Achieving Results

Expectations

‘Every major disappointment is a failure to set expectations’ Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager

No-one can be expected to hit a target if they don’t know what or where it is.

Every member of your team, at all times, should know what success looks like for them in the context of their work.

If you don’t think they do, that’s usually either a) because you don’t know yourself or b) it hasn’t been well-communicated.

The importance of a) should highlight why the first sprint we looked at was Alignment and Managing Up. If you’re not clear yourself on what constitutes success, you won’t be able to develop a plan for your team to deliver it, and communicate it to them.

For b), communicating expectations usually happens in three moments:

• Kick-offs: whenever you start a piece of work, there’s an opportunity to clarify what success would look like on what timeframe.  You may want to point to similar work which went well as an example to others, and be sure to take questions until everyone is clear. 

• Ongoing feedback: as work progresses, you should check-in to see if expectations are being met, discuss progress, and offer feedback either way.   These will likely be more frequent for less-experienced employees. 

• Completion and review: the completion of a piece of work is an opportunity to confirm whether or not the bar for success was met, and reflect on challenges and successes.

Practical tips

When setting expectations:

• Set the ‘what’ not the ‘how’: telling curious, bright employees (aka your team) exactly how to do something is often demotivating.   Set expectations about what you want to see achieved, and then look to your team for solutions on how to get there.

• Be clear on deadlines: always set expectations for the outcome you want and when you want to see it.

• Be ambitious but realistic: it’s exciting to be pushed to achieve great things, but deflating to be set up to fail.  This is a careful balance when setting expectations.  You can make it easier to walk this line by acknowledging when what you’re asking is very ambitious, and when it’s more business-as-usual.

• Meet your own expectations: you have your own part to play in achieving results, your own commitments to your team, and your own deadlines.  Try to meet every one, and explain when you don’t.  Nothing undermines your own authority to achieve results like failing to do your part well.

Capability

The second aspect that will define your ability to achieve results is whether your team has the capability to meet the expectations you have set.

Do they have the technical skills and experience to do the work or is additional training and/or employees required?

Most of the time, hopefully they do.  But if you’re not achieving the results you need, you may have to investigate.

Andy Grove suggests a simple mental test - if an employee’s life depended on performing a particular task they’re not accomplishing, could they do it? 

(This is a bit overdramatic, and hopefully your business isn’t a matter of life and death, but it gets to the point.)

If the answer is yes, they’ve got the capability, but they’re just not motivated (see our next section).   

If the answer is no, then your role as a manager is to assess whether you can provide sufficient training and feedback to get them to ‘yes’ or whether the role simply isn’t right for them. 

Motivation

‘You’re not “getting it [work] out of them”; you’re creating the conditions for them to bring it out of themselves.’ Kim Scott, Radical Candor

‘Why does a person who is not terribly interested in their work at the office stretch themselves to the limit running a marathon?’ Andy Grove, High Output Management

Assuming you’ve set clear expectations and your team has the skills required, the next factor that will define whether you succeed is if your team is motivated enough to put those skills to work.

Individual motivation is complex, nuanced, and will be different for everyone on your team.  But you’ll have learned a lot about what drives each person through your initial 1:1s and career conversations, which you can put to use here.

Various researchers have found that the highest performance comes not as a result of financial rewards (although getting compensation right is important) but through intrinsic motivation - individuals striving to improve themselves. 

Daniel Pink breaks this down into three factors, which you can use as a manager to consider how to keep your team motivated:

• Autonomy: giving your team real control over how they approach their work, without fear of failure. For example, leaving it up to them to decide how a task is accomplished or trusting them to work when and where they feel they’re at their best.

• Mastery: giving your team the opportunity to grow and the confidence they’re progressing in their roles.  For example, giving team members new responsibilities, and regular feedback on their growth. Signs of achievement and progression also factor into this.  The most powerful of these is compensation, but offering praise, shoutouts, and credit for success all show your team that they are improving their mastery of their role. 

• Purpose: giving your team a reason to care about their work - both for how it connects to your company’s overall mission and how it aligns with their individual career goals.  

If you feel your team is de-motivated, consider whether you can make any improvements across these three vectors.

‘In almost every model of motivation, people need to feel an understanding and connection with the purpose of their work. Who are they building these systems for; what is the potential impact on the customer, the business, the team?’ Camille Fournier, The Manager’s Path

Environment

Ok so your team has clear direction, is capable, and motivated.  There’s one final element which may prevent you from achieving results - your team’s working environment.

Especially when you’re troubleshooting performance issues, it’s important to interrogate this factor so you don’t attribute shortcomings to capability or motivation, when there’s a deeper problem.

