Employees can’t excel
without knowing what’s
expected of them, says Thomas Gotshall.
And as the leader of your
organization, it’s up to you to
set challenging expectations
for everyone and also set a
clear way to measure progress
toward each person’s goals.
“In turn, that helps every
employee, whether they are a
receptionist or a vice president
of business development,” says
Gotshall, co-founder, president
and chief operating officer of
Technical Solutions LLC, which
provides specialized technology-enabled business solutions.
To set realistic expectations
for employees at his company, which posted 2006 revenue of more than $26 million, Gotshall said he first had
to understand them.
Smart Business spoke with
Gotshall about how getting to
know employees helps with
setting expectations.
Q. How do you get to know
your employees?
You need to do two things.
You need to simply go out
and have a cup of coffee with
them or breakfast or break
bread with them. When you
get away from the office and
you have breakfast with
them, you can get to know
them on a personal basis.
You can get to know what
motivates them. Somebody
might say, ‘You know what,
I’ve got three kids, and I’m
worried to death about paying for their college education, so I really need to start
saving money.’
And then you might have
another sales executive who’s not married, no kids,
and they want to buy a new
Porsche 911, and they want
to buy that next week. The
one person’s got more of a
long-term focus, putting
money away for college, and
the other person wants to
get a big hit tomorrow and
go out and buy that Porsche.
So you get to know them
personally, and then you do
need to sit in a business
environment with them and
say, ‘OK, what are your
expectations? What do you
think you should strive for in
terms of revenue target and
new account target?’ and
turn it into a business discussion.
Q. How do you know
where to set the bar?
You have to push
people. You have to
know how much you
can push them. You
think of a football
team. You’ve got an
offensive line — they
are wrapped very differently than the wide
receivers.
Peyton Manning, as
the quarterback and
leader of the team, is
wrapped completely
differently from the
offensive linemen and
the wide receivers. So,
[Tony] Dungy, who is
the coach of the
[Indianapolis] Colts, Dungy
sets different expectations
for those guys.
A good leader understands
that a company is like a football or a basketball or a
baseball team. They are all
made up of moving parts,
but all those moving parts do
different things.
Q. How do you handle it
when someone isn’t meeting
expectations?
First, it’s probably a failure
of management. That’s my
first reaction to that. So, we
haven’t done something right,
assuming they are motivated.
Now, if we have hired someone who is not motivated,
we hired the wrong person,
and we need to figure that
out. But, assuming they are
motivated, we’ve probably
either not given them the
right tools to excel or given
them the right direction to
excel or haven’t set the right
expectations.
So, my first go-around is to
sit down with them and, say
it’s a salesperson, have the VP
of business operations sit
down with them and say,
‘Why are things not going
well for you here? What’s the
disconnect? Do you not feel
comfortable enough with the
product? Do you not feel
comfortable enough with our
sales process? Do you not
feel comfortable with people?
Do you not feel comfortable
closing? What’s missing?’
And if they are like most
people, they are going to be
honest and tell you what’s
missing. And once you go
through this discovery process and figure out, ‘Hey,
this is what is missing,’ the
rest is easy.
Q. How has setting expectations helped your company?
You have to set goals. You
have to say, ‘Our revenue target this year is X. Our new
account penetration is this
number, our new account or
new product development is
this.’ It is incumbent upon a
leader to set expectations
and goals. Otherwise, everybody has probably a different
idea what that ought to be.
Probably the single most
important thing for the
leader of an organization to
do is set the expectation and
the goals and the core values
of the company. If a leader
isn’t comfortable doing that
or thinks that, ‘Gee whiz, all
these people are here because
they love to be here, and I’ll
figure it out,’ I think those
leaders, over the long haul,
don’t last.
HOW TO REACH: Technical Solutions LLC, (248) 528-0150 or www.tecsol.com