How Do You Manage Expectations?

How do I manage expectations? With employees, clients, everything... Let’s talk about it. Good afternoon, Thomas Joyner with Business On Purpose here.

If there’s one thing I’ve seen this year, it’s the businesses that manage expectations the best are the ones who have the least issues with their employees and the least issues with clients. 

So... let’s break this up into two pieces. First, how do we manage expectations with employees? 

I think it all starts with what we say. Do we honor what we say or do we tell people what they want to hear, hoping it will buy us enough time to figure out what to do? Don’t do that! Slow down, mean what you say.

I had a client recently who had an employee leave. Just out of the blue, submitted their two-week notice and took a job elsewhere. At the exit interview, they drilled down on why they were leaving and all the employee would say was, “There are just a lot of unmet expectations from the hiring process.”

So, at our next coaching time, we spent the majority of the time going back to listen to what exactly was communicated throughout the hiring process. I looked at their process top to bottom and it jumped off the page to me. “Potential for profit sharing and buying into the practice.” 

It sounds great on paper, right? Profit-sharing and offering ownership to key employees to give them more of a stake in the company. So, I looked at the business owner and asked him, “Did you ever profit share or allow them to buy in?” Well, not exactly. We were trying to grow and thought we could table it for a bit until the right time. 

“So when is the right time?” Because what that communicates in the hiring process is that it’s not a possibility, but a 100% option for the employee. That’s the breakdown in communication right there. 

Without intending to offer that, it sounded like a great idea that he could figure out in the future when the time was right. A great way to get a quality person on the team and then figure out how to keep them happy on the back end. But... that’s misleading and not managing expectations well at all.

How else do we do this? Well, we tell employees we will train them and then feed them to the wolves. We tell them we’ll have meetings to check on their progress and answer questions and then don’t prioritize them ourselves so employees are left feeling unimportant. We tell them there is room for growth in the business, to give them more responsibility in their career and then bury them in their current job.

What if it looked different though? What if we scheduled training times with employees and gave them an onboarding time to ask questions about their role. What if we were prepared, ready, and engaged in new employee check-ins. What if we gave employees metrics to hit, with crystal clear expectations for what you’re looking for in order for them to move up in the business. IN a way that you both know if they hit it or not. 

You see, I think we’re not careful about the things we promise, which in turn get our employees' expectations moving a direction we never intended. Be clear. Painfully clear in the expectations you set and watch the overall employee morale improve on a daily basis.

So if that’s how we manage it with employees, how do we manage it with clients. Well, the exact same way! Do what you say you’re going to do and know what expectations you are setting before you put them in place.

I have a friend who always feels like they are being attacked by clients. But here are the expectations he sets. Every time an email pops up on his phone, he answers it immediately. Every time a voicemail is left, it’s answered as soon as possible. Texts, can’t get to them quick enough. It’s no wonder his clients get frustrated when it takes an hour because he’s trained them that every text or call or email they send him is treated like an emergency. He is setting the expectation every day that he is available 24/7 to them. 

Now if that’s the message he wants to communicate, ok. But I will sometimes read emails, and if they are not an emergency I will leave them until the next morning. I want to be 100% clear in setting expectations that I block out time for email every morning and cannot orient my entire life and schedule around other people’s minor inconveniences.

“But they’ll leave!” Maybe... but the ones that leave are the headaches to begin with. The ones probably not worth working with anyway. 

“Well, that’s a very narrow-minded way of doing business?” Is it though? I want the people I’m face to face with to know I’m focused entirely on them. Not being distracted nonstop at all the things vibrating on my phone.

Let’s talk about this practically. I asked for a quote from a contractor recently. I needed some work on my house and they came out to inspect. On the way out, the contractor said, “I’ll send you a quote to your email.” Great... thanks!

The next morning, no quote. 3 days later, no quote. Monday of the following week I finally called. “Hey, just making sure you’re sending that quote.” Yessir, I’ll have it to you soon. 

It took 2 weeks to get the quote. I was frustrated. Zero expectations were set, so I had zero confidence in what would be delivered.

Imagine if this happened. On the way out the door the contractor says, “It’s probably going to be 2 weeks before I can get this proposal to you. Is that ok?” If it’s ok and I’m in no rush I would have said yes. If not, at least I have the option and feel respected enough to make my own decision. It would also put the picture in my mind that this contractor must do good work or they wouldn’t be booked out this far.

I did the same thing a few weeks ago. I had a sales meeting with a business and it was the Friday of 4th of July week. “Great, send us a proposal for us to look over.” No problem, I said. Just so you know it will be Monday afternoon before I can get this to you as I’m about to head out of town. Is that ok? Yep, that’s great! We’ll look forward to reading it then.

Expectations, guys! Manage them. In every aspect of your business. They matter so much! They can give you a great reputation. Or can completely tarnish it. They can buy you freedom from work, or chain you to your business at all hours of the day.

So, a question for you to think through today. What are the expectations you need to appropriately set in your business to give your employees and clients the expectations you want them to have? 

If I can help answer that question at all, please let me know. We build processes out for all of this to help make sure you are communicating everything the right way. Alright, thanks for joining have a great day, and make sure to subscribe to our podcast and YouTube channel.