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Surprising employees with your personal standards doesn't work

Surprising Employees with your Personal Standards?

Human beings love clarity.  When we know what is expected, we have no problem providing that.  But have you ever had a boss reprimand you for something you had no idea was a problem?  When you are the boss, holding others accountable to our personal standards is a mistake.  Not only does it create bad feelings and confusion, good employees may begin to think twice about working for a wish-washy employer.  Listen to today’s episode of the Manager Mojo podcast to be sure you’re not doing this to your employees or your business.

 

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 TRANSCRIPT: Surprising Employees with your Personal Standards doesn’t work

Hello and welcome everyone.   Our topic today is entitled Holding People Accountable to Your Own Personal Standards is a Big Mistake.

That’s a mouthful, isn’t it?              Let me start by talking about what we’re really discussing today.  This was a real problem for me personally when I first became a manager years ago, and I’ve observed other managers making the exact same mistake.   I was reminded again – this week – that even senior leaders are not immune to this type of thought process.

Let me explain what I mean by this topic.  There are basically three problems why you should never hold people accountable to your own, personal standards in management.

The first is that it assumes everyone thinks just like you do.  The second problem is that your personal objectives could be in conflict with the published policies of your company.  And the third reason that it can be a real problem is that you could demotivate the entire company by surprising employees with this type of accountability session.

Let me start with the first reason, and let’s talk about how you assume that everyone thinks like you do.  You see, when I first got into management I thought that everyone had the same goals I did.  I thought that people came to work and wanted to not only do their best, but that they wanted to get promoted.  They wanted to make more money.  In other words, they wanted to ‘succeed.’

You see, I had grown up in sports all my life.  I really value competition and I never went into anything that I didn’t want to win at.   I wanted to be on the winning team.  Because of my sports background I thought that everybody was just as competitive as I was.  I thought that the only reason you played games was to win.   I didn’t think you played them just to be entertained.

You didn’t go to work, therefore, to just get a paycheck.  You were going because you wanted to win. You wanted to be the very best you could be and so, at least initially, I made everything a competition with my team members, and they didn’t have those same goals.   They didn’t have that same level of competition in their own behavior and they basically thought I was a nut.  They wondered why anyone would want to do something like that.   But that was the furthest thing from my thought.    We all wanted to win and succeed at the same level was obvious to me.

Well, big problem.   My team began to show me that maybe that wasn’t the right way to look at it.  In addition to that, I was also assuming that everybody had the same level of commitment to their career that I did.  I was willing to go in early and to stay late.   I was willing to invest in myself.   I was willing to learn on my own time and I thought everybody was doing that.  As a matter of fact, I got every leadership and business book I could find and I started studying and learning.   It was very common for me to work until midnight every night.   I didn’t think there was anything unusual about that because I was competing and wanted to get better.   I wanted to win.  If you wanted to win you had to do those types of things.

I would discuss with my team members and ask questions about, “What are you studying?  What are you working on?” being totally clueless to the fact that many just didn’t care that much.  They were there to get a paycheck.  They were there to win, but their definition was different than mine.

The third thing I assumed was that everybody was as ambitious as I was.   I know better today, but back then I didn’t.  I thought we were all in the same race.  I thought we were all as ambitious and in the same competition.   The problem with that type of thinking is that you’re imposing your thoughts – the thoughts that motivate you and make you want to go forward – on other people.   Others may not understand your actions and words.  They don’t understand what in the world you’re talking about.  Their attitude may be, “Well, what a minute.  You pay me to work until 5:00.  I don’t mind if I go to 5:00 or 5:15 maybe, but you want to work until 7:00?  I’m sorry, are you paying me for that?”

I was assuming they were willing to do whatever it took to get their work done, to win for our customers, our company and ourselves so that we could move ahead.   With this type of thinking I was making assumptions — you think the way I do, you have the same goals, and you have the same commitment.  That type of thinking was causing problems because it didn’t connect with other people, and I didn’t understand that.

I kept thinking I wasn’t saying it well and that my communication needed to improve.  I would try different ways of saying the same thing and continued to get rejected over and over again.   I can look back at it and laugh today because it seems so obvious, but it did not seem obvious to me at all when I was going through it.

I learned to never make assumptions that your standards are the same as the people working with and for you.  That was a big, big ah-ha moment for me and maybe it is for you, too.

But there’s another reason why you want to watch out for holding people to your personal standards.  This one could cause you even more problems than what I was having.  That reason is that you’re personal standards could be in conflict with the published policies of the company.

