Latest / The Growth Project / Episode 369: Are You Expecting Too Much?

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Episode 369: Are You Expecting Too Much? · The Growth Project

• 0:00
  what you're describing is the the contrast that exists between high performance standards or high standards versus unrealistic standards. And that's really what we're saying is you want to do everything you possibly can to ensure that you're landing on high standards, that you're promoting and demanding high standards, not unrealistic ones.
• 0:24
  Welcome to The Growth Project, a podcast brought to you by Doctor Drew Brain and joined by Doctor Gabby Cavities today.
• 0:32
  Welcome, Gabby, to the podcast. Thank you. Ready? Ready to go today?
• 0:38
  the this topic today I think is going to be it's really going to hit home for people in a variety of ways because although I know we're talking a lot about leaders and leadership, there's a ton of application here.
• 0:51
  More broadly, even if you're not a leader, even if you'll never become a leader, because there's there's principles here that are going to apply to a lot of different people. But so what we're really discussing, though, is how leaders can undermine performance by expecting too much, how leaders can undermine performance by expecting too much. Can leaders expect too much?
• 1:15
  Gabby. Wait a second.
• 1:20
  That's never happened before, right? Right. Good. Definitely can expect too much. Yeah. There. I think that's leaders. But that's us as human beings, you know, in our relationships with our children and in friendships. You know, we always get the the quote out there of how unspoken expectations are premeditated resentment.
• 1:41
  And we all hold expectations. And at what point are they, at what point are they detrimental to performance and to our relationships and to the teams that we're leading?
• 1:51
  You know, say that one more time unspoken saying I miss that unspoken expectations or premeditated resentment. Yeah. Okay. I actually I've not heard of that before. That's really, really spot on. It is. Yeah. It's, it's one that I'm quite familiar with because I think I tend to be the one who has.
• 2:13
  And the more and more I, I, you know, grow and become more aware. I'm like, how they do lead to, premeditated resentment. That's a good word. That's a really good word. Yeah. No, but in the way you were framing this up, I think is is really important because we're going to talk primarily about how leaders can be guilty of this.
• 2:32
  But as you said, you can be a person who's not leading anyone or anything but be, really off target. Unfortunately, in terms of what you're expecting out of yourself, what you're expecting out of the people that are around you, whoever it might be, and you're setting up these dynamics that are doomed to fail. That's really what we're kind of after, is how do you know the difference?
• 2:53
  Right. Because and here's the tension that I think it's important to start with also, and that maybe we'll put this back to leaders. If you're a leader. Think about this question for just a moment. Have you ever been leading a team? That you felt like was underperforming and you really just didn't understand why or you couldn't understand why?
• 3:14
  Because you were doing so much to drive performance. So, so, Gabby, talk a little bit about, like, what is sometimes going on there that when we have this underperforming team, despite the fact that the leader is really driving hard toward results. Well, you know, as a leader, inherently, you you have to, to a certain degree have high standards.
• 3:34
  And and this focus on on excellence. And oftentimes when we feel our teams are underperforming, we micromanage or we, we say, okay, well, maybe we hit this number, but we didn't exceed it. And really, my expectation was that we when we go up with us, you know, I think that those are the moments where this starts to come to life, where you as a leader, maybe your team is producing, but not to the standard that you expect.
• 4:02
  Or that, you know, you would maybe ideally want. And so it blinds you to and the success that is happening, and you become very future focused. We need more, we need more, we need to do more. And that that in itself becomes a battle for, for you as a leader, but also for your team.
• 4:24
  Yeah. So in other words, in those cases, the very thing that you're relying on to drive performance is interfering with it, because I think and I've been in plenty of these conversations over the years of leaders in the I think their psyche in that given moment is okay. I'm supposed to demand a lot, right? Isn't that part of my job?
• 4:43
  Isn't that what great leaders do? Don't great leaders demand excellence and demand high, high, high, high standards from their teams and here's the problem. Yes, they do, but there are instances where what a leader is calling a high standard is actually an unrealistic expectation. And that's where you can get into a whole world of trouble, because you're then taking it out on your team, not realizing that, like, you know what?
• 5:11
  This isn't attainable. This isn't doable. And it's not because my team isn't trying hard or isn't capable. This is just like we've got the wrong bar in place here. Yeah it happens. But the goal setting principles that are right. Yeah. If this shift that bar and maybe you do set it too high. But this is where awareness of being a leader comes into play.
