Setting & Upholding Job Expectations Is the Heartbeat of Your Small Business
While I was away, I read Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, a book recommended by our beloved Michelle Nicholson of FARMUSE. This is not your typical how-to leadership book. It’s more on the therapy end of the spectrum than the business end. Each chapter includes personal stories by the author, anecdotes from his client’s lives, and journal prompts for the reader. So with that in mind, I want to kick off today’s post on job expectations with an exposing share: my journal response to a question posed in chapter 5.
CEO coach and author Jerry Colona asks the reader to answer: Why do I struggle with the folks in my life?
Here was my response: They don’t know what I want, and I have to ask for it. And I’m uncomfortable asking for it. I believe that they’ll tell me that my standards are too high. Impossible even. They’ll talk about me behind my back.
Welcome to one of the most critical (and emotionally layered) realities of leadership: setting and upholding job expectations and standards.
If you’re a small, creative business with employees, and you don’t set (and uphold) job expectations with exquisite clarity, your growth will plateau. And while your growth plateaus, your culture will plummet.
And setting expectations isn’t one-and-done. It’s an ongoing leadership and management practice that requires lots of feedback, alongside clarity and courage.
Why Job Expectations Are So Important – and So Difficult
Most small business CEOs struggle with expectations, not because they don’t have them (we definitely do, ha), but because our expectations are…
- In our heads instead of written down or verbalized clearly,
- Enforced inconsistently, or
- Unknown, even to us.
TV writer and producer Chuck Lorre has said:
I don’t know what my expectations are until they’re not met.
We’ve talked before about the emotional leadership mistakes that cause small business owners to hesitate: fear of confrontation, desire to be liked, discomfort with authority, or assuming “they should just know.” These are natural, human tendencies. But they create real business risks. Not to mention: lots of emotional weight for everyone involved.
So how do you set and uphold clear, effective job expectations without becoming a micromanager?
Let’s walk through the two-part process…
PART 1: Create Clear, Actionable Job Expectations
Putting on my Strategist hat, I’ve observed that when new clients with employees join our Advisory Practice, they all need to build their standards and expectations. I can’t think of one client over the past 7+ years, who came to us with these fully locked and loaded. Our approach is to tackle this in a 360o way, across 3 platforms.
1. Position Agreements
A Position Agreement clearly lays out the employee’s:
- Result they’re accountable for,
- Strategic and tactical work they own, and
- Standards they’re expected to uphold for how the work gets done.
It’s the “here’s what success looks like” guide for every role on your team. You may remember my new favorite performance guideline: OOBA (thank you, Heather Mathias!). At a minimum, your PA articulates the two Os: the outcomes and output someone is accountable for.
2. Team-Wide Standards
Not everything belongs in a Position Agreement. Some expectations, such as how people show up, communicate, or handle conflict, should be set at the team culture level. This is where you define your company’s expectations for behavior and attitudes (the B & A in OOBA).
For example, you may focus on defining things like what it means to be professional, a team player, or prepared in your organization.
Examples:
- “No personal phones on the sales floor.”
- “We do not say ‘that’s not my job.’”
- “If the workday starts at 9, you’re ready to begin work at 9.” (Not walking in the door).
When you make the cultural standards clear and non-negotiable, your team can align around shared expectations, and you’re no longer the only one enforcing them. Which leads us to where the rubber meets the road…
3. Leadership Modeling
You set the tone. If you’re late, sloppy in communication, or avoid hard conversations, your team will follow your lead. Emotional intelligence, presence, and clarity start with you.
BUT/AND you’re not the only person to role model. This is about how every person shows up as a leader in your organization. Remember: leadership and management aren’t the same. You don’t have to be a manager on the org chart to be a leader. Each person on your team is constantly looking to their right and left, to see what acceptable behavior is. This forms your company norm.
This is why it’s so imperative to hold everyone accountable for job expectations and standards, as a leader. Because they are. In my own career, one of my biggest management mistakes was not correcting behaviors that were at odds with our cultural standards. Over time, poor attitudes and incongruent behavior will have the effect of carbon monoxide: they slowly, silently inject (deadly) cultural poison into the company.
PART 2: Hold People Accountable
Here’s where most managers falter. Holding people accountable to standards is where the operational and emotional labor kicks in. Without implementing Part I and Part II, this work falls flat. One without the other doesn’t work.
Once we’ve done Part I with a client, there always comes a point (often a year+ down the road) when they realize they haven’t been maintaining accountability work. Over time, when the standards errode and work isn’t getting done properly, it’s tempting to say: “We need to add new roles.” But most often when we run into this, we see that expectations actually are clear in the PAs. The standard has been set. But we’ve been inconsistent in holding people accountable to our standards.
If you have a team, you’ve probably fallen into this trap (I have):
- “I don’t want to come off as too demanding.”
- “It’s faster if I just do it myself.”
- “What if they quit?”
- “I gave feedback, but nothing changed.”
- “They should know. I shouldn’t have to tell them this; it’s so basic.”
Accountability doesn’t require aggression. But it does require thoughtfulness, preparation, and structure.
1. Use Monthly 1-1s as the Performance Backbone
Monthly 1-1s are a recurring opportunity to reinforce expectations, give real feedback, and recalibrate performance.
Here’s our 1-1 template. You’ll notice it includes:
- Wins and misses,
- Questions about current and upcoming work,
- What support is needed from you, their manager,
- A numerical ranking of their performance (based on OOBA), and
- What the employee needs to do to meet or exceed expectations.
2. Get Comfortable Giving (and Receiving) Feedback
Feedback shouldn’t only happen when things go off the rails. It should be regular, balanced, and specific.
If you’ve ever struggled to give feedback without defensiveness – or had an employee spiral after a correction – this guide will help you and your team create a feedback culture built on growth, not shame.
3. Close the Loop
If someone continues to underperform or ignore expectations despite clear conversations and support, you must take action – fast.
That might look like:
- Creating a short-term improvement plan,
- Taking away privileges or bonuses tied to performance, or
- Eventually parting ways, if they just can’t get there.
This is the hardest part of leadership – but it’s the hardest because it’s the most important. It’s where your culture and your business results get stronger or weaker. Every time you uphold a standard, you’re protecting your business and your best people. There’s a direct correlation between enforcing job expectations, your business’s financial results, and what work feels like for the team.
Final Thoughts: Expectations Show Others That You Believe in Them
Setting and upholding job expectations isn’t about control. It’s about clarity, empowerment, and shared success.
And to close the loop on my journal expose… these were not in-my-head “stories I’m telling myself.” As an orgnization with a value of honesty, these things have been said to or about me (yes, behind my back). But over time, and with intentional employee turnover and growth, here’s what I’ve learned:
Whoever you’re looking for, is looking for you too. Your expectations will be too high for some people – perhaps for lots of people. (And the ownness is 100% on the manager to communicate job expectations and standards clearly, and quickly weed out who is and isn’t up to the task). But there are people out there who want to be held to your brand and cultural standards.
So when you find and select these people, it’s a gift to help them get further than they could on their own. To get them operating at a level that’s more than what they even know is possible for themselves. This is where Adam Grant’s cue comes into play:
I have high expectations of you because I believe you can reach them.
You, as a leader, deserve to run a company where high standards are the norm, not the exception.
