636 | Stop Expecting What You Haven’t Taught

If you've ever thought, why can't my team just figure it out? This episode is for you.

Today we're unpacking why unmet expectations usually point back to unclear leadership and how to fix it without micromanaging or burning out. 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.

One of the most common frustrations that I hear from business owners and leaders is I shouldn't have to tell them. They should just know.

Folks, I get it. I understand it. I know where you're coming from. I know how you feel. And I've got to say, in my early days, I probably felt the same way. I know that I have.

It is something that is very common, especially for folks who are the kind of people who get things done. If you're somebody who gets things done, you don't understand why other people don't just get things done.

If you are a doer, make things happen, it's really difficult to understand why you have to keep telling people and training people. So we're going to get into that today. We're going to.

We're going to tackle the leadership trap of unspoken expectations and show you how to lead with clarity so your team can actually hit the target that you've set up in your mind, even if you haven't set it up for them.

So first thing that we have to understand before we dive into all of this, and, folks, I'm going to lean in your direction, and I'm also going to lean in your team's direction today.

All right? But one thing we have to understand.

Clarity is Kindness (00:02:00)

It doesn't matter if it's a team member, if it's a spouse, if it's a child, if it's a parent, if it's a friend, if it's a vendor, clarity is kindness. Let me say that again. Clarity is kindness.

When you have expectations that are clear, people can literally relax and perform. They can do what you're expecting because they know what you expect, right?

They don't get all tensed up. I mean, they may if they're concerned about pulling it off, but when they know what is expected of them, they can go and do it.

When expectations are vague, people hesitate. They begin to guess, they begin to disengage. Depending upon the personality styles, right?

If you've got a D or an I, they're probably going to go after it. And go in directions you did not want them to go in. You know, they're going to go figure something out.

If it's an S or a C, they're probably going to disengage in this process. So clear leadership builds confident teams. You have to understand that you've been there.

There was a point in your life, whether you were a kid and, and you had a parent who didn't communicate well, or you had a grandparent or a friend or a teacher or somebody, somebody had expectations on you at some point that you didn't get.

You didn't understand. It wasn't clear. You didn't know what you were doing. I think it's so funny, just about every year we go pick up more bees for our farm.

We have honeybees. And it's so interesting. I'm the guy who teaches communication, and it's so funny that this, this lovely, sweet lady that we pick up these bees from, her communication and my communication just don't align.

She will say something, I'll repeat it back, and she'll be like, no, that's not it.

And I don't ever go, well, you just said this, you know, and I screw this up as well. It's just so funny that with this, this individual, that there is a struggle in communication.

And the funny thing is, is that I can see it and I can, I can get there and I can see what I'm doing wrong. But there, for some reason, if I wasn't somebody who does what I do, I would probably mess up things that she's expecting me to do with this new set of bees.

Right? She's the expert. She's been doing this for, you know, 50 years. She knows what she's talking about. And so when she gives direction, sometimes I'm sitting there going, so you just said this? No.

So you didn't say that? No. Okay, well, if I also wasn't somebody who gained perspective, then I would go and try and figure out what she said. Or I've already translated it differently into my head.

Or, or. Or there's a bajillion different things. You've been there, you've experienced that.

You've had a bare minimum one situation in your life, if not 10,000, where somebody had expectations and they weren't clear and you weren't sure what to do, and you tried and you did what you could or you did it completely the way you thought it was supposed to be done, only to find out that it was wrong.

Since you know that, since you can, I'm pretty sure many of you just went back in your memory to situations where you did experience this in life.

Since you understand that, recognize that the clarity, had it been given to you, clearly, the expectations, that would have been a kind thing. Right?

That would have been a good thing. That would have been good to be able to have an expectation of you that you're gonna meet something because it was communicated really well.

You have to recognize that when you are setting expectations. So if you're somebody who says, you know, hey, guys, I need you to be more proactive. Proactive is something that comes up all the time.

As we're leading leaders and business owners, hey, guys, we're being very reactive. How do we get to be proactive? Right? But we have to walk through the process.

If you don't ever define what it means to be proactive, if you don't show what that looks like, then you can't be shocked and surprised that your team members aren't getting there.

Yeah, but I'm paying them. They're supposed to be smart. Okay, I get you. I understand.

But understand that the people on your team came from some other leader, and ultimately they came from parents as leaders, and it's very possible they've never been led well.

So here's your great opportunity to be their best leader. If you choose it right. Mission impossible right there.

If you choose to be a great leader, once you start clarifying what the actions of being proactive looks like, you will be blown away at how productivity will shoot up.

