618 | The Silent Team Killer: How Unspoken Expectations Undermine Success

If your team is struggling with execution, accountability, or a culture that feels, well, disconnected, then this episode is for you. Today we're breaking down one of the biggest silent killers in leadership: Unspoken expectations.

Why they wreak havoc on teams, and most importantly, how you can fix them. That is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are.

All right, leaders, here's the deal. One of the most common frustrations I hear from business owners and leaders is, is why aren't my people getting it?

They're missing deadlines, the performance is all over the place, and they seem frustrated. I'm going to tell you nine out of 10 times, the root cause isn't bad employees.

It's unspoken expectations. These are assumptions that we make. The things we think should be obvious but just aren't.

And when expectations aren't clearly defined, it leads to misalignment, confusion, and ultimately, as you've probably already experienced, failure.

So let's dive into what's really happening and how you can change it in your business.

The Reality of Unspoken Expectations (00:01:37)

So the first thing is, is we have to talk through the reality of unspoken expectations. So here is what I see all the time: Leaders assume.

And I'm going to tell you, I have experienced this. Leaders on my team have experienced this. Pretty much every leader I've ever led, you know, in other organizations have experienced this.

Leaders assume that their teams just know what to do. But what is crystal clear in your mind is often muddy in theirs, right? It's not. It's not clear like it is to you. And while I'm talking about leaders doing this, it's not just leaders.

Team members do this to each other as well, right? These. These expectations, especially through personality styles, depending upon, you know, if you're a high C, you expect high Cs, know exactly what you know, high D, S, same kind of concept, right? And so on.

When expectations aren't clearly communicated, right, it's not just good enough to tell somebody, you need to go do that thing. It's not good enough in the interview process to ask somebody, do you know how to do this?

You have to actually learn whether or not the person knows what they're doing. If they do not understand what to do, then you have to clearly communicate it.

When expectations are not clearly communicated, what do you end up with?

Well, miss deadlines number one, you know, hey, I need you to go do this thing. Maybe you haven't even communicated the deadlines that are in place.

But if they don't know what they're doing and you have an expectation that they're going to get it done and get it done by a certain time, it's probably not going to happen.

Probably because nobody knew how urgent it was, right? Another thing you're going to get is inconsistent performance. Because without clear standards, people just do what they think is best, right?

I mean, you have probably been there before, working for a leader who did a great job, terrible job communicating to you. And so you did what you thought you needed to do, right?

You plugged along, you did what you thought was the best thing to do, only to find out later on that you were supposed to be doing something else.

You're supposed to be doing it faster, different, their way, not your way, whatever it is.

On top of all of this, one of the worst things that you end up getting because this is going to happen over and over again, is you end up with frustrated team members.

They literally feel like they have been set up to fail, right? So if you tell a team member to take ownership of a project to you, that means proactive communication.

It means problem solving, it means ensuring it gets done exactly, exactly the way that it's supposed to get done. To them, it might, it might simply mean completing their assigned tasks.

I know to you're like, how? How in the world could that be? Well, there are many different aspects. We'll talk through some of these.

But I will tell you, especially if you're not communicating to the same exact personality style as you, then you probably don't understand why they see things differently.

You know, if you are a high D, I or S and you're communicating to a high C and telling them to take ownership of a project, what they hear is do the tasks, get the task done right.

The higher the C they are, a 99 C is going to go, what's the task I'm supposed to do? That's the only thing I'm going to do because that's what they told me to do. Right?

Because you didn't clearly communicate it in their personality. You didn't lean into their personality style and explain to them exactly what you wanted.

So they're going to take it very literally and they're going to do what they think you meant. So do you see the gap here? When you don't have clarity, both sides end up frustrated.

Unspoken expectations create confusion. Clear expectations eliminate missed deadlines. Performance issues absolutely can get rid of a ton of frustration.

And the best thing is, is that it moves us forward at a much faster pace. When you don't clearly communicate, you're slowing the entire process down.

Now, let me give it to you from a high level.

