Nearly all managers inadvertently treat their employees in a manner that leads to less than desirable performance. Several leaders experience difficulty delegating duties. There appears to be the automatic sentiment that the only way to get the job done right is to do it yourself. While accomplishing it yourself may appear to work, it tends to be a breeding ground for ennui, indifference, low motivation, and loss of commitment and zeal. Sharing the work can be a vast motivator, thereby fortifying the organization.



The manner by which managers treat their subordinates is mildly influenced by what they anticipate of them. If a manager's prospects are high, output is likely to be high. If his expectations are low, productivity is expected to be mediocre. It appears there is a law that triggers an employee's performance to rise or fall to synchronize with his manager's expectations.

1. What a boss assumes of a subordinate and how he empowers the subordinate will combine to rapidly influence the subordinate's performance and his career development. What is vital in the interaction of expectations is not what the boss says, but what he does. Apathy and noncommittal treatment convey low expectations and head to inferior execution. Nearly all managers are more successful in communicating low expectations to their subordinates than in conveying high expectations, even though most managers trust exactly the opposite.

2. First-class managers generate high performance expectations that subordinates can accomplish. Underlings will not endeavor for high productivity unless they consider the boss's high expectations pragmatic and attainable. If they are pressed to strive for unattainable goals, they eventually give up trying. Upset, they settle for results that are worse than they are qualified of achieving. The encounter of a large printing corporation demonstrates this. The company discovered that production in fact deteriorated if production quotas were set too high, because the workers simply ceased trying to meet them. “Dangling the carrot just beyond the donkey's reach” is lousy motivational tactic.

3. Inferior managers fail to cultivate high expectations for their minion. Successful managers have greater assurance than ineffective managers in their ability to cultivate the gifts of subordinates. The winning manager's record of success and self-confidence allows credibility to his goals. Thus, subordinates accept his expectations as realistic and exert effort to attain them.