Expectations for the New Year

Happy New Year!?January seemed to be a bit of a hot mess for just about everyone, so I’m considering February to be the start of my 2022.??

Let me start with a little story.?In the award winning (and highly recommended) Netflix docuseries, Cheer, one of the cheerleaders, Maddy, becomes inconsolable when her coach unexpectedly pulls her out of the routine in the middle of practice.?With mascara streaming down her cheeks, Maddy cries to her coach: “You couldn’t have let me know before practice of what to expect?”?Right then and there, my manager-heart strings were pulled.?I felt for Maddy.?Expectations were not clear.?Disappointment abounded. Make-up needed to be reapplied.

My new year’s resolution is to go back to basics in my work life.?And, if you’ve been with me since the beginning of this management newsletter journey, you know that perhaps the most fundamental skill of being a great manager / great life partner / great Tinder date is setting clear expectations.??

I want to share two places where you may want to clarify expectations with your team members.?My hope is that your year will be filled with minimal disappointment once you make these expectations explicit!

Team Norms and Expectations

About five years ago, Google conducted this incredible research project that looked at what makes a team great. What the researchers found was truly astonishing: it doesn’t matter what a team’s norms and expectations are as long as they are shared and explicit. A team could have explicit around starting meetings five minutes late, gabbing about personal stuff, and not having an agenda and could be just as successful as a team with explicit norms around strict time-keeping, set agendas, and specified roles as long as the expectations were shared by every member of the team.?Worst case scenario is when some team members expect to start on time and get right to business, and the other team members expect to have some social time to kick-off the meeting.?

So, one of the best things you can do with your team to kick-off the New Year is make sure that your team norms and expectations are explicit. Spend 30 minutes with your team and jot down expectations around how you’ll communicate, how meetings will run, how you want to make decisions, etc. Trust me - it will be worth it! (Here’s a template to help put together your team norms and expectations!)

What Your Team Can Expect From YOU

When was the last time you wrote up your own personal list of manager expectations - i.e., how you are going to operate as a manager with your team? It can be really powerful to articulate to your team members (especially new team members) what they can expect from you as their manager.?For example, my team members can expect that I will give frequent constructive feedback, and that I expect the same from them.?My team members can expect that I work iteratively, and I’d much rather see documents as works-in-progress than a final product.?They can expect me to be efficient in how I run meetings. They can expect that I will be committed and push them to think about their long-term development and growth. Etc. Etc.?

I like to think of this as a personal manager manifesto: spend some time writing down what your team can expect from you as their manager and share it with your team!

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More Fun Stuff!

Webinar for Managers in Nonprofit Organizations - Bosses in non-profits have unique challenges when it comes to managing well.?For my non-profit manager (and aspiring manager) friends, I’m offering a free workshop on building critical manager skills. Please share with other non-profit team members and organizations who may benefit from this talk! Sign-up here.??

New Year’s Development Conversations:?January is a great time to help your team members think about their long-term development and where they want to grow this year.?Here are four exercises to help you facilitate those discussions with your team members.?

How to Care About Work Less (The Atlantic):?A powerful read about how we find meaning in our work and our shifting relationship to work since the start of the pandemic. A quote that sucker punched me right in the gut:?“[Your] labor will always fall short of the venerated hard work of someone else.” Ouch.?

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Want more manager tips and tricks, obscure pop-culture references, and mediocre cartoons? Cartwheel yourself down to your local bookstore to pick up a copy of Bringing Up the Boss.?Or order now!

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