The Smart Way to Align Employee Expectations with Business Goals

I don't know about all of you, but I'm perfect. And, yeah, see, that's the look that I was going for on your face. And every one of us, as business owners, expects every single one of our employees to be perfect. Don't you?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. They're all perfect.

Yes.

Just like me. They are perfect. And if you saw this on YouTube and you saw the look on Chrissy's face, you know that. Maybe not.

No, never.

So we should maybe talk about those expectations you have for not only yourself, but your employees.

Yes, let's do that.

Sounds good. Stay tuned. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's broken, you need the business fix. So for those of you that don't know, I normally like Chrissy, and I kind of. We spent some time thinking about the introduction, and I just told her, josh has a hook because we needed that absolute raw reaction from you. And I feel like that was. That was pretty classic as you waxed.

Poetic about your perfection. Yes, it was good.

Yeah. And it was. As we said there a second ago, it was amazing, because I was hoping when I said, I'm perfect, you didn't say, I'm leaving, and just walk right out the door. Like, I. I'm out. I'm done. This is crazy. Speaking of crazy, what's crazy going on in life right now? Is there anything good? Is there anything bad? Is there just general craziness like you always have?

I mean, I think it's general craziness, but I think, like most parents of children in high school and junior high, we're at towards the end of the school year, which is like, let's shove everything into the last four weeks, plus Mother's Day, plus, you know, prom, plus if you have kids that are graduating. I mean, ours aren't, but it was like, oh, we moved the choir concert. You've had the same date for a year, and you moved it the week before. So we're in that phase. Final exams, final projects, the I don't want to do homework anymore phase, all the fun things.

This is why I. I mean, with the podcast class that I teach, we often wonder if they will keep me on in many cases, because I am. I am. I'm loved as an instructor.

Mm.

But as you know, in education, things that people are like, oh, we're gonna move this last chance, and I'm like, no, you're not.

Yeah.

And I am not always the most flexible person when it comes to stuff like that.

I'm not either.

So, yeah, they. We. We often wonder when they're like, yeah, maybe not. So there's just that end of your craziness.

Yeah, it's just under your craziness. How about for you?

Thankfully, I do not have end of your craziness. As the weather gets nice, I am hoping to escape into the realm that is my motorcycle. And the nice thing is, I was just telling someone about this the other day when I put my helmet on and put the shield down. I feel like it's private in there. It's not.

No, it's not.

It's not private at all. But I'm like, I'm in my own little world. I am isolated from everything else in the world. It's quiet. I wear earplugs and then put the helmet on, and I'm like, the world just went away.

Ah.

So maybe you should try. I think the kids may look at you funny if you start wearing a helmet in the house.

Helmet in the house and earplugs. I already wear headphones half the time because I don't want to listen to them bicker with each other over homework. But, you know, it's fun.

Speaking of homework.

Yes.

The teachers have an expectation.

Yes.

Wasn't that a great segue?

Oh, that was a good segue.

Teachers have the expectation that your children will do their homework.

Yes, they do. Doesn't always happen, but, you know, for life. Right.

So, I mean, that's an expectation that, I mean, we've all been through. The teacher says this is due on Friday. Yes. Expectations, to me, in business are a common pitfall that just. I mean, we say do the thing, and the thing that we thought was going to get done doesn't get done, because the thing that we thought wasn't the thing that they thought.

Yes.

And so I want to kind of talk about, like, setting up that win. Win for both. Both employers and employees, because there is a way for everyone to win at this.

Absolutely.

There's also a saying that I had heard recently that unspoken expectations are future regrets.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah. When I heard that, I was like, oh, I mean, that's business. That's personal. That's a whole bunch of. I mean, fits in a whole bunch of areas.

Yes.

From an HR perspective, what are some of the big mistakes? I mean, granted, we're trying to keep this, like, 40, 45 minutes.

Yeah.

So let's stick. What are some of the top big mistakes that you see right off the bat that people make with expectations?