Right? You'll be blown away at how people will all of a sudden start doing things that they haven't done before. So a big thing to understand, a big takeaway on this, is that people don't fail because they don't care.

They fail because they don't know what winning looks like. And if you have not defined winning to them, then don't be totally shocked if they're not getting there.

If you have clearly shown it and they're not getting there, then we'll get to that in a little bit.

It's called accountability.

Unspoken Expectations Are Unfair Standards (00:07:37)

So second thing, we need to understand. Unspoken expectations are unfair standards. I need to say that again. Unspoken expectations are unfair standards.

Folks, I am guilty as charged on this. Throughout my life, throughout my life, I have had assumptions and expectations. Well, they should just know to do.

They should be, well, I. I'm paying for that, or this person's really smart or whatever. And so I get this standard set in my brain of, well, this is what I'm going to be able to see, praise God, I, I do what I teach, so I don't leave it there.

But I can tell you in my early years of leadership that absolutely was, was an issue for me.

I mean, everybody around me, I get, there's so many people that I know, so many of our clients, so many folks have this same struggle where you have this expectation you built up in your mind.

And by the way, depending upon personality style, it is absolutely true. You have this built up in your head.

They should be able to do this. I call it the C on C violence. When you take a high C personality style, high Cs can be really hard on other high Cs if other high Cs don't do the things that are in their head.

It's an interesting thing because a high C is like, well, you're a C, you should know this. I shouldn't have to say anything. I shouldn't have to tell you more than once.

I shouldn't have to explain this stuff. And it's an interesting thing that there's this assumption because you're like me, or at least personality style wise, you know the same exact stuff that I know in my brain.

High theoreticals can be like that from time to time. High regulatories can be, definitely can be that way. So if you're expecting something that you've never taught, you are setting your team up for failure.

Now if you've got great go getters, if you've got great people that make things happen, that's fantastic. But what if the personality style is different than yours and you are a go getter in this area?

You know, I say this all the time. You might find that you are somebody who has, you know, gone out, climbed the mountain, accomplished things, made things happen, you know, made a business profitable.

Did all this stuff and then you start hiring people to do like administrative things.

Like let's say you hire a high C or his to do administrative stuff and they don't do it the same way you do it. Right. Why?

Because their personality style is probably considerably different than yours. And so they're going to do it differently. They're going to do it probably more in depth, they're going to take more time, they're going to need more information.

And what happens is people get totally frustrated because they expect them to do it the way that they did it or they try and teach them to do it the way that they did it.

I'm not saying that's terrible, you know, you couldn't try that. But if you don't understand that the personality style if different than yours is going to operate differently than you.

You've got a big problem coming. You've got disappointment coming because you may hire. Just for example, if I hire a high C now, I am not a high C.

30 years ago, I was a 10. And after I've gone up 10 points every 10 years, I've gone up a point a year.

I'm all the way up to 40 at this point on C. Right? And that's really probably just to cover my butt with details.

But if I am expecting a high C to do stuff the way that I would do it, and they're taking a long time and they're researching too much and they're not pulling the trigger, if I'm getting upset at them, that's my problem. That's my deal.

Because I put an expectation on them that wasn't fair. If. Now go with me on this, think about this--

If I will stop and recognize their personality style and recognize how they act, react, give information, receive information, what their tendencies are, what, how you know, what pace they're going to work at, if I can think of all of these things and I set them up for success with expectations, chances are that administrative thing that I was having to do, they will do it 10 times better and they'll do it at least four times faster than I would.

I know you're like, what are you talking about? A C would do it faster because their process on the administrative side is way better than mine, right?

I'm not greatly administrative. I am not the person you want to be your personal assistant. I would suck at that. You'd have a lot of fun with me. We'd do fun things. We'd make a lot of stuff happen. But you'd be missing appointments, you'd be missing things.

Because that's just not who I am, right? So I want somebody like me who's focused on different things, on accomplishing these things over here, maybe focusing on vision and growth and all this stuff.

But I want my administrative people to be way better at it than I am. And the crazy thing is, I've said this so many times. There's things the C's on my team can do so much faster than I can.

Why? Because it takes me a lot more effort to pull off the administrative stuff. Now. I can do anything, I can make anything happen. But that's a ridiculous way of running your business, right?

Get people in the right spots that can do it and then make sure that you're communicating incredibly clearly to if it matters to you, it needs to be trained, not assumed.

Teaching Isn’t a One-Time Event (00:13:26)

Third thing we need to focus on teaching is not a one time event.

People listen to me. There's certain personality styles that I just said that to. They just shuddered because they, they just realize they that in their minds, you just say it one time and everybody should have it.

