unmet expectation equals frustration, the leadership fix

Summary

most leadership problems are actually communication problems. I got a call recently from an entrepreneur ready to fire a new hire. ten minutes into him complaining, I told him the failure was his, not the employee’s. nobody had given the new person any feedback. they were just being watched, in silence, failing.

1. you can’t hire perfectly. you have to lead through the gaps. that means continuous feedback, not silent observation. set the standard, give the training, then keep the loop tight as the person ramps.

2. learn how each person needs feedback. some want it direct. some need a softer wrap. ask them in the hiring conversation. they may not know exactly, but the conversation gives you the data.

3. frustration is always an unmet expectation. exactly two ways to fix it. one, have zero expectations of anyone, which means having no standards, which means living without caring. or two, communicate the expectation when it isn’t met. there’s no third option.

4. ask yourself the second question every time. how is this also my fault. did I communicate the standard clearly. did I check in. did I train. the answer is almost always yes to some degree.

5. the crap sandwich works. compliment something real, deliver the hard feedback, close with something real. takes thirty seconds. saves the relationship and the role.

if you’re frustrated and you’re not communicating it, you’re just stockpiling resentment. that’s not leadership, that’s avoidance. try harder.

Transcript

the call about firing someone

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Welcome to the better human business podcast. I’m Jerred Moon and today I’m talking about leadership, but really I’m talking about communication. So I talked to a lot of different entrepreneurs about leadership and the overwhelming theme that I run into on leadership always comes back to communication, lack of communication, poor communication, not enough communication, and I’m starting to think just from my experience here that communication can solve a lot of your leadership issues and that’s what I want to talk about today.

So most recently I was talking with someone who they had a relatively new hire in their business and this person was just not meeting their expectations. They weren’t doing the things that they wanted them to do or if they weren’t doing them as well as they thought they should. And now wasn’t the fact that the entrepreneur had forgotten to like have standards in place when the person was hired.

I’m not talking about that level of disorganization. I’m talking about this person had hired them, they had the job description, they gave them the tasks, they gave them the training, all the stuff that we can do, right? Anyone can do those things. Some entrepreneurs skip even those steps, but what was happening was the execution just wasn’t there.

the failure was the leader’s

It wasn’t where this person wanted it to be. And so they’re talking to me, they want to know, they’re really reaching out to me to have a conversation. They wanted to know how to have a conversation about firing somebody. That’s the conversation they wanted to have with me. And so the conversation started with them complaining a lot about their employee and then ultimately asking me, how do you have these really tough conversations about firing somebody?

And I was like, what are you talking about firing this person for? I was like, so far, all I’ve heard in your rambling for the last 10 minutes is your failure to lead and communicate effectively with your new staff member. That’s all I’ve heard you say. And I don’t mind having direct conversations with people and saying things like that.

And that really made them question why they were having a conversation with me. They thought I was supposed to be in their corner and it’s not that I was necessarily on the employee’s side, but the employee had not even been working there for very long and there had been no communication. It was just like the boss was just sitting in the background watching them fail.

They do a new thing, they fail, they do a new thing, they fail, or you did it but it wasn’t as good, but there was no feedback being given. There was no additional training. There was no communication. And so, to me, that’s 100% a failure on the leader’s part. People aren’t perfect. It’s very hard to nail the perfect hire.

communicate as the new hire ramps

And even if you train them really well, there still has to be this never-ending communication, this feedback loop, and you have to always look at what am I doing wrong. Now I’m not saying that every employee deserves 10 chances and you shouldn’t fire anybody, but in this situation that I most recently was talking to someone about, it was 100% on the leader’s part.

They had all these problems of like tasks were getting done, but they just weren’t getting done to the level they wanted, but that was not being communicated. So typically, when you have a new employee, you have to learn how you need to communicate with them. Is it direct? Is it more indirect? Learn what kind of person they are.

What do they respond well to? You can even ask them that in the hiring process, how they prefer to receive feedback because that’s what’s going to come. You’re going to have to give them that feedback. They’ll let you say, they might not answer that question very well, but you could probably probe a little bit more and figure it out.

But ultimately, you have to be like, even if you want to do it in the nicest way, you can be like, hey, you did that task. Thank you for doing the task on time and how I trained you, but I feel like I may have not given you the level of detail that I wanted. So you’re starting off with a compliment, right?

frustration equals unmet expectation

And then you giving them like the feedback. These things are very easy. It’s like leadership 101, but you need to communicate all these problems when you’re having with people. Now this goes across the board. Leadership we’re leaders every single day. We’re leaders to ourselves. We’re leaders to our spouses or our significant others.

We’re leaders to our children. If you have children, like we’re leaders and leaders have to communicate. You have to be able to communicate. You have to let them know what’s going on. You have to let them know good, bad or ugly. You have to communicate all these different things. Even if you’re an employee in the business, you have to communicate effectively with other team members and with customers like that’s another form of leadership.

It’s just good communication. If you are struggling with this, just start writing down anytime you start to get frustrated as a leader and this could be like I said, this could be in relationships at home where you have leadership, where you are a leader or this could be as an entrepreneur. But if you’re starting to get frustrated with an employee or somebody you have a relationship with, just answer the question, am I communicating this frustration and if so, how?

That’s it. That’s my leadership tip of the day, tip of the week here, maybe tip of the year if you don’t do this stuff. But frustration typically comes from an unmet expectation. So there are only two ways to fix that. One way is to have zero expectations of anyone or anything and you can just go around through life not really caring what happens and have no standards.

That’s one option. You’ll never be frustrated if you live that life because you have no expectations. You have no standard. But assuming you are a human being with a pulse and you have some sort of level of expectation of those around you and your team members, you have a standard you want them to adhere to, then you’re going to have to communicate because they will not always meet those expectations.

the crap sandwich

And now you have to, you say, okay, there’s an unmet expectation, I’m frustrated, how am I communicating to this? How am I communicating this? And then also, not only am I communicating it, how could this be my fault? It probably is to some degree your fault. You didn’t communicate enough early on, so now it’s a problem.

You didn’t take ownership in the fact that, hey, maybe I need to do this a different way or maybe I need to communicate differently. Something’s not happening. So those are the questions you need to ask yourself. But at the end of the day, if you’re frustrated, you need to be communicating that or else you end up with all this resentment for people in your lives and for employees and everything else because you just have a bunch of frustrations and you’re too scared to communicate them so you’d rather go internal with it and be pissed off all the time when really you can just go communicate with that person.

Now sometimes you communicate with an employee who sucks too often, too much feedback, they might quit. But if they suck that bad, you probably were going to fire them anyway, so it’s okay. You just have to put on the big boy pants or the big girl pants and have the tough conversations. And like I said, there are easy ways to do that where you compliment the things that they did well and then you come in with the feedback, the negative side of it, then you end with something that’s positive, right?

That’s what they call the crap sandwich. You have something good, something crappy, and then something good on the back end. That’s how you can give feedback, just easy stuff right there. So my only lesson for you today is if you have an expectation and it’s unmet, you will have a frustration, and if you have a frustration, there needs to be communication.

Are you communicating with people in your lives, in your life? Are you communicating with your team members? And if you’re not, maybe you need to try a little bit harder.