#12: Why Teams Drift Without Clear Expectations: The Power of the Radical Minimum Standard

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Eric:  We're

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It gives  you a shared language for performance, behavior, and growth and accountability, and it becomes the foundation for building team culture. Hello, I'm Eric Pfeiffer, and in this episode I am again joined by Ms. Don Meldon, and we're unpacking the radical minimum standard tool, why most teams drift without it, and how you can use it to align your culture.

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That's right. How are we expecting people to show up and perform and do their work and behave on our team? And the RMS addresses both of these  things. I'm curious because I think that the RMS and this issue reveals a problem that many leaders deal with, and I, I'd love your take on this. Why do so many leaders assume that they have communicated expectations when they really haven't?

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And so as a parent, we can either get upset with  that child or simply recognize they just need to be reminded. And they're probably gonna need to be reminded multiple times over and over until it's ingrained within them, until they become their expectations. And I think with leaders, we we forget that people need constant reminding of those expectations.

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Yes, we have a very clear vision and mission and value statements, and maybe it's on their website or maybe it's on the wall in one of their  offices, and I say, awesome. How many people operate according to those expectations?

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Eric: Right. And so this is where we  come back to what you were saying earlier, which is we oftentimes clarify our expectations around what we expect people to accomplish and do. Yes. But we rarely ever speak to our expectations around how we expect them to show up and operate.

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You know, in a grumpy attitude, it, it is a wildly different experience, right? Yes. And I think this is where learning the RMS and then being able to hold our culture accountable to not only what  they're doing, but how they're doing. Produces actual, tangible results on a team in a workplace. I mean, it's night and day.

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They have been wildly successful. Yeah. The business has grown tremendously over the last,  decade and a half. Their revenues are, have gone through the roof. Their profits have gone through the roof. Yeah. I mean, everybody is winning from kind of the kinda standard or traditional business metrics.

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And began to engage in a process of communicating those expectations. That's when they began to see the radical transformation. And it's funny because I'm just thinking about  this, you know, I gave examples of my kids earlier and I can almost guarantee that our listeners are gonna think, yeah, but I'm not a parent as a leader in my organization or my team, and I don't want to treat the members of my team.

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'cause it's so critical because there are so many books and conversations around culture and what is culture and how do we shape or create culture. How do we get out of negative culture if we don't understand what  culture is Then? It remains a kind of enigma. It's almost like grasping for air. Like you just can't quite put your hands around it, but we know it exists.

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With the vendors. With the customers. It doesn't matter on a phone call, through an email, through a text, however, we most often operate. How, how, how, how, how, how we do what we do is what begins to create the culture. Expectations around how people operate and that inevitably leads to the experience that people have.

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Every person on that team in that particular, restaurant is playing from the same playbook, not just in what they do. It's not just about, flipping burgers and putting all the p ingredients together and, cleaning the tables. It's how they do what they do. That's right. It makes  being in those restaurants so incredibly enjoyable, which makes people want to be there.

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Very often it's how we do what we do that undermines what we're actually doing. Mm-hmm. And so unfortunately what happens is  intelligence, talent skills, gifts are often undermined by how people show up. And I would suggest that so much of what we do as a coaching business is not to. It is not to empower people to do their specific job related skills better because we work with a lot of different companies in a lot of different industries.

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Eric: Yeah, the radical minimum standard diagram or tool as I like to call it, was actually born out of.

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Absolutely. So  now let's just for a moment say that that Z axis, that diagonal axis is our radical minimum standard access. In other words, it's our opportunity to. Define, articulate our radical minimum standards for what we're doing in the workplace and how we're doing what we're doing. Mm-hmm.

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When, email communication, text communication, I mean, just the list goes on and on.  People will come into a workplace. They bring with them a whole bag of this is how I've learned to do it in the past. That's right. And you can actually have multiple people. And there, this is how I do it could actually be reasonable, but if it's not the same as everybody else, I tell people, I tell leaders all the time, it's like putting all the best athletes on the field, the court, the ice rink, the whatever sport we're talking about, they're all incredible athletes.

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People cannot execute and find the success that they're looking for. Mm-hmm. And for this reason, as leaders, we have to understand one of our preeminent responsibilities as leaders,  whether it's of an organization or even a small team, or even within our own households, is to clarify. What is the RMS, the radical minimum standard?

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It matters. And if we go back to the EQ matrix, that's why we start with that that tool, because we laid a  foundation for how people can show up through the lens of self-awareness and self-leadership so that they are operating from. Viable character that will allow them to operate well, even under pressure.

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People driving long distances, people dealing with mm-hmm. Aging, parents or in-laws you know, pregnancies. There's all kinds of reasons that we should be paying attention to. What is this person's bandwidth to be able to operate  according to our radical minimum standard? It's not just intelligence and skill, it's also just kind of their mental, emotional, physical bandwidth to be able to show up and accomplish what we're asking of them.

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Trajectory. Right? No. No professional  sporting coach ever says, Hey guys, it's the first day of the season. I'm so glad you guys made the team. I don't expect you to do anything better than you've done today for the rest of the season. Not gonna happen. No. Every good coach, every good leader expects that their individuals and the team.

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But the way this tool works is now we have suddenly a simple grid to say, okay, at zero time. When we bring somebody into our organization, have we clarified the radical minimum standard? And have we assessed these potential new hires through the lens of character, competency and capacity? Mm-hmm. And again,  if they at zero time are at or above the radical minimum standard, there's a good chance we're gonna hire them and bring them onto the team.