• 5:30
  So you can you recognize when that bar needs a shift whether it be up or down. There will be moments where you need to set a higher standard, a bigger expectations of your team. But there's also times where you get to lower that bar a little bit. Yep. All right. So this is good. Let's get into this right here Gabby.
• 5:46
  Because really what we're what you're describing is the
• 5:50
  the contrast that exists between high performance standards or high standards versus unrealistic standards. And that's really what we're saying is you want to do everything you possibly can to ensure that you're landing on high standards, that you're promoting and demanding high standards, not unrealistic ones.
• 6:09
  So how do we know the difference?
• 6:11
  Yeah. Well, let's talk about what healthy high standards are. One of the, you know, core principles of that is clear expectations. Yup. Can you and your team clearly state, you know what the expectations are? For each individual, for the team, as a whole, really having clarity around what the expectations are. And then process orientation. So, you know, maybe these are our expectations.
• 6:39
  Do we know how to get there? Do we have a clear process to to obtain the goals, to obtain the, you know, expectations and if not, then you've just got these expectations with no idea how to get there. That's a bad formula. All right. So let's let's pause on one second I want to go back to something you just mentioned.
• 6:59
  You said clear expectations. Let's discuss this for a minute. Clear to who? Right. Right. So in many in too many cases, the expectation is really clear to the leader. Right. Why is that? Because he or she is the one who's putting them in place, right? Who chose them? Who came up with them? And it can be crystal clear of like, okay, this is what I'm expecting you to do.
• 7:27
  This is what it should look like. But what have they not done? I haven't communicated that. They haven't ensured that. It's equally clear to the people on the team. Right. And why have they not done that? Maybe because they struggle to do that effectively. Maybe because there's some element of that that's needed to be discussed. There's some tension involved in that.
• 7:49
  Yeah. Yeah. And I think that tension really stems from maybe the leader seeing the value in that, that set of expectation that maybe your team members wanted clear on what value that expectation has. I say this a lot with, like, within a sales role, right? There's a lot of, data input that sales reps have to put in, for their managers.
• 8:15
  A lot of times they're like, well, I can forecast that I'm going to make X amount of sales this week, but there's no guarantee. And that's why I don't really see the point. And me filling out this document every Monday because it holds in value. And I'm like, well, if you know, there's your manager probably sees that differently.
• 8:33
  There is value there, but you just don't recognize it yet. It hasn't been, you know, clearly communicated with you. And so that expectation seems unrealistic to you or it seems irrelevant. All right. Let's keep this is a perfect example. Let's play this all the way through. And so then we have this sales team member that you're talking about who isn't doing the thing.
• 8:53
  They're not inputting these things on Mondays. However their sales continue to be pretty good right. Like they're amongst the highest performing people on the team. Not the highest, but amongst them doing plenty of things right. Numbers look good, trending well. And so they're not doing this thing. And so guess what. What is the leader doing as a result of that?
• 9:13
  Nothing. Yeah. Nothing. He or she is doing nothing to uphold or enforce any kind of accountability toward the fact that this person isn't doing the thing. And why are they not holding them accountable? Because they're getting the outcome. Because the results are working, because the results are working. And so that is an example of where, like I would call that a low standard team, because we aren't actually upholding the standards, but there's a complete lack of clarity and communication there and that like, hey, I know what I'm doing, you know what I'm doing.
• 9:42
  Like, like I know that I'm not holding you accountable because you're performing reasonably well. You know that because you're performing reasonably well. I have to then spend my attention on these other people who aren't. And we have this whole thing operating where there there are no clear expectations. The standard is low. There's this brewing storm is really what's happening there.
• 10:01
  Yeah. Because there's lack of clarity. Lack of clarity that kind of feeds into to the next piece here of what is, you know, healthy, high standard and communication, you know, consistent feedback.
• 10:14
  Yeah. You know, where you stand. And so do I. And I think it's too many organizations and too many teams are defaulting to a feedback definition of once a year.
• 10:28
  We're going to sit down and have a conversation in which really your expectation on the other side of this discussion is that, like, I'm going to tell you what your raise is going to be. You're going to get paid X number of dollars more in the coming year. And, you know, so long see you, like, have a good rest your day.
