Are You Inspiring Those You Lead To Be Extraordinary? | Leadership Espresso Shot 7

In today's competitive market, it's critical that leaders use every tool at their disposal to ensure their organization's success. But how many of us are tapping into the power of expectations and the benefits it gives rise to? It's an idea I explore through a wonderful story I share in this episode of my leadership podcast, “Leadership Biz Cafe”. When it comes to being effective as a leader, there are many factors that you have to always keep in focus – from communicating a coherent strategy for how your employees will go about achieving the goals you've set out for them, to being consistent in your feedback and guidance about their overall performance and contributions to your organization's shared purpose. Weaving these various aspects of leadership together, of course, is not just how effective you are as a communicator, but also how clear you are about the expectations you have, both in terms of what you are looking for your employees to accomplish, as well as in terms of what your customers should look forward to receiving from your organization in terms of its products and/or services. Now this might seem like a given in the process to defining a goal and setting out a strategy to achieve it, what we expect from others – and what others should expect from us – is often the missing ingredient that's necessary to successfully move from ideation to successful attainment. To help illustrate this point, I share a story in this latest episode of an interaction between an employee and his leader that reveals how the power of expectations can not only ensure our employees sustain their internal motivation to keep showing up to deliver their best, but how this can be achieved simply by recognizing how every contribution matters. I don't want to give away too much as it's a wonderful story that not only reminds us of the power of small gestures, but what we as leaders should be doing to ensure our employees remain committed to the work they need to do to help our organization achieve its goals.