There are many different examples of how this could manifest. But some common factors include: 

• Lack of psychological safety: this is linked to autonomy above - they don’t feel they can take risks in their work without feeling insecure or embarrassed.

• Heavy Workload: they’re just swamped.  They’re capable of doing great work, and want to do it, but there’s just too much on their plates.

• Times of Crisis: they’re struggling with uncertainty and trauma caused by events at your company, in their personal lives, or in the world.  This is compromising their ability to work to their usual standards.

• Workplace Discrimination: they’re not able to work at their best because they’re being unfairly discriminated against by those with influence over their work and progress.

• Ill Health: issues with their physical or mental health may prevent them from working at their best.

• Poor working practices: these include poor project management, insufficient communication, lack of dependability from other teams, bad internal tools and software, poor hiring practices, the list could go on. These issues can seem small at first but they sap productivity and performance if they’re not addressed (Stripe calls them ‘paper cuts’).

• Under-compensation: they don’t feel they’re being fairly paid for the work they’re doing.

Discussions about these issues will usually come up in 1:1s, but only once you’ve built sufficient trust and rapport with your team.

‘People whose manager makes an effort to help them combat burnout are 13X more likely to be satisfied with their manager’  Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy

Managing Underperformance

One of the trickiest tasks for any new manager is working with an under-performing team member.  The frameworks discussed in this piece should help you when faced with this situation. 

You’ll need to:

• Recognise it: setting clear expectations helps you achieve great results but it also makes it easier to see when members of your team aren’t reaching the standard you require.  If you aren’t clear on what success looks like, it’s very hard to know when someone might be underperforming. Recognising underperformance early is the key to addressing it before it becomes a bigger problem. 

• Diagnose it: work out whether you think the issue is due to expectations, capability, motivation, or the environment (or some combination). You’ll have your own opinions, but you’ll also need to discuss this with the team member in question to see what they think.  Remember that the first step in having this conversation is making sure the team member recognizes that there is a performance problem and that they want to solve it.  Once you’re sure of this, you can move onto diagnosing what the issue is, and develop a plan to remedy it.

• Discuss with your boss: if you think a team member might be consistently under-performing, be sure to speak to your boss as soon as you think there could be an issue.  They may be able to offer a second opinion on the individual’s performance, and guide you on how to approach the coming weeks in line with the company’s HR processes.  It will also make them aware you’re dealing with an issue which is compromising your team’s performance.

Supporting High Performers

Although it may seem like under-performers are your greatest challenge, supporting your best performers should be your highest priority.

They’re the ones who have the potential to help you achieve outstanding results, and who you want to keep happy, engaged, and retained.

It can be tempting to leave these people to their own devices because it seems they don’t need much help.

Don’t do this. 

Most high-performers are looking for further challenges, and opportunities to stretch their capabilities.  It’s your job as a manager to guide this enthusiasm, find them those opportunities, and help them do their best work.

If you’re spending more time thinking about the development of your under-performers than you are your highest-performers, you’re doing it wrong.

When and How to Micromanage

This may feel like an odd title.  Doesn’t everyone hate micromanagement?

Haven’t you spent the last 10 minutes telling me how to set expectations around outcomes, not methods, and give people more autonomy to keep them motivated?  

Erm, yes.

But one of the hardest lessons to learn about micromanagement is that sometimes it is necessary. The idea of the ‘totally hands-off manager’ is a myth.

Sometimes you will see situations where your team members are getting it wrong, you don’t have time to coach them on how to improve in the moment, and you need to step in yourself to get something done.

If you remain ‘hands off’ in those moments, your team will screw up, and you will have failed as a manager.  Judging when to intervene and handling those moments is the key.

It’s true to say that it should be a last resort.  Micromanagement is bad for your team on two counts:

• Trust: by taking over a task yourself, you’re implicitly (but pretty explicitly) telling a team member that you don’t trust them to complete it themselves.  There’s no way around this.
• Development: you’re also depriving the team member of an opportunity to develop, because you’re doing something yourself rather than giving them the time to figure it out.

So don’t take the decision to intervene lightly, and when you do, communicate with your team to reassure them on these two vectors:

• Trust: don’t leave this piece unsaid.  Explain that yes, you are taking this on because you don’t believe they can complete the work to the standard/timeframe required.  You’re going to help them get there, but right now, the customer/client/goal is more important.   You can also give positive feedback on the work they have completed.
• Development: commit to recreating the development opportunity on a different project or initiative where the situation is less pressurized. 

Resist the temptation to micromanage, help your team grow, but be aware you may need to do it.