How clear are we when setting expectations?   This story is about 3^rd and 4^th grade girls getting evaluated for basketball skills, so that they can be placed on teams.  These young ladies are roughly 9 and 10 years old.  Around 200 girls show up, and the league organizers are trying to figure out which team each girl should be on, and they have more girls than expected, so they ask the parents to help out.  I’m sitting in the stands in Ugg Boots, but I do know a lot about basketball, so I volunteer.

I step onto the basketball court, I am working with another Dad, and they give me a station of about 40 girls.  I ask the girls to count off into “1s and 2s”.   I have “1s” on the left side and “2s” on the right.

We are awaiting instruction and a guy comes by and he points to the “1s” and says: “You’re on offense”.  He then points at the “2s”, and says: “You’re on defense.  We’re doing rebounds. Go!”, and he gestures in and upward, as if conducting an orchestra.  Then he walks away.

I look at the girls on both sides of me and I say:  “Let’s back up just a hot moment.  Girls, who knows what offense means?”  No one.  “Who knows what defense means?”  Not a soul.  “Ladies, who knows what a rebound is?”  Absolute crickets.

Now remember that these young ladies are tasked with not only performing this basic drill in basketball, but they are getting evaluated on this skill set, and they have no idea of what we are talking about!  I looked at these eager young faces and I simply said:  “Let’s start there.”

How does this apply to business leaders?  Sometimes we think we’re being clear, and we are not.  Sometimes we think we are properly setting expectations, and we may be, but those words are meaningless because we don’t have shared meaning and shared understanding of those expectations.  Let’s find out where people are, and let’s start from there.