How to Set Expectations that Actually Help Your Team Deliver
Too many leaders take expectation-setting for granted. The cost isn't just missed goals, it's lost time and top talent. Here's what to do instead.
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Only about 50% of employees strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work, according to Gallup1.
(sigh) Unfortunately, that’s not surprising.
Even in a board game, where there are clear rules and objectives, there are a variety of ways to win (or lose).
In business, how you execute can be even more varied because the rules aren’t standardized, teams aren’t uniform, and the playing field is ever-changing.
Leaders know this, and yet, few give their team enough (or any) direction on what good is, and then get disappointed (and surprised) when their team misses the mark.
Their excuses are plentiful:
“I’m too busy. I don’t have time.”
“My team should know what I want.”
“My expectations should be obvious.”
And the resulting problems multiply even faster:
Wasted time because work has to be repeated
Frustration from the leader, and from their team
Missed or poor outcomes that lead to missed goals
Top talent departing when they don’t see any improvement
It doesn’t have to be this way.
You can help your team deliver and make the process less difficult for them by setting up clear and effective expectations. Here’s how:
How to Set Expectations Well
The steps aren’t complicated, but each one has a purpose, and if you cut corners, you won’t maximize the opportunity.
When we lead well, the short-term benefits are only part of the picture. The long-term value is where the real payoff lies: a higher-performing team, developing leaders who can compound their results, and creating greater trust that will result in career-lasting relationships.
1. Set Aside Time
You can’t do the work if you haven’t given yourself the time to tackle it. And if this feels like a difficult task, all the more reason to set aside more time not less. Ideally, you set aside time weekly and monthly to accomplish the rest of the steps.
Take Action: I recommend at least 30 min weekly to reflect and to plan for adjustments the following week. In the future, you can reduce to 15 min. Monthly, set aside another 30 min to review your notes and adjust for the next month.
2. Assess & Don’t Assume
The issue to address and the one that trips up leaders most often is making assumptions about their team that they haven’t verified. Instead of assuming, assess actual data, observe behaviors, and ask your team.
If you think your team is following all the steps, review their approach.
If you think your team is collaborating well, ask others.
If you think your guidance is clear, ask them.
Hope is nice in theory, but terrible in practice.
Take Action: Identify the areas where you have most concern and where there is the highest impact to the business. Then choose one thing to verify each week. You might find that this habit becomes easier over time and you can do more than one, but start with just one. And if you need to slow it down to one a month because of the complexity or scale of impact, fantastic. Quantity isn’t the goal. Impact is.
3. Prioritize & Tailor
You can’t and shouldn’t define everything. Focus on what’s most important and where your team needs the most guidance (e.g. a team that’s great at the technical elements, but isn’t savvy on people dynamics needs more guidance there and vice versa for the opposite skillset).
Take Action: Once you have identified the highest impact areas and verified where you team needs more guidance, assess where your team is strong and where it isn’t. Share more detail, offer examples, create group working sessions for when they need more help. Do the opposite in areas where they are already in a good place. This way, you’ll help them understand where they need to shore up their work and model how to do so.
4. Separate the What from the How and the Why
There are 3 different parts to setting expectations:
What is required: the outcomes, the results.
How it needs to be accomplished
Why is it important
When you communicate your expectations, be sure to distinguish each. The Why and the What always matter — don’t skimp on those. The How doesn’t always matter, but if you have boundaries or certain organizational norms you need your team to follow, don’t be mysterious — tell them.
By being clear on all three, your team will have more understanding of your specific expectations, but also how to anticipate your thinking going forward. It’s as if you’re giving them the algorithm in your head on how you set expectations. This is how great teams move fast and seamlessly.
Take Action: Setting expectations isn’t a complicated formula. Write down your What, How and Why before you connect with your team. Not sure if you’re being clear enough, prompt AI to ask you questions to clarify what you share.
5. Use Scenarios
Scenarios is one of the most underutilized managerial tool. They can help you communicate more nuance, give you insight into how your team thinks, and be an excellent tool to align with your team. As a bonus, they will get your team more engaged by creating a dialogue vs a one-way conversation.
Take Action: For each of the priority areas where you’ve identified that your expectations setting could be improved, imagine 1-3 scenarios that can help illuminate the What, How and/or Why. Bring one to your team in a test-run and explain what you’re trying to do. If everyone walks away more clear, then you have a win. If people aren’t feeling more aligned, then try another one. Have patience with this one. It might take a few run.
6. Group Discussions Scale Learning
For all of the above steps, you can do them 1:1 or in a group. Take advantage of opportunities to do these steps as a group when you can. It not only reduces the number of conversations you’ll need to have, your team will benefit from observing how each other engages and how they are making sense of what you share.
Tailoring your approach to what people on your team need will determine which path you take and when. It’s OK to go slower when someone needs more individual attention or more relationship building to create trust. And when possible, leverage the power of the group.
Take Action: As you identify which expectations need your focus, think about when you can bring those conversations (verification moments, scenario discussions, etc) into a group meeting. Normalizing these won’t just help with expectations setting, it reinforce a open and collaborative mindset that will improve how your team works overall.
7. Verify Your Progress
Pause regularly to verify what’s needed, the quality of your guidance, and level of understanding. Unfortunately, there is no GPS telling you if you’re moving in the right direction. You have to do the work to find out if you’re heading in the right direction or if you need to course correct.
Take Action: Ask your team, ask their collaborators, check your team’s results, and reflect on your observations. These are all signals to help you make sense of your progress. This is technically part of step one and two, and so if you’re setting aside 30 min every week to do this, you’ll be far less likely to miss anything.
8. Periodically Revisit & Adjust
Treat expectations as an ongoing exercise vs. a set of edicts set in stone. There are too many changes happening too rapidly to assume what you’ve designed at the start of an initiative will still hold true several weeks later. It might, but it’s smarter to design your approach as if it won’t.
Take Action: Make sure your team knows that your expectations will be dynamic based on business context and what you all learn as you go. This way, they won’t be surprised when you make adjustments. It also invites them to come to you if they see changes that should inform any changes. This way, it’s not just about what you know, but it’s what your entire team is learning along the way.
The best part of getting this right?
You can rinse and repeat and the work you do once compounds. Your team more deeply understands not just what you want, but how and why. They will also be able to cascade your expectations to more people — direct reports, collaborators, and even external partners. This will give you leverage and create greater cohesion.
It can feel like a significant time investment because it is. But remember, like all smart investments, this up-front investment will generate significant returns. Over time, if you’re working with the same people, you will have less to align on because you’ve done the alignment work already and if you’re onboarding new people, your extended team can help you translate these into practice and you won’t have to be only standard bearer.
Don’t wait. Get started this week: Choose one important initiative and one team member to work with. And start to set aside the time to plant the seeds now for far better results going forward.
I’ll be cheering you on!
May you lead without limits,
P.S. SAVE THE DATE: My next Substack Live is scheduled for this Friday, January 23rd at 2:30pm ET with Ron Gold. You don’t want to miss this conversation on resilience and what it means to redefine success. Link to come soon!
If you found today’s post helpful, the greatest thank you can give me is sharing it with another leader who might benefit. Thank you!
And if you would be open to sharing how you have set excellent expectations with your team, I’d love to learn more.
Gallup (2025). “Anemic Employee Engagement Points to Leadership Challenges.”
Momentum doesn’t come from doing more, but from choosing less. One initiative. One person. Protected time. That’s how seeds actually turn into results.
This is soooooo goooood. Thanks for sharing.