So I would say the first thing that we Always have. I mean, it happens in our organization, it happens in other organizations. Is the first conversation usually with someone is, well, I didn't know that was expected of me. And I can't tell you, Josh, how many times I've heard that exact sentence from incredibly capable people. So, I mean, like, sticks out. I have a team member who consistently underperformed in one area, turned out that she thought she was doing exactly what was expected of her. So I never clearly laid out the priority. So one of the things on expectations is especially for the business owner or if you're a manager, sometimes it lives in your head and you think you've told people, or you may have told them once, but in passing, in passing.

You told them as you're on your way out the door, maybe told you.

Yep, two or three times. But the studies show that it takes 10 times for someone to truly understand and grasp it. So when you're like, oh, I've explained this to you six times. Well, good, good job. You've got four more to go before you can really be mad at them. I mean, but when you clarify expectations, I mean, this example that we have with this person was like, once we explain this is what you're supposed to do, her performance soared. So, I mean, that's something that is common, is we, we don't explain things or we just assume that they should know. That's the second biggest one. Not explaining it is number one. And number two is just assuming. Oh, and you know what assuming does?

I believe I know that one. We'll wait till we get a little deeper in the episode for me to say it. So that way, YouTube doesn't ding us or anything like that. What's interesting about that is, is the other thing that I want to kind of dive into is like, you've got a Rockstar employee.

Yeah.

Everyone's like, oh, my God, this person's amazing. So I am going to give them.

All the things to do and make them a manager. Right?

Yeah, right. But, like, do you ever see companies take Rockstar employees and just like, hey, I am going to burn this person. Person to the ground because once again, they're my best employees. So I'm going to make them do everything while the low performer. I'm not going to give them anything because I, I realize my expectation for them is they're going to give me garbage. So I don't, I won't make them do anything. But here, my, my star employee, I'm going to give them all the things, not realizing that they may Burn out on that.

They may, they may get frustrated. But nothing will kill your organization faster than a toxic employee that you don't do anything about. So that person that isn't performing, oh well, it's okay, we'll just shove them in the corner. But they're getting paid to be shoved in the corner and that other person is working their fingers to the bone trying to get everything done. They're staying late. They're not necessarily. I mean, depending on what your compensation structure is, they may not feel like they're being compensated for their work. So they get burnt out, they get angry, they get bitter, and then they leave. And to replace the good employee, that's a bigger challenge for an organization as opposed to, I mean, exiting a non performer is usually a non starter. It's not a big deal. It's like a big deal.

It's a relief.

Yeah, it is like, it's okay.

Oh, got rid of the boat anchor. Great.

Absolutely. But I mean, we have talked about too about setting expectations, it's really about alignment. So if your expectations aren't rooted in your company's goals and their values, they're not going to stick. So being aligned is really important. And making sure that everyone on your bus is aligned and understands what the goals and values are, it's really important. So connecting people to the mission, why does this job exist? Why am I doing this? If they can understand that it's a lot easier to set expectations, then co creating clarity, writing it down, giving good job descriptions, performance goals, onboarding guides, the things that just make things clear for those of us who just want you to mind read, put it in an SOP so they can read it over and over and over again. And then you make communication. Two ways you set expectations, but it's not one and done. It's a constant dialogue. So you can't just say, well, I told you to do the thing, go do the thing. You got to say, hey, I told you to do the thing. How's the thing going?

It's interesting you say that because you go back to that culture piece.

Yes.

And to me, these are things that are, I guess I would say symbiotic. If you have a good culture, you. You will be setting good expectations. If you set good expectations, you will have a pretty good culture. This is a circular thing. If one of those things gets off track.

It derails quickly. You've got to pay attention to both things. And part of it too is professional development for yourself and for your team. Because part of communication and setting Expectations is also continuing to grow because if you don't, if you stay stagnant, you're going to hit a roadblock eventually too.

100%. So like when you said, I mean, I. We talk about SOPs, and I think ours, the way we do them, are probably slightly differently. When you're setting standard operating procedures for your employees, what does that look like for you? I mean, is that a list of checkboxes? Is that a here's the goal and just get there however the heck you want to like, which form do you kind of take with those?

