I have high expectations. (If you know me in real life, I hope you were sitting down when you read that shocking news!)
My high expectations are not just for myself, though those are my highest, but for others. I don’t apologize for that and quite frankly, I question those in faith-based work who don’t hold high expectations. Doing our work well and with integrity is a matter of stewardship of our limited resources.
To be very clear, high expectations does not mean, run yourself so ragged you cannot function. After decades of nonprofit work, mostly in a faith-based setting and researching others in similar settings, in fact, I know this:
High expectations can only be met with proper boundary setting and appropriate honor for rest.
My student course feedback is generally quite positive, though I also get the occasional “it’s not fair, she expects too much” variety of feedback too. My favorite play on that theme is “doesn’t she know we’re graduate students with busy lives and cannot possibly care about citation or library research…” Sigh. I will just leave that alone for now!
Rather, in the post, I want to share some thoughts about expecting a lot as a manger of employees. I’ve managed employees in some capacity, including overseeing an in-depth faculty mentorship experience for over 20 years now. In that time, I’ve noticed three main outcomes when I set high expectations for employees. Employees will generally:
- Rise to the occasion, taking advantage of training, opportunities to learn, and excel beyond my own hopes.
- Remain in the middle, meeting requirements and succeeding generally, but not thriving.
- Reject the concept of excellence and plummet to a point of fireable action.
Much like student feedback, I’ve certainly experienced employees who think my high expectations are unreasonable. While I acknowledge there are those with truly ridiculous expectations and that I make mistakes as a manager, a general approach of working hard, giving careful attention to detail, and respecting the strategic direction of leadership, etc. are not things I will find fault with for myself or others! And again, achieving goals on small budgets and with limited teammates is a reality for most smaller, faith-based nonprofits – stewardship of finance and having the right people in roles matters!
After 20+ years of experience teaching, managing, and the like, I’ve drawn some conclusions for these categories you may find helpful as well.
| Response | Employees | Students |
| Rise | Employees who are committed to personal growth benefit from directed mentoring, career development paths, and additional training. Financial reward is generally desired, though opportunities for growth and learning may also be highly motivating. | Students committed to doing their best will adapt to detailed coaching and feedback, seeking advanced writing and research support, and engage in conversation with professors. They move from “an A is necessary to maintain a 4.0” to “I desire to learn and grow from this experience.” These students are, however, generally “A” students or high “B” students because they seek to do the work well. |
| Remain | Employees who are happy to stay in the status quo are generally agreeable, not directly conflict-oriented, and will do the things that need to be done (though won’t seek more responsibility generally). Even if they may be gossiping/chatting in the background with fellow employees, they tend to present an “I’m on board” public/team persona. Financial reward is primarily desired, though they will usually be agreeable to additional training. | Students who are happy to remain are often completing a degree less as personal growth and more as checking a requirement off a list. Students content to live in the lower “B” or “C” grading area often are “remain” students. They will likely incorporate enough feedback to do what is needed but are less likely to engage in advanced feedback or connect with professors outside essential questions. |
| Reject | Employees who are rejecting are often experiencing complicating factors outside work that leads to this behavior. I find in those cases, this is often temporary. For those who remain in this area, you can intervene with training, plans for performance improvement, kindly directive coaching, etc. Employees who are truly stuck in a rejecting phase and unable to see outside their own viewpoints will generally either move to “remain” for a time long enough to find alternative employment or will sometimes self-implode leading to fireable action. I also have seen employees hear the message clearly and move from reject to rise! | Students in the reject category are generally failing courses or close to failing. This serves as an “ultimatum” moment for students at some point for classes or even programs. Blame for failure to meet requirements is typically external, including directing blame at the professor. Interestingly, with intervention and coaching, students in this position will often move to a “rise” category, given a clear path and understanding of what is not going well. In my own experience, students who are rejecting either move to “rise” or reject entirely, ending their course or program. |
Keep in mind that while some of my conclusions are influenced by decades of reading in the organizational leadership literature, this post is based on my anecdotal experience. One thing I’ve consistently noticed in students and employees, is that for those newer to workplace or classroom norms and standards, there is frequently a refusal to believe that someone with decades more experience and a deep level of education in an area could possibly know more than someone just starting out! This is demonstrated in student response and acceptance of professorial feedback, for example. In the workplace, I’ve also noticed a tendency towards a belief in decision-making autonomy that doesn’t match experience, role position, or role responsibility. There’s a lack of maturity and understanding in these cases I have not quite figured out yet!