Recently I was talking with a leader that had observed some employees doing things in his business that he didn’t think they should be doing.  He thought they were wasting time.   They weren’t doing the things that he would do, and he was basically assuming they were doing it to skirt the rules and tick him off.  Because he was trying to be a laid back manager, he didn’t come in as much as some managers would.   This man was one of the key owners of the business.  He sees this activity and he is livid.

His response was to address the entire company, read everybody the riot act and tell them this is unacceptable behavior.   I immediately thought, “Wow, Steve, that sounds a lot like you, doesn’t it?”   That’s exactly what I would have done years before.

We have written rules, processes and HR standards for a reason.  We do it to hold people accountable to reasonable expectations of the business, but you don’t write everything down.  You can’t, it’s impossible.    You’re trying to set some parameters, guidelines, and boundaries that say, “This is acceptable and appropriate,” but the closer you get to the edge, the more gray it is.  Some things will be covered, some things might not be.

But here I was watching myself all over again holding people to a standard that, frankly, they didn’t even know existed.  They didn’t know that their boss – that I was observing – didn’t like that behavior.  It wasn’t clear.  There wasn’t anything in writing that said not to do that.   So what happens when we’re holding people to unwritten standards?

We’re measuring it against our own, personal standard and we’re thinking that a person with any kind of logic, any kind of natural discernment, could tell that this is one of those things that – maybe it wasn’t written down – but, you don’t do it.

Whenever that comes up, the right way to handle it is not to read everybody the riot act.  It’s to discover what caused those who you observed to do what they did, and to determine whether or not that requires a change in policy.   Was it one of those things that happened, it’s coincidental, and you decide to let it go thinking you don’t need a rule because it’s not a major problem?  I keep going back to: how are they supposed to know?  They cannot read your mind anymore than you can read their mind, so it requires some interaction between you and your people to understand what’s going on.

Here’s the real danger that this type of thinking will get if you’re not careful.  When you hold people to your personal standards instead of those that are written, measurable and that everybody’s agreed to buy into, by your actions you begin to hold people to invisible standards.  By ‘invisible standards’ I mean they’re not written down.  They don’t know the standard until there’s a problem and then you make a big deal out of it.  Trust me, when you do that you are sowing the seeds of discontent.

When you sow the seeds of discontent you turn into a demotivating leader, and I assure you that your people and their results are going to deteriorate.   It won’t work the other way that logic is telling you.  Your brain is saying, “If I make a big deal out of this and I correct them, they’re going to learn and they’re going to be better.”  In reality, the opposite happens.

The employees think, “Oh my gosh, what kind of nut am I working for that believes that I can be held to a standard that I didn’t even know existed.  I was never warned and now I’m being disciplined about something that no one could have known!”

That can begin the process of employees becoming demotivated starting to wonder if they should be working for a company and boss who are inconsistent.  Is this a good place for them to invest their career?  Maybe they should think about going to work for a leader who has clear standards.   I can assure you that after a couple of those types of circumstances their resume is going to get dusted off and they’re going to start looking for another job.

So much turnover in companies comes from managers and leaders that are holding people to invisible standards and thinking that everybody should have known. They’re making the very mistake that I’m talking about. They’re holding people accountable to standards that are not clear.

The human brain loves clarity. We love to clearly see where we’re going to go and what we need to do. That’s when we work our best. When we have clear directions it makes it so much easier to get things done.

Think about it.  The reason so many people love the turn-by-turn navigation is because it clearly states, “Get in the far right lane. Turn right in ½ mile.”  What are they taking advantage of?  They’re taking advantage of the fact that we need to have advanced notice in order to drive safely.   What they’re also doing is giving the brain time to make the adjustments necessary to turn in the right lane and get to where you need to go.

As a matter of fact, it has been clearly shown that we love turn-by-turn so much that when the instructions are very clear people have been known to follow the instructions and turn where roads didn’t even exist.  In other words, their brain quit working independently.  You see, we need clarity.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you are so clear that you take your people off of the road.  What I am saying is that you need to be so clear that there’s never a surprise. You don’t want surprises for your people. You want them to be absolutely engaged and clear about where you’re going and what needs to be done in order to get there.

So the next time you immediately react and want to reprimand someone, think about whether they really should have known.   I hope you’ll remember this discussion, because holding your people accountable to standards that exist only in your brain is not only a big mistake, it’s a career killer.  I certainly don’t want that to happen to you, my Mojo listeners.

Thank you so very much and have a great day! I hope this podcast will encourage you to think before surprising your employees with your personal standards.

 

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