We do both because it depends on the employee and it depends on the role. So I mean, some of those higher level management roles, they don't necessarily need a checklist for. I need you to get your employees motivated. I need you to figure out how to. Like, there's certain things that you're not going to have a checklist for how to do that. But then when we're talking about regulatory things, when we're talking about enrollments that we have to do for insurance or onboarding procedures that we're doing for a new employee or for setting marketing, here are the things that have to happen. When we're working through marketing and through a Facebook post or through a LinkedIn post, did we do all of the things? Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. If we didn't, did we go to the checklist? No, I didn't. So if it's something that's repetitive, something that has a lot of compliance around it, I think it really just makes sense to have some type of standard operating procedure, whether it's written or it's video. I think we use both. Again.

Really? Video for sops?

Yeah. So we'll use loom and then it's documented. If you're doing something on the computer, especially when people need to see mouse clicks, this is what I'm doing. This is how I'm doing it. We do that too. In the finance piece, when we're looking at how do we categorize different entries within our QuickBooks and trying to figure out, I mean, there's a lot of different things that we can nerd out. On the documentation side, it's so funny.

To me because I do some video production just a little bit. Yeah. And the fact that I do not have LOOM as a way that we do standard operating procedures that we have not used video.

Yeah.

In our SOPs is interesting to me. And I mean, I'm starting to go through thinking about why, because, okay, most of the videos we do are like these big polished productions. Yeah, I find it hard to do a loom where I'm like, just click here, click here, click here and then stutter. No, I get you can do that for those SOPs. We don't think about that though. That is a super interesting way to be able to do that.

Well, and some of it too is if you are, you're not in a place yet where you want to hire an assistant, but you know you're going to, but you're going to say we talked about it. I think with leadership, I don't have time to train people. You do have time to train people. It's called turn, click, click the button for loom. Start doing the thing and talking while you're doing it and they can watch. And so then it's saved, you've got it archived. So I started doing some of those things before I even hired an assistant to work with because it was like I needed to be able to document. The other part is if you have employees or if your organization is sustainable beyond you. This is also part of, you know, disaster planning. This is part of succession planning. So if something happens and someone's like, I don't know how to do this. Like we have, we have a locked. Part of our SOP is this is. These are the things that if something happens to Chrissy, we need to make sure we know how to do. This is how we access the banking. This is how we access. This is how we transfer money. Like those things that are uniquely business owner, that if you don't have a partner or you don't have an employee, but even your spouse or your life partner, it could be much easier for them. So that if something does happen, it makes it easier to kind of transition.

That is interesting. That's very interesting because most of ours are directly related to just daily operations. Yeah, that is a great piece to think about. And that's to me too. It's that expectation of thinking of some things that can happen and how do we need to handle those. And the expectation that too, if your employees know you have that built out, that, I mean to me that's, that is that back end structure that gives people confidence.

It is right.

We, we know that we can do this because even if shit goes really, really sideways. Yes, there is something in place for that.

Well, and it's setting that expectation too. It's the, the expectation that we are prepared and you do the same thing with your facilities. If you have a building or you have a piece of equipment you know, we're going to film this loom about this is how this works. Because there are also different types of learners. Some of us are visual, some of us are, I mean we're, we're reading, we're auditory reading, writing, kinesthetic. It just kind of depends. And so if you can create your SOPs in a format that enables different learning styles to absorb it, it may also save you some heartburn and headache.

What's interesting, because as soon as you said something happens with the building, all that I went back to was when the vehicle drove into your building and I can just imagine you instantly, the phone goes up, okay, guys, this is how we're going to handle the next time someone drives into our building. That is the, that that's interesting because the way I have always done it is we put stuff on paper, not on paper, we put it in a Google Docs document. For us, there's two reasons for that. A is when something goes sideways, there is an expectation. Like if my editor sends back we're missing a file, I can just go like, here's the expectations, not there. And she's typically like, oops, I'll get it right to you, no problem. There's been other times where stuff has gone sideways and we're like, oh, do we need to go back and change the procedure?