If it's happening with one leader who is leading a team or a person or teams or leads leaders, whatever it is, to whatever extent they have people under them and this is the way they're leading, I'm promising you it's running through that entire team.

If it's coming from the absolute top, then you have these problems through your entire company.

The Impact of Unspoken Expectations on Culture (00:06:41)

So number two thing we need to know is how this kills our culture.

So this just isn't about tasks, right? It's not just about getting a job done. It's about culture. And to me, culture is actions and attitudes. That sums up culture for me, Right.

When you look at the actions and attitudes that happen inside a business, that's pretty much your culture right there, right?

So when people don't know what's expected of them, they. They feel fearful. You know, they hesitate to act because they don't want to mess up.

They're afraid that they're going to be putting their neck on a chopping block and they don't have control. And whether or not that ax gets swung, strange way of putting it.

But, you know, when people are fearful, they won't take risks, right? They're not going to go ballistic to try and solve something because they're afraid if they do, they're going to make it even worse if they have to try and figure it out.

And it wasn't communicated. Now you've got some high Ds that are probably going to bust up in there and try and figure out something and knock something around.

And if it's not the right thing, it's going to be a while. You didn't tell me what to do, so I did what I thought I should do. And yet we're wasting time, right?

We're wasting time, we're wasting resources.

So the longer it takes to do things to get to these expectations that haven't been clearly communicated, the more time we waste, the more productivity we waste, the more resources we waste, the more net profit we waste.

Another thing is they end up confused, right? Team members feel confused when they don't know what's expected of them. You know that you've been here, you know that you've experienced this somewhere.

When somebody had expectations of you that you didn't clearly understand and you were confused on what to do, right?

That confusion compounds inside of a person, the longer they go without knowing what they're supposed to do, because they don't just work on one project, right?

They don't just work on one task or one thing. So the more confused they are, the more difficult it is for them to focus heavily on being successful at any project.

Chances are. Chances are they're going to go after the easiest thing to accomplish, the thing that they know that they're going to be successful at.

So while you're frustrated because they're not getting done the stuff that you want them to do, they're just going, hey, man, I'm trying to get some wins here.

I'm trying to make some things happen because I don't know what I'm doing.

My best example, my favorite example of this is, you know, if you, if you ever go back to when Trump did the, The Apprentice, that's what it was. Not the celebrity.

I'm not even talking about the celebrity one. I don't know if I ever watched that one.

But the, the original show, it was one of those things that I enjoyed watching because you saw what horrible leadership looks like, and you get down to, if you've ever seen that or if you haven't, it's.

It's all these leaders coming in to do all these tasks, and whoever does the best job, then, you know, they're the ones that get down to the. The last two, and then they battle against each other.

And my favorite part, my favorite part is, and you see this probably in a lot of shows nowadays, they bring back the people who got fired, and they become team members of the person who's trying to win this thing.

Now, here's the reason why I like to use that as an example, because inevitably, inevitably, you find they do these videos of the leader who's trying to win this thing going.

You just got to put stuff on your team, and you just got to trust them to get it done. And then you, they, you know, the next thing, the edit goes to some dude who's running around Home Depot with an empty cart going, I don't even know what I'm doing.

I don't know why I'm here. I don't know what I'm supposed to get, but I'm just going to try and figure it out. And then it goes back to the other person.

You just got to trust in your team to make things happen. I used to just laugh my tail off at that because I'm like, this is the worst example of leadership. And of course, that person's going to lose, right?

I mean, unless both leaders are doing that, right? If one of them actually has even halfway decent communication, it's going to beat the other guy, right? Or the other gal.

But that was such a great example that I used to use back in the day of teaching leaders and going, hey, here's a great example of what a lack of communication looks like. Here's what a lack of clarity looks like.

These people don't know what's most important. They don't even know what they're supposed to do. They don't know what's expected of them, right?

So how can you expect that, that somebody's gonna do a great job when you have not clearly communicated to them?

Another thing team members can feel if they don't have expectations clearly communicated to them is they can feel like there's no accountability, like they're unchecked.