• 10:43
  That's not feedback. No no no no it's definitely not consistent feedback where you know, you are you're getting you know, both positive and maybe critical feedback, on a regular basis to, to assess how you are meeting the expectations or meeting the standard that we have all of them within our company, within our roles. And, it's a big part of it, because if you do once a year, you know, we're going to hit on maybe a couple things that, you know, you can do better next year, but the it's hard to lock in to a process of improvement when you get feedback once.
• 11:22
  Yeah. Oh gosh. Yes. It's hard to know where you stand. All right. So we have this vague, kind of, inconsistent feedback, inconsistent communication. You know, another way that this can really be problematic if we're not upholding healthy high standards is, just this, this reactivity. Right? So, like, if, if my standard is simply me reacting to what's happening, people end up feeling like they're walking on eggshells all the time.
• 11:52
  You know, they can't perform well. And I think it's, you know, why do people get there? How do they get there? Because the leader has poor processes because he or she is stressed all the time and overly busy and doing too many things. And so they just are constantly like reacting to whatever's going on that day. And that leaves your people kind of like jammed up and unable to really perform because they just never know what's going to happen.
• 12:14
  Yeah, that's the problem. Starts to to become fearful, right? I mean, if I made a mistake and, you know, your reaction is to yell at me, then inherently the next time I make a mistake, I'm going to fear coming to you for that, right? Telling you I made a mistake. And that that creates a whole nother unhealthy dynamic within a team, right?
• 12:37
  So, yeah, I think that that's a big one. Being able to, as a leader, control your emotional reactivity. Yes. So just to kind of close the loop on this discussion, this part of this discussion here, when we say what you're aiming for is healthy high standards. What does that really mean. It's the things we've outlined here of like, hey, there's clarity on both sides.
• 12:58
  We know what's expected. We know what great looks like in the form of the process. We're going about it in a very rhythmical way. Consistency. There's feedback involved and there's space for learning. Right? So, Gabby, when we say space for learning, like, what does that really mean? Yeah, this is this is that piece where we always talk about a combination of humility and growth mindset, you know, space where you can recognize that there is an opportunity to do better.
• 13:31
  That you you're motivated to, to do better. Now you want to learn how to improve. So when you get that feedback, it's not a direct criticism on me. It's not, you know, a hit at me. Instead it's it's hey, here's some feedback because I want it to be better. I want you to to grow and improve.
• 13:50
  And I'll help you I will, you know, you know, coach you up and have it feeling that support system there within, your team with your leader. I think that that is that's what we're talking about here. Having that space to grow and learn. Right. Which takes a lot of humility as a leader, too, and security as a leader, because normally part of what growth entails is something didn't go really well.
• 14:14
  It didn't go like we hoped it would in I as a leader. I'm not going to overreact. I'm going to kind of maintain composure. Coach, I went through this, understand the developmental path, developmental plan, those types of things. Not easy. Not not exactly low hanging fruit for leaders okay. So so let's kind of retrace our steps here to get us clear and aligned.
• 14:30
  We're talking about the ways leaders the ways in which leaders can unfortunately undermine performance. We were talking about how one of the biggest ways that happens is having unrealistic expectations, not having high standards that are healthy, but having high standards that are really getting in the way, unrealistic standards now. So, Gabby, let's, let's let's go down this path.
• 14:50
  If and when a leader is laying out and trying to implement unrealistically high standards, what are the ripple effects? We tend to then see amongst the team what happens? Well, there's a few things here. And you know, anytime anybody expects perfection from you, whether that's your boss or your parents or spouses, we can all imagine time in our lives where that's been the case and it's affected us negatively.
• 15:15
  So let's break that down. The first thing we tend to see is your risk taking drops, your, motivation to, to take risk or to get creative really limit. Yep. You want to play it safe? Completely. Yeah. I mean, look, where do we tend to find great examples are kids right. I mean, I still remember, although, you know, okay, I'm going to do enough to anonymize this one.
• 15:41
  Right. So a few years ago, when my son was playing, for a certain basketball team, this coach didn't have a spoken or written rule, but the the actual, like, unrealistic expectation and rule was if you turned the ball over, you came out of the game and. Okay, now keep in mind these kids were early middle school at that time, right?
