Setting Expectations

In this post, we dive into the first core element of performance enablement: setting expectations—based on discussion with 100+ People and Tech leaders.

Why expectations matter

Clear expectations are the bedrock of performance enablement. If employees don’t know what’s expected of them or how their work ties into company goals, they have no clear understanding of what good performance looks like. This creates misalignment, missed opportunities for growth, and unclear performance outcomes.

When expectations are well defined and agreed upon, individuals know how to direct their efforts, managers know how to support growth, and teams build clarity and trust.

Both research and modern leadership practices emphasize the critical role of expectation setting in performance. In Scaling People, Claire Hughes Johnson stresses the need for structured, well-documented goals and performance standards.

In addition, a 2023 study published in the Academic Journal of Business & Management (Lu, 2023) emphasizes that performance management is not just about evaluating the past—it begins with reflection and moves forward into clear goal-setting between managers and employees.

Common challenges in setting expectations

Setting expectations isn’t just writing down goals. Based on our discussions, common challenges include:

• No clear frameworks for setting expectations, especially in early-stage companies or in high-growth companies with rapidly changing organisations
• Managers struggling to translate org-wide standards into personal goals
• Inconsistent approaches across departments (e.g. sales vs. engineering)
• Training an entire organisation on expectations takes time and consistent effort

What does performance mean in your organisation?

Every company defines performance differently. From our conversations, successful organisations most commonly describe expectations in three areas. Each expectation should be ideally described at multiple performance levels—poor, basic, intermediate, advanced, exceptional—using absolute and specific examples.

Introducing talent bars

Performance levels show how well someone performs. Talent bars set the expected level for each role. For example:

• Junior Engineers may need to reach a Basic level in TypeScript.
• Senior PMs may be expected to perform at an Intermediate level in product discovery.

Talent bars can change. Performance level definitions should not.

Bad example: Avoid describing performance relative to seniority, e.g. “Product Management - Advanced: discovers better customer requirements than junior PMs"

Good example: Aim to describe performance relative to observable outcomes, e.g. “Product Management - Advanced: runs structured discovery, identifies unmet needs, drives roadmap decisions based on insights”

Aligning organization and individual expectations

The book Radical Candor underscores the importance of setting ambitious, aligned goals through open, joint planning with employees.

Defining organization-level expectations is only half the battle. To be truly useful, those expectations must be translated into individual-level expectations that reflect each person’s role, strengths, and development areas.

Managers and employees should work together to answer:

• What does good performance look like for me, in my current role?
• What areas should I focus on to grow and succeed?

These personal expectations serve as the baseline for coaching, feedback, and performance evaluation.

Real-world example: from expectation to evaluation

Let’s say John, a backend engineer, sets the following personal goal with his manager:

Expectation:

"Automate full-stack latency and error tracing and alerting by setting up Elastic APM and documenting instructions for teams. Ensure 80% adoption."

Linked performance attributes:

• Deliverables and impact: complexity, quality, speed
• Skill: cloud infrastructure

Evaluation:

• Complexity (Advanced): Delivered a novel monitoring solution that integrates across services
• Quality (Intermediate): Good documentation, but limited team onboarding
• Speed (Intermediate): Missed full adoption by quarter-end
• Cloud infrastructure (Advanced): Robust alerting system already surfacing issues

This structure gives clarity to both the individual and the manager—and allows for consistent calibration across peers.

Our take

Performance enablement starts with clear expectations. This doesn't mean enforcing a one-size-fits-all framework. It's about giving employees and managers the tools, context, and structure to define what success looks like, and to align on it.

Done well, it turns performance management from something evaluative into something empowering.

At Taito.ai, we help teams:

• Ensure expectations are defined for each individual
• Connect personal expectations with broader company goals
• Provide training and best practices for setting clear, actionable goals
• Feed expectations into ongoing feedback loops and check-in

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What’s next?

• Read more about the common challenges of performance management, and the shift towards performance enablement.
• In our next blog post, we’ll dive into building a culture of continuous feedback—what it takes, how to do it, and how to make it stick.

Sources

• Kim Scott (2017). Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. St. Martin's Press.
• Claire Hughes Johnson (2023). Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building. Stripe Press.
• Ling Lu (2023). Enhancing Organizational Performance: Unveiling the Dynamics of Performance Management and Employee Engagement. Academic Journal of Business & Management, 5(19). https://doi.org/10.25236/AJBM.2023.051908
• Taito.ai interviews with 100 People- and Technology leaders in European tech companies (2024)