Teaching a skill, a behavior or standard once doesn't mean that it's actually learned. Anybody who has a child or children understands this concept, right?

Repetition, reinforcement and real time feedback are the things that make stuff that you have taught, trained, modeled, makes those things stick, right?

And again, accountability sometimes, right? But if you teach it one time and I'll just use me as an example again, you could give me a hundred manuals on how to do something and I'm probably not going to get that thing done incredibly well the first time.

It's probably going to take me a couple times to get something done. If you show me one time, boom, I got it.

Or I got 99% of it, there might be one bolt missing. I'm going to understand how to do it if I can see it done. I'm a very visual learner. But I have to be taught right?

And it has to be done in a way that I understand now. It doesn't mean that I have it 100% the first time I see it, right? It might take me a couple of times to do it.

The thing you need to understand is that if you don't continue to train people on things that you want them to do, then don't expect them to get it 100%. They might get it 50%, they might even get it 75.

But the chances that every time you teach something once people are going to get it 100%, I mean, it's ridiculous. It is insane, right? It's a terrible way to think.

If you think this way, you got to change, you got to start thinking differently. I have to teach, I have to train, I have to reinforce, I have to give feedback.

Consistency is always going to beat intensity. Consistency beats intensity. Train and reinforce often over and over until they've got it.

Once they've got it, it's out of your hands, right? So if you've done it well, then you can let it go.

Modeling Creates Alignment (00:15:51)

Fourth thing we need to understand, modeling creates alignment. So your team watches how you show up.

Folks, I'm telling you, I am always keenly aware that my team is consistently watching me and watching other leaders. Why? Because they're taking cues from leadership, right?

So if you want excellence, if you want ownership and buy in or initiative, you have to live it first. If you're the person that keeps showing up late for meetings, guess what?

Not only are people going to start showing up late because they see, well, you don't care. So I don't have to care.

But there are also some people are going to start to anticipate, well, I don't even have to show up to that meeting for 5, 10 minutes anyways because so and so is never there.

So if you don't start being the example of what you want your team to be, then you can't expect them to be what you want them to be.

So if you want them to have ownership, show them that you have ownership. I'm not talking about of the business. Show them that you own things, that you're willing to do things.

You know, that is something that I. We could have a retreat with our clients and at the end of the evening there's a bunch of bags of trash I'm going to grab if I'm not talking with a client.

If when clients are gone and there's trash sitting there, I'm grabbing trash and I'm hauling it out and I'm throwing it away. It's always funny that my team will go, no, no, I got it. I got them like, no, I've got it.

And they're like, well, I don't want you to have to do this. I don't have a problem taking out the trash. I've been taking the trash out for my entire life, right?

If I go into the bathroom and it's dirty, I'm going to clean up the bathroom, I'm going to do the things that need to get done, I'm going to pick up trash in the parking lot, I'm going to fix things, whatever it takes.

If I understand it, if it's something that I don't get, maybe people are doing something in an area and I don't want to screw things up, then I'm going to stay far away from that.

But if it's just normal everyday stuff and I want other people to do it, well, then I should probably be doing it, right? I should make that happen. I should model that.

Your example is way louder than your expectations. Because if you expect something of me, but I see that you don't do it yourself, I'm going to think it must not be that important, right?

If it's not, now keep in mind there are tons of stuff that I pay people to do that I don't do.

So I'm not saying you gotta go do other people's jobs. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is modeling. What I'm saying is example. So let's just get rid of the trash kind of concept, the idea, right?

Let's just talk about showing up to meetings on time. Let's just use that as an example. Because a lot of times leaders mess that one up.

If you want your people there and you want your people taking it seriously and you want your people giving good input and thoughts and ideas and then handle that situation well, show up on time, send them information ahead of time so that they have something that they can think about and process on before they get into that meeting.

Let them know what it's about, right?

Show them that you care, that it's important to you. And then you'll be blown away by how your team cares as well.

Accountability Brings It All Together (00:18:59)

Fifth thing we need to think about, and this is the part that brings it all together and that's accountability.

Accountability brings it all together. So teaching without follow through is absolutely, almost always going to lead to some level of drift.

It's going to happen, right? Teaching and accountability creates a culture of growth. It creates, it creates trust, it creates shared standards. You got to have accountability.

And folks, listen, I love you guys. I, I care greatly about you. You know, I, I've been do. We've done I don't know how many, over 600 episodes, maybe considerably more than that.

You know, we, I've been teaching for decades. There is one thing that I find is so difficult to get leaders to do and that is to put accountability in place.