• 16:08
  So what are middle school basketball players really, really good at turning the ball over okay. So so I still remember this this conversation on a ride home from a game one time. So at that time my son was playing point guard. Right. So what is the job of a of a true point guard. What a great point. Guards.
• 16:26
  Do they get other people involved. They like penetrate. They get in the lane. They draw the defense. They they, you know, kick the ball to the teammates. They set guys up to score baskets. But in order to do that, you've got to you got to get after you got to beat your guy, you got to get in a lane.
• 16:41
  You got to get in to traffic. You have to do things that make you more susceptible to turn the ball over. So my son wasn't doing much to make his teammates better, like he wasn't setting guys up for success. He wasn't doing a great job of getting guys involved. Why wasn't he doing very well in that department? Because, you know, if you turn the ball over, have to go sit down.
• 17:04
  And what you ended up with was a team in which everybody was afraid to try to do anything. And in the sports as basketball, what, you know, was a team that was not very good. You know, like you have to put pressure on the other team. You have to put your foot on the gas. You've got to go after things.
• 17:21
  And this we're talking about, you know, youth basketball the same is true in all facets of life. In business you have to go after things. You have to put your foot on the gas if you're afraid of, oh, gosh, if I mess up, I'm not to go the equivalent sit on the bench. You're really limiting how successful you can be.
• 17:38
  Yeah, that's a great example. Especially, you know, given his position, it is not where the whole premise of success in that role is. You got to take risks. You gotta take risks in that position. You got to there's no other way. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm afraid to say I'm going to play it safe. I'm going to avoid initiating things, and I'm going to just kind of lay back and and that kind of leads into the second one, this mentality of, I'm just going to lay back.
• 18:02
  It seems like maybe you're you're kind of detaching from it, but it's quite the opposite, where cognitively you're actually very overworked. You're stressed out because you're thinking about, you know, if I do this and this could go wrong and, and that bandwidth becomes very stretched. Yes. Right then. Yeah, I mean, here's the word I'll use. And this is one of the most psychologically tiring states there is for human protection.
• 18:30
  Yeah. Anytime you are protecting something that is the the requirement on protection is hypervigilance. Think about the air traffic controller. You know, what is he or she doing protecting everyone in the skies. And so you're you have to be on and you're locked in without any blips on the radar. Right. So you have to lock in. And so when your brain goes into protection mode, it is exhausting.
• 18:57
  Yeah. Absolutely exhausting. As and, you know, long term policies that overthinking leads to slower decisions reduces your reactivity. So, you know, performance wise that's when we decrements.
• 19:12
  let's apply this to a few different industries. Let's think about marketing. Let's think about tech. Heck, let's think about today's day. I mean, everyone's talking about AI these days, right? What are all of those things industry wise, predicated on creativity? Right. So, Gabby, like, imagine the the marketing company out there that has an overbearing and unrealistically high standard leader.
• 19:41
  What is the net of that going to be on the team? I mean, what is creativity? And you know, I honestly I go back to hearing talk about marketing. This is a realization I had realized this year after the Super Bowl, but, you know, leading up to this year's Super Bowls and I'm just not that excited for Super Bowl commercials.
• 20:01
  And I'm saying why not? Was because every year in the house, you know, looking forward to it. I realize last year I was not impressed. The creativity of commercials, there was none that stood out to me. I can't really put my finger on like a one that I can still remember to this day, whereas we can all think back years ago to like the Doritos commercial where, you know, it's still imprinted in a lot of our minds.
• 20:26
  We remember it, there was some risk taking in those commercials. There was some creativity involved, and they're memorable this year. There were actually a few that I thought were good and creative, but, you know, it's still somewhere you can see it again. I can tell they're playing it safe. I can't remember a single one just for the record.
• 20:46
  Which one. I can't, I can't remember a single commercial so I don't I guess those dollars were not well spent in my, in my household and winning some the attention of viewers. Yeah. I can't remember seeing. Well maybe who else in my family did, but I can't remember any.
• 21:01
  no, I think that that's, you know, an area where I see this showing up is just with the state of the world we live in.
• 21:07
  There's so much criticism on what you put out into the media and how you put things out into the media. I mean, there, recently, received a lot of, criticism. I think back to like, there was the American Eagle jeans. That was a big topic of discussion. And, you know, there's pros and cons to both, like, some people play it safe and marketing.
