There’s one topic that comes up time and again in leadership circles, particularly given today’s fast-paced market context. What are your organization’s performance level expectations? Are your base expectations normal for your industry or are your base expectations higher than many?

Let’s narrow the scope a little to an area we can all relate to. Every leader will have to personally issue employee reviews or have their managers carry them out. The context can range from formal written reviews to informal reviews to passing hallway conversations.

Whatever the situation, we must actively decide the standards to which we hold our employees if we want our organization to perform at the highest level. High-performance organizations tend to have higher expectations as a norm.

The Power of Motivation

Imagine you are just starting out in your career. You work in a high-potential sector such as engineering, are given a reasonable amount of responsibility from the beginning, and are producing some solid results.

As your first performance review approaches, you give “exceeds expectations” and “outstanding” grades on the various elements in your self-evaluation. To your surprise, your reviewer does not share your opinion. They rate you merely as “meets expectations” on virtually all your elements.

When you inquire about your collection of “meets expectations,” your boss explains that the expectations are set at a high standard and excellence is considered a minimum. After all, they only hire the best talent available and that’s what gives the group a competitive advantage.

As the employee, how would you react? If you’re the right employee in the right sector, this feedback should serve as an eye-opening experience that drives you to excel. Knowing that you always have more you can give or skills you can refine is essential to push us out of our comfort zone and truly succeed.

Managing Excellence

No general manager or president has the luxury of resting on their laurels or settling for average expectations. If you want to be the worldwide market leader in your niche, you need a strong talent base and forward momentum. “Mediocre” or “good enough” cannot be words in your vocabulary.

Enforcing this is another matter, however. In general, managers don’t spend enough time and energy preparing for performance reviews. It’s understandable to a certain extent, as it can be an uncomfortable part of the job, and it takes time. It’s especially difficult when assessing well-liked members of the workforce who aren’t living up to expectations.

However, if you are going to take the time to carry out a performance review, it has to be honest and accurate. Anything less is simply not fair to the employee you’re reviewing. Many managers will say they have several people in their group who “try hard” or are “good people.” The simple fact is that everybody in your organization should meet those criteria.

You’re doing a disservice to an individual who needs improvement if you don’t provide specific examples of areas where they aren’t currently performing in your employee reviews. Otherwise, there’s no way to identify performance or behaviors that you want to be replicated. A strong manager will have already discussed these items and the review would act as a formal confirmation of the knowledge they already possess. Conversely, for employees that are performing at an elevated level, you should provide specific examples of how they are performing above expectations.

Reviewing the Reviewer

As leaders, it’s essential that we clearly communicate our expectations and ensure that our managers always push for the best. That means that whoever is carrying out the review is expected to go into enough detail such that the employee clearly understands the things that need to be improved and the things they are doing well. The reviewer must be held to a certain standard in order to accurately assess and provide actionable feedback to the reviewee.

One way to achieve this is by asking your managers to write down specific examples of that person’s performance that exceeded expectations for that position. If the manager cannot produce a couple of examples off the top of their head, they need to spend more time on the review, or the person reviewed may not really have exceeded expectations.

This is particularly important if they have already provided a rating and wish to defend it. Unless they can produce solid examples, then either the person being reviewed doesn’t deserve the higher rating, or the manager himself may have a performance issue.

It’s true that with changing dynamics in management trends, patience, empathy, and training need to be present in your leadership style. However, the fact remains that keeping expectations high is critical for high-performance organizations and a no-nonsense approach is both warranted and necessary.