047: Setting Expectations for Your Team

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This week I'm talking about setting expectations for your team members. What you do what you hold us accountable, and what do you let slide as far as behavior and work performance will become new standards. set clear expectations up front and then follow through with them, which includes your own personal behavior and work performance.

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clear communication is always key to clear expectations.

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Please enjoy the episode.

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Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance, and accounting. This is episode number 47. And I will be talking about setting expectations. And we'll highlight the following topics. Number one, effective communication is the key. Number two, matching team culture and your expectations. And three, you must hold everyone accountable, including yourself.

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Apple executive, Angela urens said, everyone talks about building a relationship with your customer. I think you build one with your employees first.

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This season of the podcast is about leading your team and setting your team up for success. It's how you fill the spots in your team, to what values are important, and how we communicate how we want our team to perform an act every day.

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becoming a leader is investing in ourselves. So we know how to invest in our team to make them better with every action, and every task we complete as a team. Two weeks ago on episode 45. I talked about recruiting and hiring new team members. We need to expand the pipeline to increase our chance to get better candidates. And it's critical to partner with HR so you can best influence the pipeline and the recruiting strategy. Last week on episode 46 was about team culture, which influences how the team performs together, and how everyone respects each other. What culture Do you want within your team. What you choose and what you allow will affect everyone's overall work experience and performance. What you communicate what you enforce and how you personally behave affects the team culture you have. This week, I am talking about setting the right expectations for your team members. It's essential that you get this right when a new team member comes on board. And it's important for your current team members to an expectation is a behavior, an attitude or a process that you are anticipating your team member to perform to a set standard continually. Sometimes it takes training and coaching to align people to expectations. We set expectations. So we established a baseline of what we want our team to do. How can you review performance or coach someone if you have never talked about expectations. As leaders, we want our team to grow. We want to see each person develop and become better each day, and with each task or project. When we align our expectations with our vision and goals. And we communicate that clearly to our team. We then show the level of excellence we want. Your team members who embrace this will rise and hopefully exceed your expectations with everything I believe and talk about it begins with you the leader. When you set a standard by your own behavior or attitude, the team will pick up on it and you may not even realize it. What you do personally on the team can both have incredibly positive results. But also negative ones to the onboarding experience is where you can set the standards and communicate what you desire from your new team members.

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These critically early days set the tone for what you expect.

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Don't waste this opportunity.

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Talk about values beliefs, what is important, and how the team should interact. Your current team members also need reminders of the values of the team and what is expected. Here are a few examples of what you can set for expectations. You can talk about the standard hours of business that we work, you can tell them when to ask for help. When you're stuck in a problem or an issue. You can talk about team values. Also professional behavior and the style of dress that's expected. You should talk about attitude and demeanor and also how to represent the organization and also what defines excellence in our work.

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This is especially important.

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Here's an example that I want to share with you, your team members responsible for certain journal entries at monthly close and you say to yourself, this is just a journal entry. No. Every journal entry is critical to the accuracy of the financial statements. So your person who is responsible Double must focus on accuracy and timeliness of that entry. Are they pulling the right data, and is the tool that is being used set up properly to analyze and set up the entry. I have seen sloppy journal entry work that creates wrong entries.

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We have to communicate what we expect in terms of accuracy, and timeliness in this work, and everything we do. It's critical for the accuracy of the financial statements. The senior leaders, executives and other stakeholders are relying on us to enforce high expectations in the work we do. Nothing is small everything is important in the work that we do regarding finance and accounting. And I also have a story to share with you. I usually tell stories about my army experience, and the army was definitely excellent at setting expectations from attending basic combat training. And also when you arrive to your first assignment after basic training, the army has a set of values, a strong team culture, and expectations to live up to every day. But I wanted to share a story from my days as a master's degree program student, the head of the business master's program, at my school, was a retired US Army officer, and he had high standards and high expectations. The very first paper of the first course I took he graded the papers with a very scrutinized I he probably failed or close to failed most of us on that paper and explained why it wasn't masters level work. I ensured I delivered master's level work on every paper after that in all my MBA courses, not just his he set and enforced high expectations. My view and approach changed after that.

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Let's talk a few minutes about setting expectations. Number one, effective communication is key leadership is about clear, concise, and effective communication, and share you know what expectations you want to communicate and make it clear writing it down and then handing it off after you explain what you expect is even better. Be clear when you start to explain what organizational and team expectations are. And sure to clear up anything that seems confusing. It's our fault and our responsibility as leaders.

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If we don't communicate clearly, what we are asking our team to do. Effective communication is a key skill that we all need to be developing and improving. In the next two episodes, I'm going to talk about coaching, and performance reviews. If you haven't successfully communicated expectations, how can you effectively coach or even provide a fair performance review? To properly gauge performance, you need a baseline to compare. And that is where we should be effectively communicating what we expect.