• 21:30
  Some people go for it. But at the end of the day, you're not going to take those risks or be creative if you're in an environment where you fear the criticism, right? The leaders are setting the pace when it comes to environment, and that will have a lot to do with the results that you get. Okay. So we're going through these to be expected.
• 21:49
  Ripple ripple effects risk taking drops cognitive bandwidth shrinks. We also see negative implications with respect to ownership Gabby what does that mean. How does that materialize. Well the first thing is blame placing. You know, if I mistake is made, I don't want to take ownership of that. I'm scared to take ownership of that. So, this person or blame that on circumstances, that I feel are uncontrollable.
• 22:17
  effort drops with a lack of ownership when I don't feel responsible for the work that I'm doing. I don't feel like I have to put in a lot of work into it, and, the my engagement food, then my interest inherently fades, and we can take this down the route of self-determination theory. And, you know what?
• 22:36
  What all happens there. But at the end of the day, when you don't feel connected to the work you're doing, you don't feel that sense of ownership, you're going to detach, right? Yeah. And I've used this image in conversation with leaders in the past. But if you imagine a pie graph that represents what we would call like the shared ownership that two people have for whether it be a project, a client, you name it.
• 23:01
  And if the leader is one of those people in the team member, maybe the sales rep is the other. If that leader creates a dynamic where he or she is a huge piece of that pie. And so what does that look like of like always on him about something heavy, micromanaging, scrutinizing everything would eventually happens is the team members piece of the pie gets smaller and smaller and smaller, because that leader is just taking up so much space in there by being so overbearing and everything.
• 23:31
  And eventually that team members was like, you know what, I don't care. Yeah, like, you figure it out, handle it, you handle it, you solve the problem, you make the call. I really don't care anymore because I don't want to exist like this. And that's how it can quickly just become this tidal wave of complete disregard and ownership for the situation.
• 23:49
  you know, I think we've done a pretty good job of laying out the repercussions of what happens when you are, as a leader, setting unrealistic expectations. The risk taking drops. Cognitive bandwidth shrinks, and that ownership really declines. Well, I think we should transition now into, well, how do we get to this point as leaders?
• 24:11
  How do we fall into this place of micromanaging? You know, it just suits unrealistic expectations, because I don't think any leader goes into wanting that to be the case. They all want their teams to succeed. We all want, to pursue excellence.
• 24:28
  Sure. Totally gets blurred. Yeah. How do you get there? Well, there's plenty of ways you can get there.
• 24:35
  One common way that I've certainly seen over the years is just in your mind picture kind of traditional organizational structure in any industry. Right. And so we'll think of it in terms of tiers where you have, we'll just call kind of the senior leadership, the middle management, kind of like middle, first line leaders. And then think about like the team members who we'll call the individual contributors.
• 24:56
  Well, you know, let's say that we're we're six months into the year, we've gotten our results back for Q1 and Q2. And guess what? They don't look too great. What happens? Well, the senior leaders then communicate to the folks that are kind of in that middle management position. And it goes something like this. You got to get some things figured out over there, like, what are you guys doing?
• 25:15
  Numbers are down. This isn't good. We've got to pick it up in a major way during Q3 to have any chance at all of meeting planned by the end of Q4. So in other words, the stress in the frustration rolls downhill to the middle management. Surprise, surprise. Guess what they then do is they feel like, okay, at minimum, I've got to demonstrate that I'm doing something about this.
• 25:42
  So what's the normal thing to do there is to dial up on pressure, stress, expectations. They they think they need to go turn a bunch of things up. Okay. If I demand more out of my team, they'll perform better. If I refuse to accept anything other than X, they'll raise their game, whatever it might be, and oftentimes there's just a lot more to it than that.
• 26:09
  You know, I don't know any sales teams out there that wanted to be way behind playing in Q3. You know that really doesn't serve anybody well. Yeah. So if a team has underperform during Q1 and Q2, it isn't because they just didn't feel like showing up or didn't want it to go. Well, that's not how this works. So that's a that's a common case example of how you get there.
• 26:29
  Yeah. It's a great example. And I think that there there is a point in time where kind of, you know, raising the pressure on on your team or individuals. It will work to a certain extent. But what we know from the literature is that after a certain point, that heightened stress at heightened pressure leads to performance people. Correct?
