Episode 265 | Author: Emilie Aries

Today’s blog is inspired by a great question that came in from Jennifer in the Bossed Up Courage Community. She said:

“Next Monday, I start a new job and my first-ever marketing position. I’ll be a Public Relations and Marketing Analyst. I’m excited and slightly nervous. Can anyone tell me the best questions to ask the team in my first couple of days? What answers do you think I need to know to be successful? Any suggestions for 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day goals to set?”

Now, I’ve shared some tips here in the past on Ep 165: How to Make a Strong First Impression at a New Job which really speaks directly to Jennifer’s question.

Today I want to take this question and look at it from the manager's perspective, too.

How can we as leaders and people managers make the onboarding process - or really make managing people, as clear as possible?

Tasks and Standards

The first concept I want to introduce is what's known as “tasks and standards,” and it actually stems from a principle and way of working that the Army popularized, but I was introduced to this management concept from Manny Cosme who is the founder of CFO Services Group.

Manny introduced me to this concept of management around clarifying everyone's expectations by taking a job description and breaking it completely down into a series of tasks - what tasks you expect this person to do on a regular basis, and standards - to what standard will that task need to be performed in order for it to be performed at an acceptable and appreciated level.

I've got simple tasks and standard spreadsheet tabs for each of my direct reports that takes their role and breaks it down into detailed specific actions and how they should be taken in order for us to be happy with each other.

Now, I think a lot of leaders struggle because this could feel like micromanagement, but I would argue that more often than not, most people really appreciate the clarity and the transparency around exactly how performance is being measured.

The goal here is to take subjectivity out of it. Avoid using sentiment like, “You're such a hard worker” or “You're such a devoted person,” which is great feedback to hear, but it's unclear as to what that actually means. Instead, every time we look at this task, in customer service, for example, and say “When you handled this customer request, you showed your excellence in customer service.” The level of detail that you use in your tasks and standard spreadsheet depends on the employee.

Some employees thrive in more autonomous roles and are much more comfortable in ambiguity, but I would venture to guess that the vast majority of people don't do well with ambiguity. The vast majority of people want to know exactly what matters to their boss and how they can deliver on it.

Otherwise, what happens all the time is that bosses have unspoken, never articulated expectations that are constantly shifting and changing, and then our teams are busy trying to please the company, or trying to please their supervisor and trying to please themselves and running around with different priorities because the leaders have never expressed how the priorities have shifted or where our attention needs to focus now, or why.

Ready to refine your leadership skills?

Meet Regularly to Review Tasks & Standards Together

I try to meet every two weeks, but at least every 4 weeks for just a half an hour to walk through tasks and standards with each of my direct reports and say, for instance, “Last week, you went above and beyond in how you executed this campaign for HIRED and the fact that we sold out two months in advance is a testament to how well you organized this partnership.”

Whatever it is, giving them concrete feedback based upon the already agreed-upon standards. The tasks and standards spreadsheet that I use is a living document, so often I will go through tasks and standards in bi-weekly meetings and it's not just the time for feedback, it is a time for assessment.

Does it still make sense for us to expect a quarter of your time to be spent on a task that is no longer applicable to your role? If it doesn't, that creates an opportunity for conversation around how the role shifts.

Remember: Clear Is Kind

Scope creep happens. Roles shift. Priorities change. So have the conversation with the people you manage directly and explicitly, or a whole bunch of other assumptions will be made. We take our finger off the pulse as leaders far too easily. We've got to stay engaged and I'll be honest, this is a work-in-progress for me and I think every leader I know.

We get really distracted in our own pursuit of either creative undertakings or what I think of as “technician work.” We have to remember that managing people is a technical skill in its own, right? It requires resisting what Michael Gerber who wrote the The E-Myth Revisited would call “leadership by abdication” or “delegation by abdication,” which in the pursuit of not being a micromanager. I know a lot of leaders who are ambiguous, then get frustrated that their direct reports aren't totally understanding exactly what they need to do to have a successful outcomes. We need to be specific.

So this is especially important for women leaders because women are always taught not to nag. The word “nag” doesn’t even come up to describe a man asking someone to do something. I find this overcorrection happening where women don't want to be seen as bitchy bosses. So we over correct, and we almost ask permission of our team like, “Does that work for you?” “Is that okay?” We need to take a little bit of responsibility here and be a leader and say, “Alright, this role is really important here is how this labor leads to our collective benefit. So here's exactly what I need to do. Here's when I need it done by. Any questions? Let’s talk it over. Let's do this together. We’re on the same team.”

I refer often to Brené Brown’s quote from Dare to Lead, “Clear is kind.” Clear is actually kind. Being clear with people, while it feels difficult, it's actually extremely charitable to be explicit about your expectations. So for all of my leaders out there, we need to do more to make it easier for the Jennifers of the worlds who are starting their new positions to know exactly what's expected of them.

And I've learned so much about this in my own execution of leadership - in my practice of leadership over the past year, that it's kind of amazing when you devote yourself to setting crystal clear expectations for your team members, holding ourselves and others to those expectations in a consistent way, and removing the subjectivity from our management style and from our promotions and raises and evaluations, so that we can try to really create a clear pathway for people to seek out the kind of progress we all want in our careers.