Setting Expectations
Improving the Organization Through Staff Retention and Acquisition
The availability and acquisition of highly qualified staff is top of mind for many school administrators. It’s a complex topic, so I plan to break down each of the following components over the coming weeks, sharing examples and strategies to address each one of the following:
Staff Retention
Hiring Practices
Onboarding
Setting Expectations
Feedback
Applicant Pool
Setting Expectations
Setting expectations with staff enables them to better understand the elements of job performance in order to foster employment success. Additionally, setting high expectations is essential for individual and organizational excellence. Elements of setting expectations include:
Making sure expectations are clear and consistent.
There is an established way to measure performance.
Support is provided in order to give the staff the best chance of success.
Feedback both formal and informal is provided.
Clear and Consistent Expectations
Expectations that are presented in a clear and consistent manner provide staff with the opportunity to better understand and meet expectations in an environment that promotes unity and success. Clarity of purpose assures alignment between organizational goals and individual performance. Consistency of expectations ensures equity and fairness promoting unity of effort.
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Staff are able to be successful.
Staff are treated with a sense of fairness, promoting a sense of belonging.
Individual and organizational goals are aligned to promote success.
Organizational systems are aligned adding an element of predictability that engenders trust.
Accountability is more efficiently and effectively achieved.
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Over emphasis on goal achievement can inhibit creativity and risk taking.
Clarity of expectations can create a sense of tunnel vision relative to specific goal attainment.
What can we do?
Provide precise language articulating high expectations.
Expectations should be present in several communication venues including websites, public facing documents, promotional materials, and public forums.
High expectations can permeate system structures including hiring procedures, teaching and learning systems, environmental and facility systems, and all operational systems.
Enlist the services of non-affiliated personnel to objectively evaluate the clarity and understanding of the expectations.
Anecdotally Speaking
Periodically, the district asked people who were not affiliated with the district to review their core values to provide feedback about the clarity and understanding of the values and whether those individuals might be able to speak to the high expectations that would come as a result of those values. The district also embedded high expectations into the hiring process in order to recruit and emphasize these expectations with new employees.
There is an established way to measure performance.
Setting and communicating high expectations is dependent on having an established way to measure staff performance in meeting high expectations. A district that has established ways to measure staff performance will be able to identify how to provide support when needed as well as to increase benchmarks that challenge staff. Employees will also have achievement targets to attain allowing them ways to measure their own performance.
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Performance targets are objectively measured allowing for better feedback loops.
Employees are able to measure their own performance against clearly articulated targets.
Employees can work to exceed expectations because they know what the expectations are.
Staff are able to see expectation measures across departments and can better understand their role in organizational success.
Staff are better able to identify impediments to success as they pursue performance targets.
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Focusing only on outcomes can discourage staff who add value, but might not be able to attain targets.
What can we do?
Connect expectations with performance measures.
Adjust performance measures in order to promote success.
Ensure measures of success are challenging but attainable.
Promote several ways and avenues for staff to demonstrate success.
Establish timelines that articulate a long term commitment to goal attainment.
Connect individual measures with team and ultimately organizational measures.
Anecdotally Speaking
A district set initial performance measures that were attainable, but below the ultimate desired outcomes. Having met the original goals and measures, the district determined the original measures were now the “standard” and re-established new measures that challenged staff to reach further to meet and exceed new expectations. The district provided data relative to formative and summative measures in all areas and departments that described progress toward common goals. In this way, the district was able to promote a unified effort to achieve ongoing success.
Provide Support to All Staff
Setting high expectations must be coupled with providing extraordinary support in the form of mentorship, informal feedback, staff development, removal of barriers to success, celebrating success, and equipping staff to access information to assess their own performance.
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Collaboration will be fostered through common expectations.
Regular informal feedback will offer staff members with a sense of progress made as well as objective feedback.
Individual and collective expertise will be improved.
External best practices will improve the vitality of the district.
Barriers to individual and district success will be identified and eliminated.
Strategies to success will be evaluated and those most effective can be implemented.
Staff will be able to self-determine and evaluate progress.
Making support a priority commits decision-makers with a supporting perspective when asking staff to meet and exceed high expectations.
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Typically, a commitment to support involves a financial commitment.
What can we do?
Establish a strong mentoring structure.
Ensure supervisors are regularly providing informal feedback.
Celebrate and utilize those staff members who best exemplify high performers to promote conduits to high performance.
- Intentionally seek out system best practices from similar organizations and consider the best practice “fit” into your district.
Work to identify and remove impediments to employee success.
Train staff to utilize technology that provides data relative to their job performance.
Allocate budget specifically for support structures for all staff.
Establish a conduit to recognize and celebrate staff members who had made significant achievements and contributions to the department and/or district.
Anecdotally Speaking
While a school district allocates professional development funds for their teachers and realizing all staff needed support, the district allocated budget to provide support to all employees. Additionally, the district collaboratively established a mentorship program for all departments and provided a way to celebrate successes within departments.
Informal and Formal Feedback
Engaging informal and formal feedback loops will not only provide necessary information to staff but will promote supervisor involvement in the support and celebration of staff success.
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Staff are able to receive information that allows them opportunities to continue work that is done well and to make adjustments to what isn’t working as well.
High performing staff look forward to gaining feedback and will continue to work to recognized expectations.
District values are connected to expectations and result in employee behaviors that promote district values.
Feedback loops result in open and honest communications that articulate areas of strength in the district as well as areas to be improved.
Performance of the “whole” as the “sum of its parts” is promoted.
Communication is promoted throughout the district.
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Providing several instances of informal feedback can feel as though the supervisor is micromanaging.
What can we do?
Use positive terminology when offering informal feedback.
Connect and align job postings, hiring practices, onboarding, setting expectations with feedback.
Embed expectations and values into formal evaluations.
Supervisor expectations are to be “out and about” in their own departments to best understand the levels of functioning within their areas of responsibility.
Celebrate success and provide redirection as immediately as possible.
Provide positive reinforcement and support as appropriate.
Take advantage of formal evaluation as an opportunity to emphasize and reinforce high expectations.
Consider the evaluative process as an opportunity to support staff and improve the district.
Communicate the philosophy that formal feedback is to the benefit of the individual receiving the feedback.
Accountability of both supervisors and staff can be achieved through feedback structures.
Anecdotally Speaking
Supervisors in the district considered formal feedback (evaluations) as a “box to be checked” and supervisor success in this area meant that evaluations were completed by the imposed deadline. Evaluations became less important and effective to the staff member. Realizing this was happening, the district provided training and support to the supervisors that included connecting evaluations with district values and expectations. Because supervisors received support and training, they also held the perspective that they also needed to utilize information in the evaluative process to provide their staff with important feedback, training, and support in order to realize success.
Aligning high expectations through a variety of district structures can result in increased individual and district success.
As you work through changes in your organization and/or district, consider using one of our Frameworks (Growth and Change and/or Strategic Growth and Change) found at the following link:
Next week I will focus on the topic of Feedback.
