Setting Expectations
The first step to successful Performance Enablement
In this post, we dive into the first core element of performance enablement: setting expectations—based on discussion with 100+ People and Tech leaders.
New to performance enablement?
Read an overview of all the 6 elements of performance enablement first.
What are performance expectations
Performance expectations define what “good performance” looks like in your organization. They translate your company’s values, goals, and role requirements into clear, observable behaviors, skills, and impact. At Taito.ai, we see them as the foundation for all meaningful feedback, evaluations, and personal growth. When expectations are well defined—at both the organizational and individual level—they provide clarity, enable coaching, and support fair performance reviews.
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.
"Performance management is about setting expectations early and often. Overcommunicating clarity is how you scale well."
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.
Culture
Values, principles, and behaviors that reflect how the organization works and what it rewards
Impact
What’s expected in terms of complexity, quality, speed, or other suitable attributes measuring execution
Skills
Both general and role-specific skills & competencies, such as communication, Python programming, product strategy, or cloud infrastructure
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.
"When people have clear goals, they can make decisions more autonomously and perform better."
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.
Examples of good personal expectations
Good goals are spesific, holistic, realistic, and aligned with company goals
Antipatterns to avoid in setting personal expectations
Avoid setting goals that define a business- or a learning goal only, are vague, or commit to unrealistic timelines
Specific and non-ambiguous
"Set up full-stack tracing and latency alerting for our app stack using Elastic APM or Sentry"
Holistic combinations of impact, skills, or values
"Study discovery techniques, run customer sessions, and create a product strategy doc"
Time-bound and realistic
"Complete and document 80% tracing adoption by end of Q2"
Aligned with long-term and proximal goals
"Support NPS improvement by reducing app errors and latency through APM instrumentation"
Only business goals without links to personal growth
"Convert 10 ICP customers"
Only learning goals without connection to business impact
"Complete a course on AWS"
Vague or ambiguous goals
"Improve app error monitoring"
Short-term actions without a longer-term goal
"Fix 50% of bugs in backlog"
Long-term aspirations without actionable next steps
"Become a better product manager"
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
This post is part of our blog series on performance enablement. So far, we’ve covered:
- Performance Enablement: Why Modern Teams Are Moving Past Traditional Reviews
- Setting Expectations: The First Step to Enabling Performance (this post)
- Continuous Feedback: Driving Growth in Real Time
- Employee Coaching and 1-1 Meetings: connect expectations, feedback, and action
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)