Despite these challenges, I find myself most interested in investing my time and coaching energy in those in the rise and reject categories. This is where I typically find employees and students fighting the hardest for learning, growth, and success. As a mentor/coach/teacher, I am invigorated by investing in that energy and helping others refocus their paths and achieve their goals. I had to fire someone for the first time fresh out of college myself, have mentored numerous employees from PIP to excelling, and have managed employees in a wide-variety of performance levels in nonprofit settings over the years.
My experience has proved that my time is typically best spent focused on the extremes, though I don’t know if that’s entirely fair so much as the best use of time and energy. I find it’s also okay to accept a reasonable number of people in the “fine” category. These employees may not be your super stars but they are likely to be retained for a solid length of time, showing up for work, pleasantly get along with the team, and do the job well enough each day. The ultimate explanation of the employer/employee exchange relationship understood in the psychological contract literature, in fact, may just be these employees! It’s important as managers and professors to remember, too, that not every one desires to “move up” or is fulfilled by career as a primary focus. Not every student has to be excelling beyond excellence to gain something from a course and chart a path forward!
In my many years of reading advice blogs and career stories, I noted how often people ask a version of “do I have to take a management role”? Realistically, some employees may not want that level of people responsibility, preferring to remain an individual contributor who clocks in, does a job well, and clocks out. Remaining in a status quo because that’s good enough for you and allows you the income to support your needs is not a failure – in fact, more of us might find fulfillment there if we thought about it long! Whether or not I hate this phrase, “Cs get degrees” (though not so much in grad school if any students are reading…).
Where I am the leader of a team or course, I expect good work and effort. You decide at what point you’ve achieved “good enough” for you – I can’t be in charge of that. What I can do is expect excellence from everyone at each turn, until we reach a point that it’s not obtainable. For me, that might look like you cannot pass a course or you are damaging team culture and cohesion by staying put. But I’m also going to keep asking for your best work day after day.
Critically, though, I don’t choose for you where you land!
My dad shared with me recently that a former student was asking him how he and my mom managed to raise preacher’s kids who weren’t awful (alas, it is kind of a known trope that PKs are dicey later in life…). He asked what kind of rules we had. I laughed a little, because I knew what Dad had to say…we really didn’t. Obviously, my parents didn’t let us run wild or stay out until 2 a.m. or dedicate closet space to a drug habit.
Dad continued, “we just set high expectations.”
While that can certainly be taken to an extreme and can be damaging in those extremes, in our family we knew that what was ultimately expected of us was our best. When I operate in that mindset for employees and students alike, three things are true :
- I set expectations for excellence which are consistent and clear.
- I am open and available for discussions about clarity and guidance regardless of how clear I think I was.
- I am consistently willing to provide directive, kind feedback.
Kindness matters here. Each term I have students struggling due to a crisis or family illness. Employees experience the same kinds of struggles or go through periods of depression or the general mid-20s life crisis of “what now?!” that I’m not quite too old to have forgotten my own experience with yet! High expectations does not equal angry, yelling bosses or distant, inaccessible professors.
I’ll leave you with a post I made on my LinkedIn a couple months ago, in the midst of offering grace and kindness where I could to several students experiencing a tough time:
We can expect excellence while being kind, considerate, empathetic, and flexible. Does that mean I can accept terrible work and give you a raise or assign a plagiarized paper an A? Of course not. But the choice to coach and care can help fix issues and give people a chance to invest in their own development.
Reminder to professors: we can have high expectations and be reasonably full of mercy. I don’t apologize to my students for expecting their best work or citing their research! I will never apologize for asking a student to go beyond and push themselves. But I also just gave 2-3 extensions for family emergencies, sick kiddos, and just feeling plain overwhelmed in one case.
I would estimate 90% of my undergrads work full time, and 99.9% of my grad students work more than full time. And by the way, your student athletes are working at their sport (and often also a job).
Of course, if your grandfather has died 5 times in my classes, I’m going to ask you just how many grandfathers you have…but generally my default is to trust until I have a reason not to and flex where I possibly can.
Reminder to students: sometimes all you have to do is ask! We aren’t that scary and as I just told one student, I don’t know anyone teaching [here] who doesn’t default to working with students where we can.
Without the grace of a few Eastern professors at tough times in my own life, I could easily have faced a delay in program or withdrawal. It can be BOTH high expectations AND an understanding of reality.
So wherever you find those reporting to you, learning from you, or even find yourself – frame it in a posture of stewardship, grace, and kindness and a clear, reasonable path forward can be developed.
Faith + Work + Life 
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