching seem to be very employee-oriented; however, looking at the bigger picture, your organization as a whole gains from having effective coaching sessions. Workplace Psychology, a website which covers areas of the workplace and workers from a scholarly perspective, offers some advantages of integrating coaching in your organization. I have elaborated their top three reasons: 

1. Overcome costly and time-consuming performance problems: many companies still rely on their annual performance to evaluate their employees’ performance. By integrating coaching in your organization, you can identify performance problems easier and quicker, and take the appropriate measures to overcome these hurdles such as re-aligning the employees’ objectives, or offering training/mentoring to help your employees succeed. 

2. Strengthen employees’ skills and results: Coaching allows employees to gain valuable skills and knowledge from their coach – whether it is you or a senior employee – which will eventually increase the productivity of your organization. Coaching also provides you with how the employees are performing; by following up with their progress, you may discover that they possess skills that you were not aware of. Therefore coaching helps you identify the competencies of your team and you may then take the initiative to strengthen these skills by encouraging them to take advanced classes or/and attend seminars. 

3. Improve retention: when employees are coached, they feel supported and encouraged by their manager and their organization. Coaching is a two-way communication process. You provide feedback to your employees and they are able to use this opportunity to also give feedback. Employees are more likely to stay in your organization if they feel that their voice is being heard by you and senior management. By integrating coaching, you are encouraging your managers and yourself to be more present among your employees. Coaching also allows you to identify employees who fit with your succession planning. 

The Secret of the 5% Solution

Many managers when exhorted to coach more and boss less will rightly say, “But my plate is already full. I can’t handle one more obligation. I rarely see my people because I’m so busy and they are scattered all over the place. There’s no way I can do all this.” 

You face a dilemma: Simple solutions don’t work for development, yet you don’t have time for complex solutions. So you need a coaching process that attacks the true challenges of getting a variety of people to change and yet is still manageable in light of available time and resources. That process is the 5% solution. 

You can be effective and efficient if you focus 5% of your energy and attention on coaching and development. Working smarter—not harder—helps you make the best investment of your time. The secret of efficient coaching is to know your priorities and then to create and seize coaching opportunities that arise in the course of your everyday work. If you are prepared, you can leverage a relatively small investment of your time into a walloping payback. 

Check out these related posts:

7 Questions to Ask Employees During Coaching Conversations

Coaching Works: Here's Why

SMART Leadership Coaching Works: Here's Proof

To Your Greater Success,

Peter C. Mclees, Principal

Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

Mobile: 323-854-1713

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com

We help organizations and leaders accelerate their results. 

What’s Different When Leading Remote Employees

In (important) ways, leading is leading, regardless of where you and those you lead are located. In all cases, as a leader, you are moving toward a goal, and are moving in the direction of that goal with and through the efforts of other people. And yet for all the ways that leadership is the same, there are nuanced differences that need to be understood and acted upon if you want to get great results and have people who feel good about their work and the working environment.

One of my mentors borrowed the quotation from W. Clement Stone – “little hinges swing big doors.” This idea is a profound truth in life and applies directly to us as leaders of people located elsewhere. This article is about some of those nuanced differences – differences that like a hinge, can make a very big difference in your results.

Intentionality
One of the things the proximity and frequent face-to-face interaction provides is the chance for serendipity. When you see someone in the parking lot, when you pass them in the hallway or on the shop floor, you are reminded of and provided with opportunities to say or ask things of others -and they will have that chance as well. When your team member is in Sioux Falls or Singapore and you are in an office in South Jersey, none of that happens.

As a long-distance leader, you must be more intentional about the things you want to share and need to share with your team members. You must also be intentional about providing time and space for your team members to share with you, too. Remember, they can’t see your office door open, so they may not know you are available, or they “don’t want to bother you.” This is just one example of the need for greater intentionality as a leader at a distance – to be intentional about creating space for conversations.

The need for intentionality extends to the other four ideas that follow too. . .

Communication
When you are face-to-face with someone you have the full complement of cues and clues to improve the chances for communication success. You have body language, posture, and the fullness of “how people look” as they communicate with you. At a distance, unless you are using a webcam (which I recommend, but isn’t always practical), you lose the richness of the body language, and must rely on the words and the tone and intonation or “how they say it” to receive the message. Of course, if you are only sending email, you lose some of that too. The bottom line is that when you are leading someone at a distance, not only might there be fewer chances to communicate (as noted above), but the chance for miscommunication grows significantly. As a remote communicator, you must be aware of these risks and make sure you are using the best communication medium for the situation you are facing. Chances are, you need to move past email or instant messaging more frequently and more quickly than you might do naturally.

Coaching
As a leader, you have a responsibility and opportunity to coach those you lead. It is a critically important part of your role. Doing it with a virtual or remote team member can be a challenge. Time must be set aside, care must be taken, and the communication challenges mentioned above must be considered. While most leaders don’t do enough (or frequent enough) coaching to start with, this is typically truer when coaching remotely. While everyone wants to know how they are doing and how they can improve, often those working apart feel even more disconnected and are wondering how they are doing or how what they are doing is being used and appreciated by others. Long-distance leaders must take their coaching role more seriously and put that seriousness into action – by scheduling more coaching with their team members.

