Beyond Today
  • Blog
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Home
Bridging Leadership Lessons from the Workplace and Those Experiences Shaping Today's Youth and Tomorrow's Leaders

beyond today

Leaders growing together

Manage Expectations, Lead People

9/14/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
You have probably heard the phrase “you should manage projects but lead people.” It reinforced that people want to be led and empowered without having to be managed as a resource to be “optimized” like they are a piece of production equipment.
 
I am a firm believer in this philosophy and have been blessed to grow up in a company that put more emphasis in developing the soft skills that focus on leading and relationships then on the hard skills of management execution. What has become apparent in my 29 years at this company is that it isn’t either / or as you must have both skills to reach your true potential.
 
Recently, I found that as I was engaging a variety of people across a broad spectrum on topics of leadership and challenges, a thread appeared that would always bring the conversation back to the principle of “manage projects, lead people.” If people were sharing challenges, it would typically come back to a leader stumbling in one or both of those areas and in contrast when people shared success stories, both of those had been achieved. 
 
As I would engage in more questions and discussion, I changed the principle from “projects” to “expectations” as that really seemed to be at the heart of the matter. Whether it was about projects, strategic planning, sports teams, or family drama it always seemed to come back to a mismatch of expectations. It’s not that people necessarily lack a skill or don’t know what is needed for a project to be successful, but it is either unclear expectations or unstated expectations that seem to cause the conflicts or misalignment. People moving to the beat of their own drum were causing things to be out of rhythm.
 
If you can manage expectations effectively, then even if you struggle to lead people you can still make progress. If you don’t manage expectations but are an effective leader, then you might be able to lead people down a path even though they are not sure why they are traveling the path. But in either scenario, it’s going to take a lot more work to be successful.
 
From my experiences and discussions with others, I pulled together some common reasons why leaders fail to effectively manage expectations:
 
THEY DON’T KNOW
The manager may not have a clear understanding of what needs to be done. Just because a person is in a management role, doesn't mean they have all the answers. In an effort to avoid looking stupid, they set a goal or a metric on something that they do understand. But many times, we confuse the goal with the process. 
 
DISTORTED LENS
The manager may be seeing things through their own lens and don’t grasp the bigger picture because they view things from their position. The expectations they describe fit into their own view of performance and definition of success, but it misses the mark on the direction the company is traveling. 
 
AVOID CONFLICT
Sometimes, they don’t want to rock the boat, or they don’t feel that the expectation will be well received by their team. It may be a lack of confidence or fear of political backlash. But either way, they find it easier and possibly safer to avoid it and instead choose to set lesser expectations. 
 
DEFEND THE CASTLE
Many times, when people feel a push to change expectations, they move into a defensive posture and try to protect their position and deflect what they perceive as an attack on them. By changing expectations, they feel that what they have been doing is wrong and reflects poorly on them as a leader. They reinforce their silo instead of viewing this as an opportunity to pivot and move forward. 
 
As a leader, you must be able to manage expectations of your team as well as their relationship outside of your immediate organization. Clear expectations that can be supported and executed will help your team feel engaged and empowered. Managing expectations in this way will help you lead people Beyond Today.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Picture

    Author

    Tom Brown - a husband and a father who is simply trying to make a difference. Using my experience as a  Manufacturing Executive to connect leadership from the boardroom to the hardwood to help  teams grow and develop to make a difference in the lives of others.

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020

    Categories

    All
    Coaching Sports
    Leading At Work

    RSS Feed

    Tweets by Iserve2lead
Proudly powered by Weebly
Photos from nodstrum, shixart1985 (CC BY 2.0), objectfox, wuestenigel, focusonmore.com, wuestenigel (CC BY 2.0), wuestenigel, nodstrum, rvcroffi, shixart1985, JoanDragonfly, wuestenigel, Artotem, www.ilmicrofono.it, Llima, The National Guard, wuestenigel, Paul L Dineen, stevepaustin, wuestenigel, CDay DaytimeStudios w /1.7 Million views