In the introduction, I asserted that management is the engine that drives organizational results. Let that idea sink in for a moment, because it’s heavy. As a manager, you are an engine—you power forward movement. Your company has handed you a piece of the business, and your job is to help that department, division, location, or operating group manifest its goals. Your prime directive is to make good things happen. Whoa! Cool! Yikes! This is a significant burden and privilege, and I encourage you to feel the weight of it. Your work is important.

So how should you go about approaching your role as the engine for a part of the business? How do you make sure your efforts yield the best results? This book answers these questions beginning with step 1, which will help you see the big picture of your management assignment.

Clarify Behavior Expectations

Let’s stipulate that many well-meaning, hard-working, talented managers stink at communicating and clarifying expectations. Your boss, your boss’s boss, my former bosses, all of us. Why? Because people are busy, because their boss hasn’t done it, because they’ve never thought about expectations beyond basic job duties. But here’s the thing. Even if your well-meaning, hard-working, talented, and otherwise awesome boss stinks at sharing their behavioral expectations, you need to seek clarity.

You need to seek clarity.

You want to know—really know—the behavioral expectations that your manager, peers, and team members have of you. How can you be an effective engine for a piece of the business if you don’t? How can you make good things happen if you don’t know how “good management” is defined? Sadly, most managers don’t know how they’re supposed to act. Especially not to the depth and degree that they need in order to be optimally successful. So that’s why we will start our exploration of management here.

Behavior expectation conversations often occur only after something goes wrong and in conjunction with performance counseling. Perhaps you ruffled feathers, had a public meltdown, failed to be accountable, chased staff members away, or treated someone unfairly. These corrective conversations are important but not what we are talking about in this managerial step.

You need to know much more and before concerns arise. You want to know the type of work environment you should be cultivating. You want to know your part in leading and enabling change. You want to know your manager’s expectations regarding creativity and innovation. You want to know the organization’s professionalism standards in detail because there are always differences from company to company. You want to know what your manager expects in terms of employee engagement, accountability, and development. You want to know what your peers want from you as a partner and colleague. You want to know the type of manager your team members hope you’ll be. And you want to know so much more.

OK, Lisa, I get it. I want to know about the many types of behavior expectations. How do I do this?

Answer: You ask. You ask your manager, peers, and employees specific questions that yield specific and helpful answers. Tool 1-1 offers a meaty list of questions that you can use to clarify behavior expectations. I recommend setting aside 60 minutes per meeting for the first round of conversations, and then allowing 20 to 30 minutes to update expectations. Try doing the following:

• Have a one-on-one conversation with your manager.

• Gather several of your peers together and ask them questions. (This makes for a very interesting conversation because while you’ll clarify the behavior expectations they have of you, you’ll also get to reinforce your expectations of them.)

• Ask your employees, first in a group meeting and then one-on-one as part of your regular conversations. If team members seem uncomfortable sharing their ideas in front of you, break them into smaller groups and then allow them to report out their group’s input.

This might sound like a lot of meetings, but you only have to do it occasionally. Use Tool 1-1 as a starting point for the conversation and add your own questions. And here’s an idea: Some of these questions can be tried at home! So while you are at it, use portions of this tool to generate a great discussion with your spouse or significant other. OK, maybe you don’t want to know that….

The questions listed in Tool 1-1 are great, right? I realize it might seem a bit overwhelming, but you can select and adjust the questions based on who you’re meeting with and where you need clarity. It’s worth the effort to do this—I promise. Clarify behavior expectations annually, or twice a year if your job or focus changes. In addition, don’t miss the chance to calibrate your understanding of behavior expectations throughout the year. Things change and memories fail. Take advantage of opportunities to clarify individual expectations when discussing specific projects, goals, or new departmental challenges. Take a look at Tool 1-2 for some common behavior expectations for managers.

Are you high or on drugs? I imagine this might be the question that comes to mind after you collect and consider everyone’s behavior expectations. You can’t stuff 200 pounds into a 100-pound bag (but we try, don’t we?). And remember, this initial inquiry does not include project-specific operational goals or work products. Even so, this first pass often yields a significant amount of input and too many daunting behavior expectations to count.