• 26:48
  Yeah. It's not sustainable. Yeah. So that's your job as a leader is partially is to know when to add pressure and when to choose a different pathway here. Yeah. When to add it, when to take it away. Yeah. We call that the art and science of leadership.
• 27:02
  You can certainly turn some levers and dial some things up in the short term. And yeah, your team will respond from a behavioral standpoint. They might like do more or stay later or later that type of thing. But will that be a sustainable winning formula? Unlikely. Unlikely that that will. So I think part of the point there, part of the takeaways we hope for leaders is if and when you feel the stress rising, be very conscious and aware not to just then go try to start upping the ante across the board and demanding more and more and more and more.
• 27:40
  More. Probably not the formula that's going to help you get to where you want to go.
• 27:46
  let's Gabby, let's focus on this for a second. Let's get into day to day application, whether it be in meetings, whether it be kind of like executing a project, you name it. What are some of the specific and concrete examples that that pop up that would tell a leader, okay, I'm not doing work very well with this right now.
• 28:09
  Like I am expecting too much. I am driving harder than I should be. What are the things they should be looking for? Yeah, well, what comes to my mind is the example of maybe you go into a meeting with your sales team, and as a manager, you know, there's some hard hitters you get to hit on, say we're not we're not meeting members and we're behind.
• 28:26
  And so you go in there and maybe you're like, well, I'm going to go in there and ask for a strategy. What do they think we can do to get us to where we need to be? And you're met with silence. Yep. Everybody just kind of looking around the room at each other waiting for somebody else to speak.
• 28:41
  Right. So why are they doing that. It's, it's a hesitation to speak up out of fear. Most of the time it's well, I don't want to because there's something going to be wrong. I don't want to present something and be met with criticism. So I'm just not going to say anything at all.
• 28:56
  potential upside or gain of opening my mouth isn't worth it relative to what could happen from a cost or consequence standpoint.
• 29:09
  Yeah. And as a leader, that's frustrating too, because you're going in there and thinking, well, I'm asking the team for suggestions. Yeah, but I'm not getting anything for them. It becomes a whole cycle of frustration with the leader, the team. You know, your and yeah, it's, that is one clear sign though is if your team hesitates before speaking or does not engage and, group discussion.
• 29:35
  That's a beginning sign. Yep. Yeah, that's a strong one. And I think related to that too. Another thing that you'll sometimes see is people on the team don't want to bring you bad news, like they do not want to have to have that conversation, because it goes back to one of the things you were talking about earlier of like the importance of of maintaining space for learning.
• 29:57
  Well, when do you when do you have to learn? Oftentimes when something didn't go very well, they're afraid to come tell you. And so they're going to try to fix it. Or maybe just like hope it goes away. That's a bad strategy and of itself. But if people struggle to be transparent with you about things of significance, probably an indicator that you are being unrealistic with your demands.
• 30:22
  If you feel like you're always the one finding out yourself that things have gone wrong after they've gone wrong, that's a clear indicator. Yep.
• 30:30
  Absolutely. It is. I think another one is if you feel like you're having to be the decision maker on all things, things that maybe you feel like are simple, that. Yeah, maybe you're keen to know what the decision would be here, but they're still coming to you and and making sure they get your approval before moving forward.
• 30:49
  That's another area here where they're afraid to to make those decisions. Yep. They're afraid to make them. And or the other one would be like, if what you're describing there's the the common problem of like the leaders, the bottleneck, and you often end up there. This goes back to what we said earlier about improper balance and ownership. Well, they're you're the bottleneck because you because everything has to run through you, slows things down.
• 31:15
  And you haven't distributed ownership throughout the team. Or maybe you did it one time, but people have given it away. They've put it back, get the ball back in your court because they're so frustrated with how you're going about leading them. That can absolutely happen as well. And then a final one that I'll include here is, when you see that just kind of the the tone in the energy in the dynamic of the team is really just tense.
• 31:42
  It's like people aren't focused. They're they're on the edge of their seat. They're uncomfortable. It feels like we're just like one domino falling away from just this big disruption eruption amongst the team. Like, that's another strong sign. And maybe that one's a little bit more ambiguous and tougher to put your finger on the any given moment. But that's a common thing that happens.
• 32:03
  Yeah. Maybe you feel like you're walking on eggshells, or if you can feel a sense that that tension there, that's something's not right. No, something is definitely not right. So okay, we want to pay attention to the signs obviously. Like if you're if you're seeing and sensing this thing, it's time to act. It's past time to act. Let's let's kind of work toward this.