Clarity (the need for it)
One of the biggest things missing in the workplace today is clarity. We need more clarity on the goals, on the expectations on the policies and procedures, on nearly everything. In my work with employees everywhere, they typically feel in the dark about more than one thing necessary for them to be fully successful. Do you somehow think those who are remote will be more clear than everyone else?

Hardly.

In fact, chances are the clarity that is lacking for everyone is exacerbated for those at a distance. You must work hard at creating clarity on the work, the work outputs, and all of the expectations you have about how people work, when they work, and what success looks like.

Relationships
Fact: People choose to follow those they know like and trust. Building “knowing,” “liking,” and “trusting” is harder when you don’t see people. Sorry Hallmark, absence, at least in this case, rarely makes the heart grow fonder.

Leaders of remote teams must spend more conscious time working to build their relationships and trust with those they lead. This is important work, made far more important by the distance.

Do you know about your team members’ passions and interests and family? Do you know where they want to go with their career and how they see you helping them? Can you both comfortably talk about more than just the work and the weather? If not, start here – it will start to help in the other areas mentioned here (and others unmentioned), too.

After reading these five things, I am sure you further agree with the premise in the first paragraph – all five of these things are important as a leader of a team just outside your office door too; and yet, each takes on a different and more important meaning when you don’t see your team members regularly and/or on the way to the coffee or break room.

If you are a leader of a team (or team member) at a distance, think about these ideas, determine which could help you improve, and get started. Notice that the first idea is intentionality. Get intentional, take action, and you will start to get new and better results.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

The Powerful Question that Leaders and their People Need to Answer

This question is said out loud often, but it is asked far more often in people’s minds and under their breath.

It is sometimes asked in an earnest tone, often it’s uttered in a quizzical way, and far-too-often it’s said in exasperation.

Whenever it is asked it hints at a gap in communication and understanding and always highlights an opportunity for significant productivity improvement.

The lack of an answer stifles creativity, causes customers to leave, damages relationships and promotes inactivity and indecisiveness.

And these are just some of problems caused by this question, and a small hint of the value of answering it.

You’ve asked this question, likely in the last few days.

And, unfortunately, it also has likely been asked of you more often (and more recently) than you realize.

If my writing so far has worked as intended, you are both wondering what the question is and hoping I get to the answer soon – which is a feeling that is similar to what we feel when we need an answer to the actual question itself.

When you don’t have an answer to this question you can be confused, frustrated, stymied and perhaps unduly stressed (and none of these emotions help you reach top performance).

“What do you expect?”

Let’s explore just a few of the situations where this question gets asked. People ask, or think without asking, this question when:

• They really have no clue what is expected.
• The task is new, and they don’t see the context of the request in the big picture of their work.
• What they were told didn’t make sense (or was shared in a one-way medium like an email or text message).
• They were seemingly given latitude, but in the past they’ve been burned by that not delivering what the person wanted.
• The person sharing the task didn’t really know their expectations either; they seem to be taking an “I’ll know it when I see it” approach.
• I’m sure you can think of other common instances, but this short list highlights the problems that a lack of clarity on expectations can cause.

Now that we have identified the problem, let’s look at what you can do to eliminate or at least minimize the number of times this question is asked.

Talk about the big picture. Help people put your request, the task or their behavior into context. Once people see where you are headed mentally, or what the overall goal is, it will make your request much clearer. Help people see how this request fits into the larger picture of work or why this matters in achieving team or organizational goals.

Share boundaries. Perhaps you have some parts of the task that you want done in a specific way. If so, share those specific expectations. Beyond that though, let people know how big the playing field is. Let them know the budget, time parameters or whatever else matters in the situation, and give them clarity on where they have latitude as well as where they don’t.

Be clear yourself. Pretty hard to give people clear expectations if they aren’t clear to you. Get clarity before the conversation or assignment. If not, you must let go of the outcome – or you are creating a very costly “gotcha” for people.
Share your clarity. Once you are clear, communicate your expectations clearly. This point may seem obvious, but it is worth saying anyway. Be crystal clear in your communication about expectations.

Confirm understanding. Like any other important communication, it is useful to make sure the other person understands. Take the time to clarify with them by having them paraphrase back to you or in some way confirm understanding.

Provide the needed skills. Sometimes people aren’t able to meet expectations because they don’t have the necessary skills. When this is the case, provide them with the advice and skills needed so they can reach the expectations that have been laid out for them.
Make it part of every conversation. To avoid even small gaps in expectations, make a conscious effort to talk about expectations regularly.

Let go. Once you done these other steps, let go of the task. You have assigned it and given clear expectations. Now you need to allow people to succeed!

And finally, while this isn’t required, don’t be overly prescriptive. Giving people some room to work within your expectations will garner you greater commitment and better results. If not, the ultimate end of this logic is to tell people exactly what you want in such detail that they have no room for creativity, self expression, personal commitment or an opportunity to create something even better.

As you find this balance between “I want them to figure it out for themselves” and “this is exactly what I want” you develop a team with skills, confidence and people that are highly productive.

However, wherever you fall on this sliding scale, the question “what do you expect?” needs – and deserves – an answer.

Make it your personal challenge to eliminate the question of “what do you expect?’. Not because people are afraid to ask, but because conversations about expectations are encouraged, positive, open and ongoing.

Potential Pointer: Effective leaders know people need a crystal clear answer to the question “What do you expect?” if they want any chance at top performance. Do not underestimate the value of answering this question clearly in unlocking top performance and achievement.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.