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Milan: I.
Ged: Okay.
Milan: Setting expectations. Alright. You want do the
Ged: I will do the intro here. Welcome to podcasts, the podcast where Milan and I chat about the cards that we draw at random from a deck of cards Milan has created. Now, we don’t choose these cards in advance. We pick them at random, so let’s shuffle the deck and see what pops out.
Setting expectations. Ah, so
Milan: Card. Yeah. We haven’t had a hard
Ged: It is,
Milan: For a moment. Yeah. That’s great.
Ged: It, it, it’s, it’s a hard card, but it’s a hard card as well, because this is a very difficult thing to do well and most people underestimate how critical this is. And I. I, I have this term that I use called, you know, leadership by Osmosis. You know, the assumption that [00:01:00] people just get what’s in your head at any point in time. And as we know, leadership by osmosis is rarely, rarely, rarely effective. So it’s worth spending a time on this card and just talking through why this is so important. So, Milan, why did you, why did you come up with this card as a, as a concept?
Milan: You, you know, again, it’s a hard card and, you know thank you for making fun of my accent there. But, but I can take it. It’s fine. It will never change. The know, so it’s about people. It’s about culture, right? It’s about the human system. And we see this so often, and I don’t remember what was the actual trigger for this one, however. I had so many stories when somebody was, oh, I’m really unhappy with how this person is doing. And [00:02:00] do they actually know what you expect from them? What do you mean? Isn’t it obvious? No, it isn’t. Right. No, it isn’t, unless you are very, very clear about it. People get hired for a job not understanding what the expectations are and then be surprised of that.
Right? It’s, and then it hurts both parties. You, can jump into a project and if you don’t know exactly how good looks like, you know, when it gets at the end, like, what are your chances of actually, you know, satisfying the requirements if they are they are not clear. I’ve seen it in business between companies, like when consultants come to solve a problem and the problem is not very well defined and the consultant doesn’t have the maturity to say, Hey I don’t know what you’re actually asking here.
Let’s be clear about it first. It happens very, very often. So I think that this was one of the cards that was more talking about. [00:03:00] A principle or a trend rather than a, you know, particular trigger or particular situation that would inspire it.
Ged: As, as coaches, we see this all the time where there is a mismatch in expectations, where clarity of expectations hasn’t been made to the point where. Both sides understand exactly what is expected, you know, and until you get to that point you can’t expect to get the outcomes that you’re looking for because people don’t know what you’re looking for.
And this, this also comes back to trust, isn’t it? You know, the, you know, when, when you say, when someone says to you, well, and I’m, I’m, I, I don’t think they’re performing particularly well, or I don’t think that they’re doing this particularly well. Now, the first thing I say to that person is, well, what do they think?
And, you know, what’s gonna happen? The expression on the person’s face is gonna be, oh, I haven’t spoken to ’em about it.
Milan: Okay.
Ged: No. That, and, and then that’s because they, they either. Don’t want to have a difficult [00:04:00] conversation or they haven’t got the level of trust that they need to be able to have that conversation.
And both of those situations are, are not good. And you’ve gotta get beyond that. You’ve gotta get to the point where it is possible to have that conversation, which isn’t, isn’t always easy. But unless you get that clarity of expectations. And I think it’s, my first thought was going to my book and chapter two in my book is called, most people in Business don’t know What’s expected of them.
Now that’s a long chapter title, but that’s intentional ’cause I want to, I wanna, I want to make people think about what’s in actually in there. And the whole chapter is all about clarity of expectations and the fact that most people don’t have clarity of expectations. So you’ve really gotta work at this.
You’ve really gotta work at this so that people know what the outcome is and what people are looking for. And. So that really takes us to scorecards. ’cause scorecards is a really good way of getting clarity of [00:05:00] expectations in a role.
Milan: Before we get there.
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Get there, I think that there is one more I dimension to it, right? A scorecard and impact filter. We’ll talk about it. That’s the how, right? What we do need to mention is that, yeah, you have, you have situations when the expectations are not clear, but you have even more dangerous situations where the expectations seem to be clear.
They just don’t match between the two parties. Right.
Ged: Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Know, the power of assumption, right, to mess up our lives is much unlimited. And this is a great example of it where the communication about it is poor. There are no checks and balances to make sure that, hey, are we actually talking about the same thing?
Is it actually clear? Right? Because there might be impression of clarity without an actual agreement or without an actual alignment. And we saw it very often where, for [00:06:00] example, a new hire be afraid to admit that they don’t understand the instruction or they don’t understand the expectation because they feel like it would be, you know, it would look better on them, right? So they will not thinking that they’ll figure it out later, but they never do. And then they will just work hard to try to do whatever and. And off it goes. Right? So again, slowing down, you know, we’ve talked about it a couple of times now, that being down in the beginning a little bit, be very clear about the expectations, and even more importantly, is be clear about the other party’s clarity about understanding of those of those expectations.
Because just because they say they get it doesn’t mean that they get it the same way as you do and vice versa.
Ged: So how, how do we get that clarity of expectations between two parties? How do we, how do we get that in, in practice?
