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Standards and Expectations
Setting a standard, answering the first violation, correcting without humiliating, and ending employment properly.
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01
Praise and Its Inflation
Recognition is a currency and it inflates the same way any other does. A leader who praises everything has not made people feel valued; they have made their own approval worthless.
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02
Firing Well
Two obligations run at once: to the person leaving and to everyone staying. Most of what goes wrong happens in the months before the conversation, not in the conversation itself.
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03
The Productive Employee Who Violates the Standard
The exemption is never announced and is understood by everyone. What the organization learns is not that this person is valuable, but that the standard has a price and they now know it.
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04
Correcting Without Humiliating
A correction that lands on the person rather than the act produces defence instead of change. The distinction is audible in the first sentence and decides everything that follows.
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05
The First Violation
The response to the first breach is the moment a standard becomes real or becomes a suggestion. Everything after it is negotiation against a line the organization has already located.
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06
Setting a Standard and Holding It
Your standard is the worst behaviour you have permitted, not the best you have praised. Everything above that line is aspiration, and the organization worked out the difference some time ago.