Your team is struggling with unclear job expectations. How can you clarify roles for improved performance?

No one seeks to underperform. Enhancing performance requires clear role expectations, a supportive environment to work without fear, a renewed sense of purpose and belonging, and a forward-thinking mindset.

Role clarity is one of the important drivers of employee engagement, having job description is great starting point for managers but is not equivalent to having role clarity. It is critical for managers and employees to have regular conversations around expectations. This gives employees the opportunity to speak up if they’re unclear about or a new challenge they’d like to take on. This open dialogue not only helps with role clarity but also strengthens the employee-manager relationship and can lead to a greater sense of purpose for employees. One way to assess the clarity of team member duties is to have individual conversations with each team member. Take a pulse check on the understanding of role.

It's important to communicate with your supervisor and offer feedback if you feel that you're facing unrealistic expectations in your role. Consider meeting with your manager and vocalizing your perspective. They may understand why you feel this way and offer solutions for a more feasible workload. If team members are unclear about their tasks, it's important to address the issue promptly by clarifying expectations, providing resources, encouraging open communication, breaking down tasks into manageable steps, offering support, and monitoring progress.

To define team member responsibilities, start by identifying the key tasks and deliverables associated with each role. Collaborate with team members to ensure that responsibilities are clearly understood and aligned with their skills and expertise

Here are 13 ways you can work with an underperforming employee to create change and improve their productivity: Take action immediately. ... Send out a training survey. ... Meet with the underperforming employee. ... Identify the cause. ... Establish long-term goals. ... Schedule regular meetings. ... Encourage continuous learning.

Open dialogue is hands down one of the most effective ways to communicate expectations, ensure alignment and support performance. The key is two-way communication. Employees need to feel safe to raise obstacles, concerns and even mistakes. Each can be turned into a learning opportunity supporting future growth and performance.

Unbeknownst to you, your team may receive direction from many stakeholders who are not you. HR folks work with their direct manager in HR, but they also work with executives and leaders of other functions. At times, those leaders may give your team direction that is inconsistent with or directly contradictory to your direction, so stay close to your team to ensure they approach you when this happens. Also, be sure to socialize your HR initiatives with key leaders in the organization (and certainly with the CEO) so that you can steer everyone on the right direction when they inevitably veer off course.