So, here’s one more expectation. It’s your job to negotiate behavior expectations so that you can be successful. Sometimes you don’t have the time, resources, or skills to achieve it all and sometimes you need to get a better understanding of what the expectations mean. Here is a common expectation:

Sounds good, but what does this mean and look like in action? Who knows? It’s important to discuss and understand. When I was a manager, I did a behavior expectations tune-up quarterly and then made sure that actions and words were clarified and aligned. Doing that was important to me because I wanted to stay focused on what most mattered.

Clarifying behavior expectations will help you understand what others hope you will do as you manage your piece of the business. This is a critical part of knowing your business and setting yourself up for success. It is also important that you know how great work is defined for the operational aspects of your work.

Define Operational Excellence

Let’s take our understanding of job expectations to the next level—to the hitting it out of the park level. Good performance is getting it done, but excellence is hitting a grand-slam home run, as in baseball. The grand-slam home run (which yields the maximum of four runs) makes the most out of the team’s efforts and has an added benefit of creating a feeling of success—elation!—throughout the organization.

I like using this metaphor for excellent operational results because everything we do ought to have a positive and additive effect on our teams, peers, and the organization. If you are going to do something, make it a grand slam!

Sounds nice, but let’s put this metaphor into action. Start by listing all your key projects, initiatives, and core business processes. If you are an accounting manager, for example, purchase orders might be a core process. For each item, define your current metrics or performance measures. Next, meet with your manager. Review what you’ve recorded so far and then make the following request:

How does that sound? Here’s the example you can share with your manager, which deals with a project to implement the new accounting system within budget by August 1. A grand-slam home run might be to:

• Complete the implementation by July 15, before the busy season.

• Involve the accounting team such that ownership and acceptance is high.

• Implement the project while improving accountant computer skills so they can better use the new system’s features.

• Develop robust contingency plans to cover any potential project setbacks.

• Reduce the costs spent on the project by harnessing the creativity of the group to find the best way to transition to the new system.

There’s getting a project done and then there’s managing a project such that many other aspects of the work are improved as well. That’s excellence. As a driven and talented manager, you want to know how your manager defines excellence. Actually, you’ll need to know because you need to be able to define excellence for your team, as we’ll see in step 3.

You might be thinking that talking about excellence will set you up for failure because the boss will then expect nothing but grand slams from you and your team. It’s true that openly discussing grand slams does change things—for you and your boss—but this is a good thing. Your conversations will become more useful, important, and motivational. And you’ll develop a stronger business relationship as you go beyond dinking around along the surface of performance conversations. My goal with this step is to help set you and your team up to succeed at a level you’ve not previously imagined. If you don’t identify what a grand slam looks like, what do you think the chances will be that you’ll know to focus on each of these desired outcomes? You might know or guess some of them, but not all. We get what we focus on.

If you include the behavioral expectations discussion at your next one-on-one with your manager, discuss operational excellence at the one after that. Or you can book one longer meeting to do both if that works better for you and your manager. You can call it planning for success or something like that. Example 1-1 shows you how you might set up the information for the grand-slam discussion with your manager.

What a cool and helpful process! Once you have typed up your operational goals with grand-slam home run performance indicators, share it again with your manager to confirm that you interpreted their input correctly and get agreement on your top priorities. Hold the spreadsheet in your hand and breathe a sigh of relief—many managers haven’t a clue what they are supposed to do, but now you do! It feels great to understand, in depth, the results that you should produce for the organization. And it’s satisfying to know how your manager defines excellence. I love clarity, don’t you? Use your spreadsheet as a discussion guide during regular one-on-ones with your manager and for the weekly planning you do with peers and your team and employees (you do both of those things, right?).

One caveat about all this clarity, though—things change. You’ll want to update your chart monthly or as needed. It is important that it always contains the current version of grand-slam home runs and what’s most important.

Using this process to define extraordinary results will put some additional pressure on you (and therefore your team) to perform at a higher level—but it’s all good. Would you like to know that you need to climb to the summit of Mount Rainier or would you prefer to remain oblivious to that expectation and fool around in the foothills all year long? If you know the summit is your target, you’ll prepare, train, and approach the mountain ready for the long journey. Here’s an important point—whether you have the grand-slam conversation with your manager or not, the grand slam is already in their mind. Your manager wants excellence. If you don’t take the time to define grand slams, you’ll miss out on an opportunity to align with their hopes for you and your department.