You know, if expectations aren't clear, then how do you hold anybody accountable? If I. If I don't see you holding me accountable or anybody else accountable, where's the accountability in the business, right?

So if, let's say, a leader assumes that a customer experience is, you know, our top priority, this is the thing that we are focusing on the most. But if that's never reinforced, then what you may find.

I mean, if you haven't taught your team that customer experience is the top priority, then what you find is team members prioritize, maybe speed over service.

How do I get this thing done right? How do I? You know, I had somebody I was communicating with recently about a process, and I'm like, hey, speed is fantastic.

But understand, accuracy is more important than speed. And this is somebody who works at a fast pace, but they also can mess things up because of speed.

And I'm like, hey, listen, I want you to be fast. I want you to be accurate before I want you to be fast. And it just landed with them. They're like, okay, you know, I get this because they knew.

They knew that sometimes they go a little bit too fast and they can mess things up. And it was just a really good moment of bringing clarity to what's most important to me by knowing that they knew what to focus on.

Don't get too fast. Don't get ahead of yourself. Don't mess things up. Be accurate. That's the most important thing. So when you don't explain to your team that the customer experience is the top priority, then what do you get?

You get inconsistent customer experiences. Because what if, you know, the rest of your team is focused on, well, Frank sure wants me to be faster.

Yeah, that the speed is the most important thing when really what you're wanting is a different type of experience for your customer.

So culture that's shaped by unspoken expectations, I can promise you it's going to breed fear, it's going to breed stress, it's going to create a lack of accountability.

But if you create clarity, if you bring clarity to what you're trying to lead people to do, if you bring clarity to people's roles, if you bring clarity to the expectations, then the great thing is, is it creates confidence. And confidence is crazy powerful.

Confidence gets team members moving faster, more productive, more profitable, utilizing resources correctly. Right. So all of those things matter.

How to Set Clear Expectations (00:14:12)

Number three, what we need to focus on is how to set clear expectations.

So fixing this isn't just about telling people what to do, it's about collaborating with them. And here's how you can do this.

The first thing you need to do is define your expectations clearly. Be specific about what success looks like.

Let me say this again, start with the end in mind.

What does success look like if they do this thing, if they do this project, if they do whatever, if they how they lead a client through the customer experience, whatever it is, show them, explain to them what success looks like and then help them to see how to get there.

Second thing is communicate early and often. One conversation isn't enough.

A lot of you out there have the personality style or personality styles that think just because you told somebody once they should know it. I told them once, I shouldn't have to tell them again.

Folks, the goal here is success, not how few times you can tell somebody to do something. So if you understand that, then you can understand that you need to communicate more than once. You need to communicate early and often.

Third thing is make it a two way street. Don't just tell your team and don't just give your team information. Make sure that you're asking them, you know, to share their thoughts, to share their concerns.

How do you feel about this? Do you understand everything? Where do you think you might fail? Where do you think? Where have I not given you the best information? Make it a two way street.

Make sure that they get to ask you questions, talk to you about it. Right? If you don't, then again asking them, do you get this? Your answer is probably going to be yes, I do.

And then they're going to leave. And then a week later you're going to find out that they really didn't get it.

Number four, document it now, whether it's a KRA, A Key Result Areas which I highly suggest you have KRAs in your business for every stinking role in the entire business or whether it's a checklist or whether it's a, I don't know, a team agreement, whatever it is, put it in writing.

Put it in writing. So not only do they have something to refer to, but you have something to refer to. One thing that happens all the time with leaders who don't get things written down is you lead somebody on something, you do not write it down.

You come back and you're like, hey, how come you're not doing this way that we talked about? You didn't tell me that.

Yes, I totally did. I absolutely told you that. No, I don't remember that. And then you're sitting there going, I know for a fact that we talked about this, but you have nothing to refer to.

So even if it's in an email and you just summarize, you know, the clear expectations, here's the things we talked about. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Make sure that you document it. Now, do you have to always do that?

You're probably going to get to a place where you've got some quality champions that you do not have to do that with. They're not going to hide behind. You never told me, right?

But even in those situations, many times you can believe that you communicated something that you did not. So even when you've got a champion, make sure that you're getting it done correctly.