Yeah.

Or to, to adapt for this new thing? Or is this just a one off case where okay, something went sideways and let's just keep on trucking. But there's that expectation of what's there, what's to be delivered at the end of it. So we know exactly where we're headed with that, what happened. I mean the, the big thing that I see, what happens when expectations aren't set.

You have no one to blame but yourself.

I love that.

I really don't.

No, you don't. And I feel the same way if someone, if you did not set the proper expectation, even though you thought you did to me. And that's why I love when you said the loom or Google Docs or anything like that. You can go back and look and it is in writing, it is on a screen where you can say, look, I told you exactly where you needed to be.

And you can see how they access it too.

Correct.

Which makes it nice.

I told. I mean this is pretty clear. If this is not clear. And I mean the other thing that I like with that is too is when you take some of these sops and you show it to them up front. Are there any questions?

Yes.

If they say, no, I don't have any questions. And something gets messed up. Well, now you can go back to that and be like, you had no questions. Yes, but there's a question now. You can ask the question at any point throughout the project. It just went sideways. You turned it in, and we've got this pile of hot, steaming garbage here instead of the thing that we wanted. Why didn't we ask the questions?

Yeah.

So to me, it opens in a. It opens up that door for people to say, okay, well, this isn't clear enough to me.

Yes. I think it's really important, too, that whether you're a manager or whether you're working with. You're collaborating with a coworker, you need to stop assuming that silence means understanding. I think oftentimes we think if someone doesn't ask a question or because they nod in a meeting, or it means they get what you're saying or they get what you're asking. So someone's looking at you and they're nodding.

They just went out of the room.

They do. It's probably what it is. I mean, I've seen it over and over. I've done it. I mean, come on, we've all done it.

I've done it this week.

Yes. And I've also said, like, do you understand? Do you have any questions? And they're like, no, everything's fine. So I walk away thinking that they're clear. The team walks away confused. And. Because there was no opportunity to confirm or clarify. So instead of even saying, like, do you have any questions? I'm trying to change my verbiage and say, can you walk me through how you're planning to approach this? Oh, can you tell me how you're going to handle this? Because. And I'm really working on it, too, with my kids, because, I mean, I've got teenagers, so they don't say anything.

Yeah. Experiment on them before you get to the employees.

Exactly. And so it seems to be working well. But it flips. Flips it from a passive agreement to active understanding and active listening. Because then they have to tell you, okay, you told me that I need to call this client and I need to handle this issue. I'm going to handle this, and I'm going to call this client. I'm going to do it at this time. I'm going to make sure that I say these words, and this is what I want to make sure that I convey it makes it a little bit easier. That's where clarity comes in. Because then you've Got. You've got clarity in what your practice is going to be and what the end game is.

There's two pieces that I like about that, and there's one that I see as a bit of a trap is the piece that I love about it is that if that employee has an issue halfway through the project, you have an idea of where they were at, you have an idea of what they were doing. So somewhere you can say, look, I'm pretty sure they're here. Can you pick this up and run with this? You can say that to someone else. The trap with that. How do you keep that from sounding and. Or feeling like there's a word like micro, like micromanaging. Well, I wanted to use the office reference and be. I believe it's microgiment.

Microgymt. True.

Okay. So to me, it's how do you pivot it? Well, how do you make sure that when you say, hey, how are you going to do this? It's not, how are you going to get this done? I need every step because I don't trust you.

Yes.

How does it come across as, hey, I'm curious, how are you going to get this done? In a way of, I trust you to do this, but I'd like to be part of the process rather than, how are you going to get this done? Because I think you're an idiot.