Once you clarify behavior expectations and operational excellence, you’ll want to ensure that your managerial practices support your success. Time is precious! But how do you know if what you’re doing will lead to the results you seek?

Measure Your Managerial Effectiveness

You manager just stopped by your workspace. After some pleasant banter, she mentions that she’d like you to update her on how things are going at your next one-on-one. Specifically, she’s interested in your managerial efforts and how she can best support you. The one-on-one is in two days. Do you know what you’re going to say? Or will you be burning the midnight oil for the next two days to prepare?

You might be thinking that your boss does not sound like this example and would never make a request or offer like this. So, this is a moot point. You don’t need to prepare for a meeting that will never happen! Right?

Wrong.

While your manager might not specifically ask for it, they want to know how things are going for you—as a manager—and how they can best help. And you want to know, because you want your time and effort to yield the best outcomes.

At any given moment, you should be able to self-assess your performance relative to behavior expectations and grand-slam goals. I’ll admit that measuring managerial behaviors is less straightforward than keeping your operational goals chart up to date. But here’s the thing: Management is visible—what you do is observable and can be measured. Here’s an example using one of the behavior expectations for all managers that I suggested earlier in the chapter:

Are you delivering on this expectation? Here are a few ideas for how you might self-assess your performance:

• Assess your meeting agendas and determine the percentage of time you spend seeking and listening to concerns, ideas, and input from others.

• Record and acknowledge ideas from others that you have implemented.

• Make it a habit to send thank you emails or notes to others when they offer ideas. Reflect on how often you thank others each month.

• Measure your follow-through of concerns from the time each concern is communicated until it has been addressed or resolved.

• Ask employees and peers for feedback on your responsiveness to their concerns and ideas.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re worried that if you measure your performance against every expectation, you’ll not have any time to manage. This is a valid concern, and doubly so if you’re the type of person drawn to data analytics and more likely to go down the measurement rabbit hole. I don’t want you to become an absentee manager because you are in your office check-sheeting your meeting minutes.

But here’s the bottom line. Select and use metrics that will illuminate how you’re doing on your top priorities. Be choosey. If you want to be a stronger role model, focus on metrics that help you understand your impact on others. If creating a more collaborative work environment is an important behavioral goal, then make sure you have good metrics that tell you how you’re doing.

Be careful, however, that you measure the right indicators. For example, if you want to increase collaboration, don’t measure the number of meetings you schedule and hold (this is almost always a terrible measure); instead, assess what’s happening when people work together in meetings and other business discussions.

Step 1 is called Know Your Business because management is your business. You are the engine hired to power a part of the organization. To be a successful manager, you need to know what’s expected of you and how your boss and other key stakeholders define excellence.

Building ACCEL Skills

The management techniques we’ve explored in step 1 will help you build the following ACCEL skills:

• Accountability. Step 1 emphasizes personal accountability by helping you develop skills to define what you need to do to be successful. When you understand what you need to accomplish and own, it will be easier for you to create an accountability culture for your team.

• Communication. If you practice clarifying expectations and excellence, you will build important communication skills that help you improve focus, manage team performance, and negotiate with peers.

• Listening and assessing. Step 1 focuses a lot on having conversations that will help you understand the piece of the business that you’ve been asked to manage. You will find that the more you practice these conversations, the better you will be able to listen deeply and assess the meaning of what you hear.

Your Turn

It can be a bit intimidating if you’ve never asked questions about expectations or grand-slam home runs before. To get started, try these methods:

• Find a mentor with whom you can discuss and practice your approach. If you verbalize the questions ahead of time, you can tweak your list and get more comfortable with them.

• Ask a peer to practice with you and offer to do the same for them. That way, you will both benefit and be more prepared.

• Prepare talking points that help provide context about why you are asking these questions. It is important that your boss knows that you want to know their expectations because you are interested in succeeding, not because you wish to complain about them.

The Next Step

Knowing your business provides an important foundation from which you can manage. Once you understand what—in the broadest sense—you are being asked to do, you can explore the best ways to make it all happen. Remember, managers make thing happen! In step 2, you’ll learn about the most important and profound managerial characteristics you should cultivate to be a successful manager.