Guys, you must, must, must focus on accountability. If you put somebody in place, if you're paying somebody a good salary, you're spending this money.

This is coming off of your, your profits, your bottom line, your bonus structure, whatever it is. You put them in place and then you don't hold them accountable.

And then six months later you're wondering why they're not doing the job that you expected them to do or they're not getting to the outcomes that you expected.

This is your fault. It's your fault. You have to make sure. Listen, I am an 88S, so I'm speaking to all of my S's, my C's out there, even I's. I'm an 88S.

Accountability makes life so much easier. I don't have to figure things out. I don't have to try and go round and round with somebody on whether or not they did something or didn't do it, or whether or not they're doing it correctly or not.

When you put accountability in place, that solves it. That takes care of, removes so much stress from your life.

So why am I pushing this so hard?

Because so many people I love and care about still struggle to implement accountability. I don't know if it's because they think it's not needed or they know it's needed, but it's difficult because accountability is tough. It's not easy. Right?

But for the love, you're doing the job anyways.

Put things in place to make your job easier. Make accountability happen. Make it happen. Teach things, reinforce things, and then hold people accountable to the very things that you've taught. Right?

It's the cycle of healthy leadership. People, if you will, hold people accountable. Wow. I shouldn't have to.

Doesn't matter. In a perfect world, which we are very far from living in a perfect world, sure, you shouldn't have to hold people accountable.

But we live in a fallen world. We live in a world of distraction. We live in a world of confusion. We live in a world of deception. We live in a crazy, stinking world.

Accountability is your best friend. If you will hold people accountable, things will get done properly or those people won't stay. It's as simple as that.

I can also tell you this. There is nothing worse than losing a champion because they were not clear on what you expected and because you didn't put accountability in place.

Nobody ever got to them and said, hey, this isn't looking the way we want it to look. And so you end up losing somebody who could be phenomenal, but it looked like they were being terrible.

So make it happen. Make it happen. Let me say it again. Make it happen. You know, think about it as, like so many folks, put KRAs in place. We teach that you got to have carries in place with every team member.

They'll get their team member to sign off, they'll have a discussion about it, and then they don't do anything about it. Right. They don't talk about it.

They don't, you know, go and take a look at the percentage of the carrier that they're getting done. They don't review it. They don't optimize it when it's necessary. They just come back a year later and go, hey, you're not doing really well.

It's a colossal waste of time, colossal waste of effort, and it's a colossal waste of a quality tool.

Action Items (00:23:40)

So here's some action items that I want you to do first, choose one area where you're frustrated with your team's performance. Pick one area.

Ask yourself, have I taught this clearly? Have I taught this repeatedly? Have I taught this recently? This week? Teach and revisit that very expectation in a team meeting.

Pick a time. If it's a team thing, if it's an individual thing, either meet with the individual or teach the team in a team meeting and get feedback on what they understand about what you taught.

Here's another great piece of information. You may not be teaching it correctly or you may be teaching it in a way that they're not receiving it the way that you want them to.

So get feedback. You know, I'm huge on saying, does this make sense? Do you guys have any questions? Is there anything that's unclear? Tear this apart. I just put this out there.

Do you see how this is going to work for you? What issues do you have? You know, for my high Cs two hours from now when you're like, oh, I should have said this, hit me up then.

But get feedback.

Additional Resources (00:24:51)

So some additional resources for you. 618 | The Silent Team Killer: How Unspoken Expectations Undermine Success

So if your team is struggling with execution, accountability, or culture that feels, well, disconnected, then that episode is absolutely for you.

Episode 618 also blog post The Silent Leader: Why Your Team Needs to Hear From You. Leadership isn't just about making decisions. It's not just about telling people what to do. It's so massively about communication.

All right, here's what I want you to think.

Virtual Team Trainings (00:25:25)

I want you to imagine transforming the way you lead without ever leaving your office. Our virtual team trainings give you practical tools, leadership insights, and accountability that you can use right away. And it's all on your schedule.

So just go to chrislocurto.com/training to learn more.

That's chrislocurto.com/training.

Conclusion (00:25:51)

Folks, when you lead with clarity, your team can finally deliver what you've been hoping for.

Stop expecting what you haven't taught, and start building a culture where everyone knows the target, everyone believes in it, everybody knows how to hit it, and everybody knows what winning looks like.

Thanks for joining us in this lead from where you are series. If this has helped you grow, then share it with a fellow leader. Also, check out our virtual team trainings and take it even further.

Well, folks, that's all the time that I have for today.

I hope this has helped you. I hope this has blessed you. As always, take this information. Change your leadership, change your business, change your life and join us on the next episode.