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And that includes skills both hard technical skills and soft skills, behaviors, and many others continue to grow your own ability to communicate effectively. The number two, matching team culture with your expectations. Last week and Episode 46. I talked about team culture, your expectations should match the team culture you want. So please listen to Episode 46. If you have missed it. To achieve your ideal culture, you have to consider what your expectations are. For example, if your team is more social and you have returned to the office, what do you expect from your team regarding after work or lunchtime events? is a mandatory attendance? Are you flexible? Can you do the event in the last hour of the workday instead of making it after work?

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If you want to see more group problem solving or cooperating more to help each other on a difficult task, how do you set that as the way this group conducts a problem solving event? There are many considerations but it's up to you to develop the messaging and coaching to achieve the culture you desire. When you communicate and match expectations to the culture you want, you can reduce confusion of where you want to go. And number three, you must hold everyone accountable including yourself. You are the leader, what you communicate and emphasize as important or resonate on your team. You can hold people accountable and have empathy at the same time. Some people believe there's a conflict here, there isn't.

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You're not doing anyone any service of leadership. If you don't hold people accountable to the standards that are necessary to have a functioning team that performs well and respects each other. No conflict at all. And accountability begins with us.

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You are being watched for your behavior. You are being silently judged for your actions, your words, and once you enforce the standards on the team, if you want to be seen as a credible leader, you have to live the same expectations as you have laid out for your team and now I have a few specific expectations for finance and accounting professionals. Number one, you should be growing your technical expertise, including knowing new accounting and finance process decisions, like fast speed processes. technical expertise is already expected in this profession. So continue to grow it, and to be seen as an expert in this field. Number two, I believe you need to be earning a professional certification, and there are many out there. Number three, you need to earn an advanced degree, whether it be an MBA, or a master's degree in finance, or even accounting.

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Number four, you must know how to communicate numbers and what they mean to people who don't understand numbers very well.

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You need to know how to add context to a set of numbers and match that to the strategy. What do these numbers mean to the person who is reading the report, or the email or looking at it on a slide number five, you need to be developing your leadership and influence skills.

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And finally, I expect finance and accounting people to partner with senior leaders to develop and execute the strategy. Now this list is a good start and what to expect for your team members and there are others specifically work with your team on what you expect them to do as professionals. Now for an easy one today, please review your onboarding process, your organization should have a formal onboarding process to set your new team member up with success. Some have a very formal step by step process of training and meetings to teach the values and procedures of the organization. Now some fall short. In the absence of an organizational approach, you can devise one for your new team members. The first few days are critical to you and your new team member for communicating standards and expectations. And most importantly, for building trust. The first day is especially important. So review what your organization has and what you have as a plan and improve your part of it. Make it clear and eliminate anything that is confusing. I have a free guide for you.

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It's called the leadership growth blueprint for finance and accounting managers. In the guide I talked about three leadership areas communication, team growth, and empowerment.

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Plus a few recommendations around challenges with the systems you are probably using to complete your work. The link to the guide is in the episode description. Or you can go to Stephen McLain calm. Please use it to help you with a few leadership wins today. Thank you. This episode is sponsored by my course through finance leader Academy. It's called Advanced your finance and accounting career developing a promotion strategy that will set you apart. To advance your career you must set yourself apart from your peers, finance and accounting professionals are already expected to be technically competent. This course helps you establish your professional Foundation, and how you can set yourself apart from your peers. by growing your leadership skills and developing your executive presence. You can go to Stephen McLain calm for more details on this career advancement course The link is also in the show notes with this episode. Thank you. Today I talked about the importance of setting expectations and highlighted the following points. Number one, effective communication is key. Number two, you must match team culture with your expectations. And three, you must hold everyone accountable, including yourself expectations begin and end with us as leaders, we need to clearly communicate to our team what we expect. Try to eliminate confusion. Additionally, you need to be doing those very same things you're asking your team to do. What you do or don't do, your team will follow. When you do something contrary to the expectations or the team's values that you have communicated then you set a new standard of behavior. Leadership is always about setting the right example of behavior.

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Respect an excellent job performance expectations provide a base standard to train and coach your team to excellence.

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Your new team members should end those first few days with a set of high standards to live up to and also how to fit into the team's culture. When a new task is assigned. What does it mean to complete this task to excellence? How is excellence defined in this environment?

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When your team member faces adversity? Or a decision on behavior? How are they expected to act? Their early conversations on expectations provide that starting point for them to grow into a member who contributes positively every day and it begins with you. Next week, I will discuss coaching your team members to better performance. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader Podcast. I am dedicated to helping you grow your leadership because it is leadership that will set you apart from your peers. You can get this episode Wherever you find podcasts, until next time, you can go check out more resources at Stephen McLain calm, and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now, the lead your team and I'll see you next time.

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Thank you.

047: Setting Expectations for Your Team

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