Okay, so a couple ways you can do that. Instead of saying, I think you're the idiot, we're going to pivot back and say, because I can sometimes be the idiot. I am not always a good explainer of how to do things. Oftentimes it lives in my head. So I want to make sure that I've conveyed this to you. So you tell me how you're going to approach this so I can make sure I explained it to you the right way so we can make sure that, you know, you're supposed to be going to Chicago and not going to Phoenix. Like, let's get this exactly where it needs to be. So that's the first way I tend to use that, because if I can pivot it back to me, then it kind of evaporates Some of the issues that we have sometimes with. With role. Another thing that you can do is, you know, I. Do you understand? Tell me what you're going to do. Okay, that's great. When you get done with those first two steps, let's come back and let's talk about it. Make sure we're still on the same page, having that secondary conversation, kind of seeing where they are. Especially if you think they're going to get lost in steps three and four is really a good idea. And I think if you've got a, if you've got a complicated multi step process and especially a team member who hasn't maybe walked through that before, doing it alongside them, not doing it for them, or empowering them to work independently for those first few steps, come back, check in. Okay. Keep going back and forth. I mean, that's part of the training process. Part of the issue that we have with expectations is oftentimes poor training and we haven't been able to train people effectively. So if we do the training part, the expectations kind of follow pretty easily.

We'll need to do an episode on training, I think, because training is one of those things that we all, I mean you both and I have both seen far neglected. And it's typically because like when I was at the truck dealership, we would see it all the time. You're down an employee, so you get behind.

Yes.

So you get a new employee. Just get them in there, jump in. Right. Do it, just do it. They can be doing it wrong, they can be doing it outside of your procedures, but they're getting it done.

Yes.

And then in six months you're like, why the hell are you doing this wrong?

Yeah, there's a reason why Starbucks shut everybody down one year and one day they all had to make lattes the same way. They did a full retraining. So it does, it happens.

It, it just needs to happen the other, the other way that I have found that I, I approach that in a lot of cases too, in terms of the not micromanaging is to check in with someone at different steps and be like, hey, where are you at? And what do you need from me? Yeah, it's a great way to kind of say, hey, look, I want to help you get this done. If they say, hey, I want you to do it, then be like, no. But to me, when I say hey, when I show up honestly wanting to help and I've seen people do this poorly because I've seen people be like, hey, where are you at? And what do you need from me? And they're like, hey, I could really use help with this. Well, okay, well, we'll get to that later. Right? The eye roll with a fine. You have to earnestly want to help them.

Yes.

If you do, then they look at this as okay. They are, they are, they want to know where I'm at because they want to know how they can help. Not they want to know where I'm at so they can micro German the the hell out of me.

Yes, having a weekly meeting cadence can be really helpful in this. So whether you're training someone, whether they've been with the organization for a long time, you can say, you know, we're going to get together once a week. This is the agenda we're always going to talk about. We're going to have topics and then you can also check on those projects, how those things are moving. I'm not saying you have to do, don't wait a full week if it's something that's important. Oh, we're going to wait for our weekly meeting until you do the thing that you need to do tomorrow. And then I'll ask you if you did the thing and if you didn't, then we'll talk about. No, that's not how that works. But there are certain ways that you can go about this and make it move a little bit more seamlessly.

To me, I would love to hear from people on this if they thought Chrissy just went on a Josh style rant there. I think you kind of did there. You may want to seek help for that. I don't know if I'm concerned, contagious or if, if that's going to work that way. How do you make sure that on a consistent basis? I know you talked about the culture and I know you talked about making sure that people are aligned with the culture and the expectations. How do you ensure that on a day to day basis that people, I mean, first off, you hire for the culture. I get it, but how do you make sure that you're constantly kind of keeping those guardrails around people to like make sure like, hey, we're going down the right street here and not merge or veering off into traffic?

