Hey, this is Chris with Hacking Leadership on today's discussion on employee engagement.
I want to talk about the importance.
Of getting and maintaining clarity of goals and expectations between you and your leader. You know, on this show, Lorenzo and I talk about the importance of clarity and how one of your responsibilities as a leader of people is to provide clarity to your people on what the goals and expectations are, not just of their role in general,
but of the moment. And you know, in organizations, the goals or the objectives can change by an annual or a quarterly basis, but sometimes it can feel like those goals are changing based on a moment by moment basis when leaders don't have kind of the ability to decipher
between what's important and what's urgent. And you know, I've been in situations before where I didn't have that clarity between my leader and myself, and it led to me spending time on things weren't as important but they felt important at the moment, and it ended up being that, you know, time was being wasted on those things versus what was was really important. You know, in order to
be successful in a role. Obviously, you need to align with the priorities of your leader, and in a perfect world, all leaders would be clear about what those expectations are, what the priorities are, but some leaders aren't as great at being clear about those things. You know, and if you, as an employee, want to take more ownership over your career or the outcomes associated with your career, the doors that open for you when it comes.
To getting your job done correctly.
It can sometimes take a responsibility on your end to gain that clarity if it's not being provided to you. I've been in situations where I've gone to my boss and said, hey, you know, what's how am I doing?
You know, what is my performance doing?
Well? What are what are the things that I should be working on that I'm not working on? And I have received answers something like, oh, yeah, you're doing great
or yeah, I just keep doing what you're doing. And that can feel great in the moment, like Okay, I guess I'm doing the right thing, but if that doesn't align with what's going on, you know, a month or two months down the road, when we have performance discussions and I'm getting talked to by my leader about you know what I've not done right or what I should
have been working on. Then it can feel very bad for me as the employee that I've been almost put in a situation where I didn't know I should have been doing something, or I've put too much focus or time and effort or attention into the things that felt important in the moment but weren't necessarily the bigger picture
things that I should have been working on. It took me a while to realize that when I didn't have this clarity, it was less that my boss was being difficult or you know, didn't want to put the effort in, and more likely that the cause of that was probably a lack of clarity in themselves on what the goals were, either because their leader wasn't being forthcoming or it wasn't painting a good picture about what the priority should be.
And now that kind of trickles downhill where the leader that is feeling like their priorities are vague, all they can do is pass on that ambiguity to their team, and then everybody kind of falls under the same situation where they're focusing on whatever feels urgent in the moment as opposed to the more important goals or the.
Bigger picture of things.
And when I first start thinking about this, my kind of knee jerk reaction is to say, well, that's not more responsibility, you know, like this is this is more effort or kind of like, you know, expending emotional capital to get into the head of my boss when it should be their responsibility to provide.
The information to me. And that's not wrong. It is their responsibility.
But if you want to make sure that your career, or your aspirations, or the doors that are opened or closed for you aren't completely controlled by somebody else and you want to have more ownership over that, it might take effort on your part to talk to your boss to figure it out. And sometimes, you know, the high level questions that we ask about those things are met with answers that don't seem to provide any further clarity
than what we had going into it. And so what I want to talk about is how to best make sure that the time that you're spending at work is on items that would be considered promotable work, you know, things that you can hang your hat on at night and say I accomplished this that will align with the organizational objectives of your company as a whole, or the broader leadership structure within the organization, as opposed to just your boss who might be telling you what to do
based on what feels urgent in the moment, but isn't necessarily you know, the bigger picture priority things. And so I want to go over a couple of questions that you can ask your boss that will kind of help decode.
That that language a little bit.
Things that you can say that will be more likely to elicit a candid response or a more accurate response if you happen to be reporting to a leader who isn't good at being forthcoming with what this information is or what you should really be working on. So I want to go over some of those questions, but first let's get to one of our sponsors. All right.
If you're trying to.
Gain clarity or validate the clarity you think you already have on the things you should be working on, some of the questions that you should be asking your boss are things like what goals do they discuss with their boss? The importance of this question is that it kind of reveals what impacts the performance or reviews or appraisals of your boss, So what metrics do they get taught about first with their boss as opposed to just having them
try to translate it to you on their own. If you ask them specifically what they are kind of tracked on or what leads to a performance appraisal result that we consider positive versus negative from their boss, the answer they give you to this is likely what's important to their boss, and then that is likely what should be important to you as well. And so when you're bringing this up, the important thing is to ask what things does your boss talk to you about first when they
have a conversation. So when you sit down with your boss to figure out, you know, what your progression is, what are the things that your boss brings up first? If you ask that of your boss, then those are likely the things that you should be working on first as well. The next question you can ask is, you know, what are the projects that we're working on right now that spend the most time in your head? Basically what
keeps you up at night. And the reason you want to ask it this way is because it removes yourself from the equation altogether, and hopefully it will get a more honest or candid response from your leader because you're asking them about the things that impact them. Those are the things that your boss might struggle on getting done. And if they're struggling with getting it done, they are very likely going to struggle with providing you the clarity
that you need to get it done as well. And so it kind of gives them an opportunity to show a little vulnerability and tell you what are the things that are kind of bothering them or the things that they don't have enough time to work on, and then you can decide how much of that you can take on on your plate, because anything that you can do to again further align your actions with the priorities of your boss are the things they're going to work out
better for you. When it comes to performance appraisals or quarterly or annual talent assessments or ratings that you might get. The last question might be the most important one, and that's to ask your boss what the difference between good and great performance looks like. But it's important to word
it a certain way. Ask your boss what good looks like when it comes to results and how you're spending your time, and let them tell you what that looks like without interrupting, let them go through that entire answer, and then once they answer that question, fallow up with it and say, okay, that's perfect.
What does great performance look like?
Now? And so what you're saying is the things that they've just said to you in that answer would be what will be considered kind of meeting expectations.
Or what good performance looks like?
And then now you want to find out what is great look like. If you ask them the difference between good and great right up front, then you're likely to only get a response of what they considered it to be great, but might only just be what good performance looks like. So you have to wait till they answer the question on what good looks like to then follow
up and ask them what does great look like? The answer to this secondary follow up question is going to be the difference between performing at a kind of meeting expectations level or exceeding expectations, and that could be all the difference in the world between what doors open for you, even if you happen to be working for a leader who isn't great at laying this out to begin with, or providing.
The clarity that they should be providing.
And then the last thing I want to mention when it comes to this is that if you're having difficulty gaining this clarity from your boss, make sure that that doesn't translate into your inability to provide clarity to your
team members, the people that report to you. So, if you're a leader of people who is feeling this with your boss, then it's likely that you have a difficult time kind of trickling it down to your people, not because you don't want to, but because if you don't understand what good looks like, if you don't understand what the expectations are, if you don't have that clarity, how do you then translate that to give it to your people.
And so if you're going through these conversations with your boss, if you're having these issues and you're trying to solve them, make sure that you understand that that means that it's like your people are feeling the same thing, because if you were very easily able to translate it to them, that means you already know.
What you should be doing.
And if you don't know what you should be doing, then you're not articulating it.
Correctly to your people as well.
And so as you're getting this clarity, make sure you don't keep it to yourself, make sure you don't know just run with it on what you should be doing, but that you bring your people in on it too, because if they feel more clarity on what the expectations are, then they have more control over their own career progress and they will likely become more engaged in their work because they understand that the things that they see you working on are the things you're also asking them to
work on, and that will sit very well with them.
And making sure they understand that they.
Are focusing on the right things, that they are considering bigger picture things and not just was urgent during the moment. Thanks for joining me today and listening. We'll see you next Thursday for the next discussion of employee engagement.
You have a great day.