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Right? And for those who you know, remember the episode when we talked about the chiro circle, that is just  another chiro, an opportunity for us to gather, to learn from that situation and to give that particular team member an opportunity to raise their game so that they can get back to or above the radical minimum standard.

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Great job. Because what got you in the door won't keep you here. And as long as you keep growing with us, you're gonna stay in the door. Now, here's the thing. Above the radical minimum standard, at or above, we would refer to those team members as assets. Yes, they're operating as an asset, and this could be  kinda at a macro level, is enough of how they're operating at or above the radical minimum standard.

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But as time is continually passing, if somebody persists operating below the radical minimums they persist as a liability. That does come a point where we have to ask the hard question. If this  person can't change their trajectory, then what do we do now? Is it a situation where we need to reallocate their time and energy within the organization to something that where they can be more effective?

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We just tolerate these people all the while they're undermining. The very culture that we're trying to create so bad. So for most leaders, what we inevitably do is say, Hey, we're gonna have to pick a time, whether it's two weeks, two months. I don't care how long it  is, where we're gonna give them every chance we can to raise their game.

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We don't have to do hardly anything. They're just gonna keep on growing. But what we know about everything, how everything in this universe operates is that left alone. Things do not continue up into the right. That's right.  Things devolve, entropy takes place. Yeah. And so as with without an external force operating on my house, it doesn't naturally get cleaner over time, it gets more chaotic and more messy.

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Or they're learning a new skill and so their their skills, their competencies Yeah. Aren't where we want them to be because we've challenged them to take on new roles. So  our role as leader is to step in to give our teammates every possible chance to win.

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So one is, we start our new book's coming out, which basically unpacks this whole leadership operating system or this leadership playbook. And I start the book with a real story. We'll call this gentleman Bob for, to conceal his real identity. But this guy, Bob, you know, it was the head of  finance for an organization from the very beginning.

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And at the end of the day, it be, it was really an untenable situation when I started working with this organization. I had to step in and say, Hey we've gotta determine whether this individual can continue up into the right with the up and to the right of the organization. 'cause their organization  was growing.

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Basically put 'em in the closet in the back of the office or it's time to move on  and find somebody who is willing and wanting. To operate according to your radical minimum standard. Sadly it didn't work out and that individual's gone. But guess what? The person who replaced him was excited about the culture that this company was fighting for and has been nothing but an incredible asset to that organization as they've continued to grow and move forward.

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There's no cross pollination. There was a lot of toxicity. And, you know, people were not enjoying showing up to work. Yeah. And when this new leader stepped into that role. You know, they inherited a culture. I think sometimes we forget this, that we, if we step into a preexisting organization, we're  inheriting the culture gone before us.

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And I tell people, fear doesn't norm. It's not normally a good motivator to change behavior. Right. Instead, like we did with our kids growing up, we would focus more on reminding them over and over, Hey,  this is how we do things. This is how we handle our siblings. When we have a disagreement, this is how we clean our room.

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And also as they brought new people into their workforce, guess what happened? They were able to hire people with a clear. A clear RMS that would give that new hire an opportunity to determine is this the kind of culture I want to be a  part of and fight for as well? And that organization went through a radical transformation.

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Eric: That's such a good question. All right. I'm gonna give our listeners just maybe three or four practical things that they can start asking themselves, reflecting  on today that would help them, whether it's, you know, remember to our listeners, we can ask these questions of ourselves. 'cause we're, we're responsible to lead ourselves.

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We can actually begin to think through and articulate our RMS. That's the first thing as a leader.  Okay. Do we have a clear RMS? And if we don't, that's where a a, a coaching business like ours loves to come in and say, Hey let's. Let us help you identify, clarify, and articulate. Mm-hmm. That RMS and by the way, listeners, don't forget, having a set of values on the wall in your office isn't gonna cut it.

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Yeah. It's like somebody once said, once you think you've communicated the vision for your team or your company, you know enough, then do it a thousand more times. 'cause people will forget and loose side. The third question is, am I holding? The people that I'm responsible for, accountable for the RMS, am I willing to  engage with my team members or as a parent with my kids, or even with our spouses to say, Hey, it seems like you're operating below the RMS that we've agreed on.

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My expectations are too big and sometimes we realize they're too low, we need to raise them up. So either way, that diagonal line, it can  constantly shift in terms of its trajectory to make sure that our RMS is serving. Us, our team and the organization, we wanna make sure that it serves us, not we end up serving it.

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And of course, we've got  these diagrams in the show notes, and obviously we've got the new book coming out that will unpack this with even greater detail.

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Dawn: and on that note, I wanna say next week we are wrapping up this kind of season one of the Empower Podcast, where we have literally laid out every single one of our tools that we. Excuse to work with these high caliber organizations that we work with all across the  country. We laid them all out for you.

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But if we don't actually implement, we're not gonna see the transformation that we're expecting. So that's what season two is gonna be all about, and we're  so excited for that. So if you wanna invite a leader on that journey with you as we move from information to implementation, send them this episode or one of our previous tools and.

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But also in the show notes, you'll find a free mini course that we'd love to gift you five shifts to become the leader that you wish you had. That's all there for you and we hope that this episode encourages you to stop guessing, stop assuming that people just know what you expect of them, and start creating a culture  of clarity.