Yeah, I think part of managing and leadership is being present. So you can take time out of your business, but it's really important that you're checking in. Whether it is daily, weekly, and depending on who, who you're managing or where those expectations lie in your team, where the accountability is, you can be checking in if you're the CEO with your managers daily, weekly, and then they're checking in with the other employees that are kind of learning in the team members. But I think it's creating the cadence that works for your business. It's not the back burner stuff. Like these are the things that are important in Paramount first. So when you've got time with it, building that time in your schedule Intentionally of. Now we're going to check in. How are things working? How are things going? Management by walking around. Leadership by walking around. Sometimes it's just leadership by listening. Not even engaging with other people, just going and standing in a space and listening to what they're talking about. So you can say, okay, what do I need to do? How do I need to coach? Is there an issue? Because sometimes you'll just. By wandering around, Josh, you'll hear, oh, I think we have a client issue over here. Oh, I think we have this. So I'll make that note and then have a conversation separately. I'm not always going to jump in and be like, you have a client issue with this person. Sometimes I will. But it just kind of depends on the situation. And what you don't want to do is be that lovely micromanager that's always like, what's going on? What are you doing? You want it to be. You want to be helpful.

You don't want to be the lurker. No.

And you can be, but sometimes that gets awkward. And I think part of it, too, is just, you know, creating that clarity, writing it down, providing it in different ways, so communicating in different layers, whether it's written, whether it's verbal. However, you need to get your. Your employees where they are, because I think sometimes they consistently fail to meet expectations because we consistently fail to communicate effectively.

I was just going to ask that wonderful segue once again, is how do you make sure. I mean, we all talk in our language. I'm not telling everyone to go out and figure out, your employees love language. That is not it.

Do not do that. That's awkward. Right.

You. They will end up needing to call Clarity hr.

Correct.

When they do that, I'm assuming you guys have gotten that phone call before. Is that awkward?

Yeah.

Nonetheless, we all tend to speak how we need to hear things or from our basis of knowledge.

Yes.

As business owners, as managers, as whatever, we have a different knowledge than our employees do.

Yes.

How do you make sure you're talking on their level to set those expectations? Because otherwise, I mean, you may as well be speaking a foreign language. And I am not good with foreign languages. In high school, I was very close to taking two years of Spanish one.

Oh, nice. Okay. So I think part of it is, especially when you're hiring new people, if they're not. If they haven't been in your industry before. Glossary of common terms. Conversation of how things work is really important. I mean, we're an insurance and hr, but on the insurance Side we're like, okay, welcome to the insurance world. Do you know what deductible, coinsurance, max out of pocket, Ichra, hsa, hra. All those things are. No. All right, let's talk about those. Let's talk about how a deductible works. Let's talk about how coinsurance works. Let's talk about if someone has a health savings account. This is what we have to do for a maximum out of pocket, how that works for someone who's calling and got a question about how to access their doctor or a prescription. We have to give you kind of like Insurance Industry 101. Because if you understand the verbiage, then we can start moving into, okay, this is how you do the things, especially in customer service and sales support. When we are, I mean, selling insurance products, enrolling people in insurance products, understanding those things is really important and there's licensure that goes with it. But on the administrative support side, they don't have to be licensed to do that help work. And so helping them understand is really important. So I think having that base level of clarification in do you even understand what we do as an organization? And then moving further into, okay, this is how we make money as an organization, I think that's really important. It's that second level of understanding to set expectations. Because as CEO, I know that revenue is important. I know we have to make money. But to other individuals in the organization who are providing service to a client, they don't necessarily understand how we make money. So that's something that we're doing right now at AUI and Clarity is we're taking our employees through this training process of, you know, let's talk about what our budget looks like, what our profit and loss looks like. You need to understand how market manipulation and impact within the industry can impact your job and why it's important that everybody in the organization is customer focused and sales focused. Because oftentimes it's easy for people to go, I don't live in sales. I don't need to care about them. Oh, yes, you do. You need to care about sales.

You want sales to do well.

You want sales to do well. I don't care that they can sometimes be annoying and sometimes color outside the lines. You've got to talk to them because they're who bring the customers to you. And if you don't have salespeople that understand and that you appreciate, they're going to leave. So let's talk about how we can continue to grow as an organization. And we set expectations from customer service and sales support to agent to HR salespeople to HR consultants. So that way we know as an organization, how do we move down towards our success.

You have brought up a good point and once again, beautiful segue. We've talked about a lot of things with SOPs.

Yes.

Like, hey, here's the thing that needs done. Go from point A to point B.

