As we all know, assembling a high-performing team is a mandate and step 1 to achieve anything. Lack of skill at pockets can also be supplemented if everyone has team spirit. On the contrary, a group of highly skilled individuals can fail the collective objective when the team spirit and misalignment to the common goal.

The challenge for the leader is that getting long-standing resources in the volatile job market is almost impossible. Even if there are a few, everyone won’t always be in the required form to achieve the desired result. If you are a blessed individual, pass on the good luck to others as well 😉

There could be many reasons for a team not performing. I may need to dedicate an individual post for every other reason. One such reason is expectation management.

Expectation management is not a much-outspoken area in the leadership forums but a critical area of concern for the team’s performance. A resource is not keen on achieving the goal or aspiring to do something different but is stuck in the role for reasons that are the concern. 

I have seen people passively retire within the service. They all stick to the company and act as committed individuals. It’s tough to identify them; unfortunately, if a manager/leader is also not keen on cleaning these resources, that’s the biggest weakness for a company. Think of if someone has been unattended in this category for years. Think of how much they would have slowed down the company’s growth.

Conversely, some resources might aspire to play different roles but are given different responsibilities. Again, in this case, it takes a lot of work for the leaders to understand this challenge. Only if the resource voices the concern it’s easy. I won’t say this is impossible, but the investment of time is a concern.

It’s a prime responsibility of a leader to identify these gaps. When it is determined, immediate corrective action is required. I often heard the term ‘setting the right expectation,’ which I disagree with as I see that as a one-way communication. Threatening, pleasing, cornering, or anything else may give temp results only.

Expectation management is a gentleman agreement over a DIALOGUE with a clear outcome-based understanding between the leader and the follower. A good leader can only do this everything else is up to the individual to change.

All the leaders are resources/followers to someone, so a leader might also fall into these buckets. It’s a chain that needs to be constantly evaluated and course-corrected (expecting a perfect one always is impractical). The evaluation time and course correction determine the success of the company/team. What is your assessment of your team?

It’s a curse if a reader of this post thinks I am asking to define KPI and assumes that’s an existing process and moves on. The letter ‘K’ in KPI means DIALOGUE/Agreement 🙂

#team #leadership #management #people #communication #leaders