Milan: Well, the, you know, the, the card is talking about two [00:07:00] tools. You know, one is the scorecard that we use in Metronomics which, you know, is inspired by top grading scorecard. But
Ged: Yep.
Milan: Looking at, Hey, these are the accountabilities. These are the competencies you’d have. This is how good looks like.
This is how we measure success. This is the mission By just writing it down and saying, Hey, this is what it is. You know, it’s a really, really good step. That’s for a position, that’s for a function in the
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Right? Ged: The individual. Just wanna stress those.
Milan: Yeah.
Ged: Not for the person, it’s for the function.
Milan: It’s for the function that they’re, that they are fulfilling, right?
Ged: Yep.
Milan: Then if we are looking about a project, about something that needs to get done, then, then Sullivan’s impact filter that he’s talking about with Dr.
Benjamin Mu Hardy in who not how, a really, really good tool, right? Which is again, this is how good looks like. This is what happen if we wins, this is what happen if we don’t win. Right? Again, spelling it out very, very, very clearly. [00:08:00] You know, lately I was thinking that it’s like AI prompting, you know, you get what you prompt.
Like if you are not clear about that, you know, you will get crap back. You know, you will get slop, you will get bad stuff. You have to learn. It’s a skill to set up your expectations. Well, again, the Ai analogy works really well here because it’s a skill to work with AI effectively, and it’s all about being clear about the expectations and definition of how good looks like. So you get. Outcomes back, you know, the actual, now thinking about it, the whole framework, like whether you quit or whether any, any of those, you know, they’re all the same, right? Like, are you A competency, right? What is the task, right? A mission, right? How does good look like? Like what does, does it actually mean? [00:09:00] AKA, you know, metric measurement, good outcome, you know, all of those things impact, like, it, it, it’s all the same components. We just need to make sure that they are spelled out correctly, whether we are talking to a, a human or a machine, and we need to have a feedback loop to make sure that they were understood correctly. Thing.
Ged: So it’s not just about getting it down in writing, it’s also making sure that both sides, both parties have the same understanding of what’s expressed in words and numbers
Milan: Yeah, and,
Ged: Numbers.
Milan: You know, I, I’m sorry. This just, you know, it just keeps coming because again, with AI you use the same principle. If it’s not clear, ask me. Right? That’s, that’s what you do. It’s one of the main principles. So I think that creating that feedback loop to make sure that those expectations as set are also received, [00:10:00] is absolutely, absolutely critical. And that could take, that could take a whole bunch of forms, right? It’s like, hey, this, you know, in in new function, we would set up an onboarding plan and we would look at, okay, we’ll be looking at every week and how those things are progressing, right? So we have the checking points. We deliberately set framework for ensuring that the expectations are understood and put in place trip wires that when a correction is needed, you know, we don’t sleep through that moment, right?
We’ll catch it right there and then to minimize any damage and, you know, maximize the the chance of success.
Ged: So getting clarity of expectations, you need to have a conversation. The conversation can be hard sometimes, so you’ve gotta build that trust to be able to have that conversations. And it’s also not just [00:11:00] about putting it down in words and numbers. You need to make sure that you’ve both got the same understanding about those words and numbers.
So whether it’s expressed in a school card or some other way, you still gotta get to that point where you have clarity of understanding and clarity of expectations on both sides.
Milan: You know, we’re talking in the business setting, but this is the same in any relationship and in life. And, you know,
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: The, a lot of, especially the heart cards are you know, you can look at it and say, oh, this is kind of obvious, but just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it’s common. You know, in any relationship, in any interaction, be very clear about what your expectations are, give you a much higher chance of actually cutting it.
Ged: Yep. Yep. Because communication by osmosis doesn’t work.
Milan: It’s also called Reading the Mind Rich. No, absolutely.[00:12:00]
Ged: That’s a wrap.
Milan: Yeah, I think so. I think it could be, it, it could be worked on. Yeah.
Ged: Yep. Yeah, and, and I wasn’t making fun of your accent, by the way. I was just trying to No.
Milan: Had to, I had to take that, take that piss because I, it’s perfectly fine. And I know, I know that my pronunciation is not there, so it’s it’s
Ged: Oh, no, no, no. It, it is a hard card, heart card, but it’s also a hard card, you know that?
Milan: I know
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: You’re, what you’re saying. I cannot make the distinction between those two sounds and look, you know, any, any opportunity to take a piss and you know, add some entertainment value, go for it.
Ged: Okay. So let’s do the recap. So why don’t, why don’t I introduce this one and then you, you add the, the content. Yeah.
Milan: Sure.
Ged: So in next week’s card cast episode, we are talking through the card setting [00:13:00] expectations, which is often harder than it sounds. Milan, what did we talk about?
Milan: Well, we talked about what happens when the expectations are not set, how often it actually happens. How do we set like couple of tips of how can you go about setting the expectations, right? And then we talked a lot about how do you resolve if there seems to be a misalignment in the understanding of expectations.
Ged: That’s, that’s a wrap.