Yes. Standard operating procedures. For those of you who are googling. What does an SOP say? I understand.

Don't. Don't do that while you're driving, please. Thank you for explaining that. As the operations guy, I just kind of assume that that's.

Oh, I speak insurance and people get annoyed at me all the time. Abbreviations.

With that being said, we're talking about going from point A to point B.

Yes.

What happens when point B is general? And the, the, the situation that I have in mind with that.

Yes.

You're talking about sales and customer service. If you just say, my expectation is that you make the client happy, people are going to give away your business.

Yes.

How do you set the expectation of what? Customer service or service or what sales or what? Some more of these fuzzy areas, even somewhat HR at times. How do you set the expectation to get consistent results out of that? Because obviously, I mean, you can't just say the customer's always right because there are times where the customer very much is not correct.

Well, yeah, and in hr, it can be illegal, so.

Right. So how do you set the expectation with someone like. And the example that comes to mind for me is customer service. We want to give good customer service. I have worked with companies that, like, they say customer service is their number one priority. And I will tell you, I definitely did not feel like that. So how do you set that expectation for what is good customer service?

Yeah, it's setting the definition. And every company's gonna be different. So for us, good customer services, they're not always going to be happy because sometimes the insurance carrier says no, sometimes the doctor's office says no. And so it is. How do we create an environment where the customer knows that they've been heard and we have empathy for their situation and we work to resolve it. So we will do everything within our power to resolve an issue for a client that we can. And sometimes that issue is giving, and sometimes it's giving them hard information and hard facts that they don't want to hear. But we do it in a kind and professional manner so that they know, regardless of whether they like the outcome or not, they Know that we're right. So that's something that we have to do on the insurance side. And there are times where we get yelled at and people are not happy and they'll write a Google review because they're not happy. Had nothing to do with us, had to do with their insurance carrier, said, no, I'm not going to cover that drug. No, I'm not going to cover that doctor's appointment. You knew it was out of network and now you got to pay for it. I mean, that's. That happens. But I think especially too on the HR side, we have to talk about what the expectations are for our clients. And so at clarity, it's at AUI too. But really at clarity, we want coachable and open to change clients. So if you are not coachable and you are not open to change, it makes it very difficult for us to provide a high level of customer service to you because you're not going to listen and you're not going to do what you're supposed to do. So you're probably going to end up in HR prison, which is really just code for a fine from the federal government or the state or local government, depending on what you do wrong.

So my. And that makes sense because my ability to be coachable and, and change some things probably has been what has kept me out of HR prison. Knowing me and my mouth and some of the things that I say, that makes a lot of sense. Something that I find interesting that for me, from an expectation standpoint that I have also used and this is interesting, I started this at a very young age. I coached in my mid-20s high school girls soccer.

Wow.

It was entertaining. I learned a lot. Probably far more than the young ladies learned from me. I told them this and as I became in management positions and things on this down the road, I always also told people, I will never ask you to do something that I wouldn't be willing to do myself. And as long as they had that expectation, then that to me made it much easier for me to lead people.

Yes.

Now, when it was soccer, I had a caveat to that. I would always tell them, if the old guy beats you, you have to do it again. They only ever called me on it twice is. But to me it's that, okay, I can do this.

Yes.

I have other. I got other stuff to do. I want you to be able to do this and I want you to be able to do this at a high level. And that's my expectation of it.

Yes.

To set that expectation too. From my Standpoint, I usually tried not to be like, here is step one, step two, step three, step four. I always try. And if we had to, I'd still be like, look for ways to make this better. But I always made sure that I outlined that is like, here's exactly where we need to go. The tougher piece was with sales, was with customer service. For me, when I'd be like, just. Just do good. Be good people. And we know some people are better than other people.

