You Get What You Expect

photo by milkaela

Confirmation bias is a powerful thing.  Micro-managers have to micro-manage because their employees miss deadlines, deliver half-baked work and are lazy.

While some may see this as a chicken and egg problem, I’m firmly in the chicken camp.   Employees don’t start out looking to cut corners and do late, mediocre work.  People will usually live up to the expectations you have of them.  If your actions make it clear that you expect them to be middling employees they’ll live up to that.  If you expect your employees to look for every excuse possible not to work, they’ll live up to that as well.

Mistrusting your team, establishing low expectations and circling over their every move does nothing to engage an intelligent employee.  A vicious cycle ensues where the employee resents their boss and thus does not want to do good work for him and the boss therefore feels the need to get even more involved in order to get things accomplished.  Nobody is going to win.

Start by thinking what you want to get out of your team, set the expectation with each of them and then act accordingly.  When you treat people like smart, responsible adults you’ll get that behavior in return.

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