• 32:27
  Gabby. So I know we're kind of going to finish up for the next few minutes. But when we say instead of doing those things, we want to drive high performance by focusing on our process, we want to focus on raising the standard when it comes to our process. Give us an example of kind of what that means.
• 32:47
  While we've talked about process so many times on on this podcast, and it really comes down to, you know, instead of using phrases like fear and stuff like, don't, don't mess this up or this has to be done this way, you know, give more examples of here's what great execution looks like, clarity behind my expectation, here's what it should look like.
• 33:10
  And paint a picture so people know what the process is. You know, being blind, right. Or moving the goalposts on, that's something everybody's heard in corporate America, of course, is like, well, gosh, they keep moving the goalposts on us. Meaning like, we don't really know any at any given moment what we're what great looks like or what the goal is that type of stuff.
• 33:29
  Yeah. So so get ahead of that. Paint the picture very clearly. Another one we would include would be and this is tough. We know this is tough. Separate the person from the outcome. Separate the person from the outcome. And so be disappointed in the result. Don't be disappointed in the person. Yeah. And I don't think people always realize this.
• 33:51
  But when you're the leader, if you're the one who says, I'm really disappointed in you for the burden of that, the weightiness of that is almost nothing compared to what it is for the person who receives that. If you receive that, it sometimes takes people a long, long time to come back from that, you know, be disappointed in the result.
• 34:14
  Fine. They probably are too. But focus on in terms of the feedback. Focus on your disappointment in the result, not the disappointment in the person. Yeah, that's that's powerful. You know, the the saying and so disappointed in you or I had higher expectations for you, of you. You know, those things were really characterizing you in this moment of your.
• 34:40
  Yeah. Kind of taken a hit it. They're you're labeling them and and that does take much longer to recover. So yeah, that's a big one. You know, another one that we've touched on a little bit already is respond instead of react. So that emotional reactivity piece that we were talking on at the beginning, being able to, to control your emotions, and respond when you know, there, there are stressful environments that you're working in or, hard conversations you have to have, coming at it from a, you know, calm and composed manner rather than a highly reactive, which is hard.
• 35:22
  I mean, a lot of what we're outlining today is hard. We realize that. And we, you know, we probably should have been more, I think maybe conscious of this explicitly throughout the conversation today, the job of a leader tough. And heck, I mean even go back to that example we gave a minute ago of the sales organization whose results are off target through Q1 and Q2, and that stress is rolling downhill.
• 35:44
  Whose lap is that falling in the leaders? We realize that, you know, they're not we don't have senior leaders who are having direct conversations, typically with the people who are the reps out in the field, like that's coming straight downhill to the leader, and he or she is having to deal with that in his heart. So it's more than understandable that then that stress gets transferred to the team.
• 36:05
  But that's where great leaders do it differently, and that's what we want to promote. And through our conversation today and others as well, is be very conscious of how the stress you're feeling is then driving unhealthy standards. You're you're demanding throughout your team. That will not be the formula through which you turn this thing around. Yeah, that's the okay, so, I know we need to kind of wrap wrap up here and move toward our finish.
• 36:30
  I would kind of finish in this way, whether you are a leader or you aren't unhealthy, unrealistic standards can, drive so much stress and unhappiness and lack of fulfillment and ultimately, underperformance. So really, what we want people aiming for is high standards excellence. And I never also want to paint a picture as though we at the Growth Project and plus, aren't striving for big goals.
• 36:57
  Of course we are. It's never about backing down or backing away from from huge opportunities. It's let's do it the right way. And part of that involves setting up high healthy standards, not unrealistic ones. All right, Gabby, final thought from you. I think that you summed it up perfectly. I would to say, remember the correlation between, you know, unspoken expectations and resentment and, emphasizing the power of communication as a leader, make sure that your team is clear on what the expectations are.
• 37:31
  Like you said, we want high expectations. We want high standards. We just want them carried out in a manner that's productive for the team as a whole and gives us a chance to accomplish our goals, right. Ultimately, which is ultimately what people are after. Awesome. Well, thank you, as always for tuning in to our conversation today, and we will look forward to our next one here real soon.
• 37:50
  Take care.