They are. And I think some situations are more challenging than others. I think there's. There are times where it's important for you to not. It's not taking the job from your. Your team member, but saying, you know what, I'm going to walk through this with you and I'm going to. I want you to watch me. And then there's other times you're like, I'm going to sit right next to you while you do this, because I know this is hard. And I think both can be really powerful as you're training and setting expectations. I think that there are definitely moments where you can set the expectation and they're not going to know how to do it. You can say, this is what I want you to do. And especially if it requires a high level of emotional intelligence, a lot of empathy, or, I mean, you have to remember, too, most of the time, the people that you're setting expectations for, you've been in the organization longer than they have. Especially if you're the business owner, especially.

If you're the founder.

It's your baby.

I was about to say, especially if you grew up in a closet in the business.

Exactly. Well, that's another important part. I mean, oftentimes when people come into our organization now, they have no idea of what the history is of the CEO. They just look at me and go, oh, she's been here for probably like five years. No, no, no, no. She's had every job in this organization, including yours. She knows how. She just doesn't want to anymore. She wants you to.

I love that she knows how to do it. She wants you to do it. She wants you to specialize in it so you can do it much better than she can.

That's the whole goal.

That is the big thing that so many people miss. Quickly, I want to cover a little bit about what happens when people miss expectations consistently. Now, one result of that is teaser. Our next episode is going to be termination.

Yes.

When you go to an employee and be like, hey, it's been real, it's been Fun. It hasn't been real fun. See that door right there? Go through it. Don't come back through it. When expectations aren't met, what's your first Go to document.

You need to make sure that you're documenting that your expectations haven't been met.

Okay.

Clarifying with the employee, this is what's going on. I need you to do X and this is why I need you to do it. And then you document. And I set it on this date. And this was the expectation and this is the result of the conversation. And you continue to document because if you are going to make that hard call towards termination, sometimes they're not so hard. But if you're going to make that hard call to termination, you need to document the issues if you have them.

Yeah, no, and I agree with that. The other thing that I, that to me is the, the biggest piece with that is if you document it, that forces you to sit down and talk about it.

Yes.

And to say, look, the expectation has been missed. I have seen so many times where people like, I've listened to managers tell other managers, yeah, person X keeps missing expectations. Go tell person X. They may not know it.

Most of the time they don't.

Right. Stop telling the other managers. Yes, go tell the actual person. And when you document that, not only is it a good way to cover your tush, it is a way to make sure that you are telling the person that there is a problem and that you want them to help work through that. I see it in so many cases where people, they say to another manager, yeah, Bob or Bill or James or whoever isn't doing so hot. Have you told them?

Well, I think they can figure it out. No, they cannot. No, no, no, they cannot. Every time you're complaining to another manager about someone on your team, you need to be telling that person on your team, too, because chances are you've told the manager that you're complaining to way more times than you've ever told the person that is underperforming or maybe performing at the level that they thought they were supposed to perform at because you never explained it to them. Right.

That. I see that so many times.

Yes. Constant.

Yeah. When you see an employee that's surprised that termination is coming, we should never.

Be surprised at a termination.

And we're going to talk, we're going to talk about that next, next week. Because that, that, that's when I don't want to say I'm excited to get into it. It's. But it's, boy, is it a topic that we need to talk.

It's a really good.

Because it's, it's, it's going to be interesting. I mean, did we miss anything with expectations? I mean, to me it's clearly defined roles. Make sure it's frequent and open. Don't give me this BS that you have an open door policy. You have to go tell them, do.

It in a bunch of different ways. Talk it through, write it down, show it visually. Give space for people to try it hands on. Hit all the different learning styles. It's important.

I love that. Offer the feedback, the coaching. Reward people when they actually do it right.

Yes.

Don't just have. I mean, if your expectation is them to do it right every time, don't just scream at them when they do it wrong.

No. Coach them and how to fix it. Because you're not just setting expectations, you're setting people up to succeed.

Yeah. Review them too.

Yes.

That review is big.

Tell them what they're doing right first.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That way they, they never see it coming. No, I'm kidding. As we alluded to, next week is termination. We'll see if I can get through that whole episode without having Chrissy fire me and we will go from there. As always, take care of yourself. If you can, take care of someone else too. We will see you very soon.

Sam.