You Have Expectations for Your Employees. What Can They Expect From You?

Businesses are usually very clear about what they need from employees. The reverse deserves just as much thought.

Show up.

Meet the deadline.

Communicate.

Take ownership.

Hit your numbers.

Follow the process.

Be adaptable.

Most businesses have no problem articulating what they expect from the people they employ.

We put expectations into job descriptions, employee handbooks, onboarding materials, performance reviews, KPIs, meetings, policies, and conversations with managers.

That makes sense. People need to know what good performance looks like.

But there is another side of that relationship that businesses do not always define with the same level of intention.

What should your employees be able to expect from you?

They should know what success looks like before being told they have fallen short of it.

They should have access to the information and resources reasonably necessary to do the job they were hired to do.

They should know who can make decisions and what decisions they are trusted to make themselves.

They should receive feedback while there is still an opportunity to do something with it.

They should be able to raise a problem without every problem automatically being interpreted as resistance.

And when priorities change, they should be told that the priorities changed.

None of this eliminates employee accountability.

Someone can have a clear role, adequate resources, a supportive manager, functional processes, and still perform poorly.

That happens.

But the opposite happens too.

A capable person can struggle inside an environment with conflicting priorities, unclear ownership, missing information, constant changes, or expectations that exist primarily inside a leader’s head.

That distinction matters.

When something is not working, the easiest conclusion is often that the person needs to improve.

Sometimes they do.

Sometimes the business does.

Accountability works better when it moves in both directions.

If we are going to ask people to communicate clearly, leadership should communicate clearly.

If we expect employees to take ownership, they need enough authority to own something.

If adaptability is expected from the team, leadership needs to recognize what repeated changes require from the people implementing them.

And if employees are expected to learn from mistakes, that standard should not disappear as you move higher on the organizational chart.

Your employees should know what you expect from them.

They should also have a reasonable answer when someone asks:

What can I expect from this company?