Clear expectations make it easier to have impact
I spend a lot of time thinking about belonging and how we bring it to life in our teams. A leader I was working with a few weeks ago put this to me:
“What about the leader who is so determined to work on belonging and inclusion, that they let people get away with bad behaviour masked as ‘my values’?”
That’s a real challenge to setting up an environment of belonging, right? If a couple of people in the team are annoying the heck out of the rest through their behaviour, how do you resolve that and continue to nourish a belonging culture?
Maybe the question to ask is – what makes an environment of belonging? It’s not just creating a warm nest where people feel connected and know that they are cared for. Those are definitely two key elements, but if it’s just those things it all becomes a bit self-serving. And at that point, belonging starts to fragment and suffer. Our team becomes a bunch of individuals hanging out rather than a connected group of people who add value. So an extra element to think about if you are building an environment of belonging is clarity of expectations. When we each know what’s expected of us in a team, it strengthens our sense of belonging because it tells us:
That we have an important role in contributing to the success of something bigger than us – in this case, the team, and
How we can best make that contribution, and
How that contribution has an impact.
Being clear about the expectations we have of each other puts a bright line around what it means to be part of this group. As a team member, clarity of expectations means I know not just what I can rely on from each person in the group, but also how I need to contribute to enable my team mates or the team as a whole to succeed. It doesn’t need to be a massive or complicated conversation either. The simplest way I’ve found to make this happen is the Offer and Need conversation. Here’s a simplified version from my Potent Leaders group coaching series that gets this conversation going:
Find a sheet of paper / blank screen / whiteboard (or try this template)
Split it into 2 columns – Offer and Need
In the offer column, list the things you are offering the other person to help them make their best contribution
In the need column, list the things you need from them if they are going to be an effective member of this team.
Ask them to do the same on their own sheet / screen / whiteboard (what are they offering to this team, what do they need from you to be at their best?)
Put the two documents side by side. Where are you aligned? Where are there gaps? Explore this together until you have agreement about your expectations of each other.
Take photos of what you’ve come up with together, and use this as a reference point for checking in on expectations as you progress.
You can open this up into a team conversation too, by inviting all team members to share what they need from a team environment to operate at their best, and what they are willing to contribute to help others in the team be successful.
To make this useful, it’s important to come back to it on a regular enough basis that you can make course corrections together. The expectations part of belonging doesn’t actually get tested until people start to wander off course (which we all do, because we’re all human and curious and love a good distraction or two). At that point, it’s not necessarily about pulling out the sheets of paper to prove your point. Instead, get curious. It could be a case of revisiting and reemphasising expectations, or there might be some good reasons for the change that prompt you to revisit the conversation and set new expectations with each other.
Have a go – let me know what you think!