The Joyful Performance Model - Align
- Aug 12
- 5 min read
If you lead people, you've been here.
You've had the same conversation three times now.
Same associate, same issue, same patient explanation from you. And every time, they nod that they understand and they mean it. Two weeks later, you're having the same conversation again.
So you start wondering whether you hired wrong, whether they care, whether it's time to have a harder conversation.
Before you go there, consider a less comfortable possibility: they may have never known exactly what you wanted.
The problem is rarely the person
When a team or individual is missing targets, most leaders reach for the same three solutions.
Amp up motivation. Bring on that pizza party...
Increase the pressure. There's nothing like a heavy stick to follow the carrot...
Change people. If this one can't do it, someone else can...
Those are expensive solutions, and they usually don't work out any differently, because they're aimed at the wrong problem.
Often the expectation was never clear enough to begin with.
Gallup found that only about one in five managers and individual contributors strongly agree they have a clear definition of what exceptional performance looks like in their role. One in five. That means four out of five people on your team are doing their best guess at what "good" means, and their guess is shaped by their last manager, their last job, and their own instincts.
Those who do have a clear definition are nearly four times as likely to be engaged at work. Leaders are nearly three times as likely to be engaged when they have clear expectations for exceptional performance. Clarity isn't a soft benefit. It's the difference between a team that's aiming and a team that's guessing.
(Gallup, U.S. Employee Engagement Declines From 2020 Peak, 2026)
What unclear expectations cost you
Unclear expectations don't show up on your P&L with a line item. They show up as rework, as a customer experience that varies depending on who's working, as burnout in your best people because they're carrying the load for everyone else.
Everyone is working harder than ever, and the targets still get missed. That's the signature of an expectations problem, not an effort problem.
Consider this scenario:
Joe is asked by his boss to "create a report for our sales trends for the last six months that I can use in my directors' meeting next week." Joe has never done this before, but knows how to show trend analysis, so he sets to work. One day before the meeting, Joe shows up with his report. It's missing several important KPI trends and doesn't have an overview. His boss is frustrated and asks him to redo it, giving the KPIs required and for an overview. Joe asks what the overview should look like and gets vague answers. Joe spends the rest of his day reworking his report and sends it over at 8 pm after putting his kids to bed. The boss gets the report the next morning and isn't happy with the overview, so he asks Joe to rework it again. Joe spends his morning adjusting the overview and, after lunch, finally gets to the regular work he's had to put off for the last day and a half.
Is that how you would prefer work to get done in your organization? I think we can all agree it would have been better to take five minutes to drill down on what done looks like. Joe gets to his regular work, there's no frustration, and his boss has what he needs long before it's required. Joe probably even gets a "good job, thanks." instead of a headache.
Three signs your expectations aren't aligned
You don't need a survey to diagnose this. You need about thirty seconds of honesty.
You're correcting the same issues repeatedly. Once is a mistake. Twice is a pattern. Three times means you need to reflect on your clarity.
Your team is working hard, the strategy is right, but the results aren't there. When effort is high and output isn't right, something is getting lost between what you meant and what they heard.
People seem blindsided by feedback, or they push back on it. If your feedback is a surprise, you're describing a standard they didn't know they were being measured against.
If any of those sound familiar, the good news is that the fix is smaller than you think.
Clarity takes minutes, not meetings
Setting a clear expectation isn't a program you roll out or a form you fill in. It's a conversation that answers a handful of specific questions before the work starts, so you and your employee will both recognize success the same way when you see it.
Name the outcome, not just the activity. Define what good looks like in enough detail that you'd both spot it. As Brené Brown says throughout her work, "Paint done." Get into the details, encourage clarifying questions, and ensure you both agree on what done means and by when.
Try this sentence out next time you're aligning expectations: "Just so I know we're both on the same page, can you repeat back what I'm expecting of you?" You'll be shocked at how often you get a different version of done than the one you see in your mind.
Tie your expectation to why it matters, for everyone involved, including them. People want to be successful at work. No one shows up trying to do a bad job, really. Individuals may become disillusioned over time, but when they start, they want to do well. Set them up for success by outlining how their work supports the business, the team, you, and them individually.
This only takes a few minutes at the front end. It's the cheapest performance intervention available to you, and it's the one most leaders skip because it feels too obvious or simple to bother with.
Often, it isn't obvious to the person doing the work.
Where this fits
Align is the first step in a three-step performance cycle: Align, Observe, Celebrate & Enhance, then repeat, all resting on a foundation of trust. Each step depends on the one before it. A clear expectation you never observe against is just a wish. But nothing downstream works without this step, which is why it comes first.
Want to learn more about aligning expectations? I've put the five questions a clear expectation answers into a one-page guide you can keep on your desk or your phone. It includes an overview, diagnostic, and support for developing strongly aligned expectations. You'll also get the Overview of the Performance Model which is already available to members. Become a member below, and it's yours.
Emily Gospodarek is the owner of Performance Consulting Services, LLC, and a certified Everything DiSC and Five Behaviors practitioner. She works with small and mid-sized retail and sales businesses to build performance systems that drive results and engagement.
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