Fifth thing, Reinforce, reinforce, reinforce. Check in regularly and provide feedback.

So instead of just saying, hey guys, we need to improve our team communication, right? Say something like, I want you to lead a 10 minute team check in every Monday where everybody shares their top priorities, their top roadblocks.

And then let's review it in two weeks and then come back and review it, take a look at it, be a part of it, listen to it, write down takeaways that you have, reinforce the process, reinforce what you expect.

If those meetings aren't going the way that you want them to guide, direct, steer, help them to get on the right path. Don't just come back two weeks later and go, hey, these suck.

That's a waste of time. So clear expectations come from defining, communicating, documenting and reinforcing them.

Now the fourth thing, the fourth thing is, and this is, I think everybody wants this, but sometimes they, they don't understand just how important it is.

The Power of Team Buy-In (00:18:57)

The fourth thing is, is why does team buy in matter? So let's be real, people don't like Being told what to do.

They want to feel like they have ownership. They want to feel like they have responsibility. Now, some people do.

Some people just want you to tell them, you know, every five minutes, hey, I need you to go do this. I need you to go do this right.

But champions don't operate that way. Champions want to feel ownership. They want to feel like they have good responsibility or great responsibility.

So team buy in happens when team members help define their own expectations. If you define the expectations for them, then there's a really good chance they're just gonna feel like they've been dictated to.

This is what the leaders told me to do. I'm gonna go do the thing. If you bring them in on the process and you get them to help you define the expectations, then great things happen.

You may discover things you hadn't even thought about. You may see paths that you hadn't thought about. They may bring up information, hey, what if we did it this way?

What about this over here? What if we took this piece out and put this piece in, right?

So not only do you get a better process, but you're creating team buy in, team ownership. And the great thing is by taxing the collective intelligence, you're going to find that they come up with stuff that you probably didn't come up with.

On top of wanting to help out to define this, the expectations that you have of them, it also helps them to understand why something is important.

Now, I will especially tell you now, if you've not done personality styles, go to chrislocurto.com get it done. Get this, get the video, get the personality style profiles.

Get, you know, get this done in your team, you will be blown away. There are personality styles that if they do not understand the bigger pictures, you know, a lot of you out there want to just tell somebody, go do the thing.

And for some personality styles that can work, they'll go do it. It's going to come back not being the way that you want it to be, but they will have gotten it done, at least to their standards.

And then there are other personality styles that will not be able to execute on what you're asking. Why? Because they don't understand it. They need a bigger picture to understand the thing you're asking them to do.

Now, if that is not you, then this is probably confusing again. Get personality styles into your business. Get the video so you understand what I'm talking about here.

If you do not communicate in the way that the person needs to receive information to be set up for success, Then don't be surprised when they fail. There are certain personality styles that need to be communicated to in different ways.

They need to hear different levels of details. There's some personality styles that if you give too much information, you've lost them. Right. So this is vitally important.

Another thing is, is they feel ownership of their responsibilities.

So not only do they feel ownership of the role, not only do they feel ownership of the expectations that you're setting, but this begins a greater path of somebody really taking ownership of all of their response, all the things that they're responsible for.

Powerful piece of getting somebody to look at every aspect of what they do and to take ownership.

So for example, let's say you are a sales team leader and you want your sales team to improve, let's say with follow ups with clients, instead of mandating a new script, what if you had them collaborate as a team, you know, together as a team to develop a follow up strategy?

What would the result be? Well, the team is more invested in the follow through because they helped create it. Right?

They helped be a part of the process. So when teams co create expectations, or you know, a team member does with a leader, then they take ownership.

And the great thing is that increases commitment, that increases execution, that increases engagement in the process.

The Consequences of Not Addressing This Issue (00:23:17)

Number five, what are the consequences of not addressing the issue?

Well, if you don't take action to eliminate unspoken expectations, then here's what tends to happen. Your morale is going to drop. And I mean tank.

Team members feel confused and they feel disengaged. You're going to experience inconsistent performance. Some people are going to hit the mark, others are not.

