Aligning on Expectations: Berkeley’s Expectations Formula
Expectations are what you want or are anticipating. They are defined by your perceptions and assumptions. Whoever you are working with has their own set of expectations. Undefined and unvoiced expectations often lead to misalignment. Use Berkeley’s expectations formula to align with your team members.
Tool Summary
This expectations formula helps you to align and clarify the details of your expectations and consider all the various categories where expectations come into play.
How to Apply
To apply this, start by reviewing the categories of expectations.
Role Expectations
What are your various expectations around your team members' roles- their ongoing responsibilities and measures of success:
What are you expecting them to do? Consider their Job Description.
What does it look like if they are successful in that work? What are key performance indicators or other measurements of success?
Who do they work with to accomplish that work?
How do you expect them to prioritize their work?
Project Expectations
Next, what are your various expectations of any project work? These are the one-off tasks or items. What changes from the general role expectations above?
Cultural Expectations
Lastly consider culture as a category. The actions and behaviors of your team become the culture of the team. What are your expectations regarding how you work together- the customs, norms, behaviors, and unspoken rules of working as a part of your team?
It can be helpful to consider how team members you perceive as a great culture fit, act, and behave. What do they do and what don’t they do? How do they work with others? Use examples of their actions and behaviors to codify and communicate expectations around behavior that is in alignment with the culture you want to see.
Considering these three categories of expectations and you can begin to map out your expectations, making them detailed and clear. For each expectation, break it down into the actions, behaviors, and results:
Actions: What you or someone else is expected to do.
Behaviors: How you or someone else will do the work.
Results: What the result is after the work is completed.
Example
Role:
Simplified version: Book 25 demos monthly to hit targets.
Detailed version to clarify expectations: Your primary role responsibility is to book 25 new demos a month by engaging with new inbound leads via email, LinkedIn, and cold calling.
Action- engaging with new inbound leads
Behavior- via email, LinkedIn, and cold calling
Result- to book 25 new demos a month
Project:
Simplified: Participate in the customer research project.
Detailed version to clarify expectations: In collaboration with marketing on our customer research project, you will be a part of 5 interviews in the next month where you will share more about our target customers’ needs to help marketing build new customer profiles.
Action- be a part of 5 interviews in the next month
Behavior- where you will share more about our target customers’ needs
Result- to help marketing build new customer profiles
Cultural:
Simplified: Collaborate with marketing.
Detailed version to clarify expectations: We can only be successful in sales if we work collaboratively with the other teams by sharing our unique knowledge of our customers to ensure a high quality of inbound marketing leads.
Action- work collaboratively with the other teams
Behavior- sharing our unique knowledge of our customers
Result-ensure a high quality of inbound marketing leads
Any of these examples could be more or less detailed. The question is how much detail do you need to share to align on expectations with your audience and achieve desired results.
Measuring Results
When you are practicing a more strategic framing and communication of expectations you should see greater alignment and clarity in your team. You should not find yourself saying “that is not what I thought you were doing.” You all should be able to move faster and ask fewer questions.
Source
Berkely , P. & C. (2022). Performance expectations = results + actions & behaviors. Performance Expectations = Results + Actions & Behaviors | People & Culture. from https://hr.berkeley.edu/hr-network/central-guide-managing-hr/managing-hr/managing-successfully/performance-management/planning/expectations