Champions are probably going to do a better job. If you have folks that are not champions, they're probably going to fail miserably.

You're going to experience increased turnover. Frustration leads to talent leaving all the time. You might lose your best champions this way because they don't want to be in that type of atmosphere.

So if you're struggling with employees not stepping up, then what could the real issue be? Well, it could be that leaders are assuming that everybody knows what stepping up means.

And the crazy thing is that there's probably a good percentage of them that do not.

Once you do set the expectations and you make them clear, then how to take initiative and what ownership looks like, then team members begin performing at a considerably higher level.

That is what you're looking for. So ignoring the unspoken expectations leads to low morale, inconsistent performance, high turnover. Addressing them boosts retention, it boosts results. It gets you to the actual expectations.

Action Steps: How to Fix This in Your Team (00:24:48)

So here's some steps that you can take to the action, steps that you can do today to fix this type of problem in your team.

First, audit your current expectations. What are you assuming of people and just assuming that they, they know. Find out, dig in.

You know, start with you, obviously start with you asking, what do I expect of folks and how do I know if they just know it or have I trained them to get there?

And then you can go and move in the direction of finding out if they do, which would be, number two, have direct conversations.

Ask your team, what do you believe is expected of you in this role? That is a powerful question.

When you get to somebody else telling you what they believe is expected, all of a sudden you get clarity on missteps, on miscommunication, on things not even communicated.

You will find that sometimes one of the struggles that I have is when somebody assumes that I want things a certain way and they never ask me and I haven't clearly communicated.

And usually it's when it's something that hasn't been communicated at all. It's not even a, it hasn't even been a task.

It's not been assigned to somebody, and they just take it on themselves to start doing something a specific way because of assumptions. Right.

It is great to find out what people have just added onto themselves that you've never given them to do.

So, number three, define clear, measurable expectations. What does success look like in specific areas? What does it look like for them to get the job, the project, the task? You know, growth processes?

What do you expect them to look like six months from now? What is, what is the expectation? Or what does success look like if you put them on a growth plan where they should be six months from now?

Somebody wants to get a raise and like, you know, I, I believe I should have a raise. And you're like, well, actually, I expected you to be here by now and you're not.

So here's a, here's a growth path and here's what you need to do. Make sure that it's clear. Make sure that it has measurables so everybody involved knows whether they hit it.

Number four, communicate expectations. Often don't just give yourself one conversation with a team member or one conversation with a team and give them the information of here's what it should look like.

Instead, make sure that you're reinforcing and adjusting as needed. Get in there, see what they're experiencing. Ask them to explain it to you. Ask them to go back over the expectations, you know, ask them what they've seen as far as change.

Has anything, you know, this is what we expected. Has anything changed in your mind? Are you seeing that we should do anything different? Whatever it is, get in there, reinforce and adjust as needed.

Number five, invite participation. Get your team involved in shaping expectations so they feel ownership over their very own work.

Additional Resources (00:28:09)

So here's some additional resources I want you to go ahead and use. There's a great blog post on the site chrislocurto.com how clarity and focus transform your team.

And this is creating those skills that you can cultivate on your team by intentionally leading with these principles. So you'll see incredible transformations in your team's performance, morale and alignment.

So make sure that you go check out the blog post how clarity and focus transform your team. I'm sure obviously there's a link in the description.

Conclusion (00:28:43)

So with all of that, I hope that you're walking away understanding that unspoken expectations are killing team performance, morale, results, everything.

As a leader, your job isn't just to set expectations. It's to clarify. It's to communicate. It's to reinforce them. So the more you do this with your team, the more engaged, the more productive and by far the more successful they will be.

Folks, if today's episode hit home, and I'm sure that it did, take action, schedule a conversation with your team, clarify expectations and and watch how it transforms your culture as well as your results.

Well, thank you for listening in. I hope that you have found this incredibly helpful. Please do me a favor, share it with a fellow leader and be sure to subscribe for more leadership insights on the Chris LoCurto Show.

Folks, that's all the time we have. As always, take this information. Change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.