Raise your expectations on productivity and watch your team exceed them.

If you’re on the lookout for ways to bump productivity, accelerate your lean or Six Sigma efforts, rescue slumping performers or improve teamwork, here’s a place to start: Your expectations. These subtle—but very powerful—elements of your leadership toolkit can produce lasting results.

One of the earliest case studies that starkly highlights the effects of high and low expectations involves a punch card machine. For the 1890 census, the U.S. Census Bureau automated its census tabulation by using a punch card machine invented by a mechanical engineer named Herman Hollerith.

The machine resembled a typewriter, and operators had to be specially trained. Hollerith estimated that a skilled operator could process 550 cards per day. Sure enough, when workers were trained, they punched 550 cards per day with two weeks’ experience. Some managed 700, but they complained that it was a strain to work that fast.

The next group of operators was trained by people who had no knowledge of Hollerith’s prediction. These operators weren’t told anything about the first group’s production. Before long, they were processing 2,100 cards a day without breaking a sweat.

This is a case in which artificially low expectations were communicated to one group of trainees but not to another. The machines didn’t change, the training methodology didn’t change, nor were the later trainees any smarter or more adept than the early trainees. The only thing that changed was expectations. Lower expectations produced lower results, and higher expectations produced higher results.

How Do Your Expectations Play Out?

Your beliefs play a significant role in boosting performance. This is not to advocate a perpetual cheery optimism that everything-is-just-fine-all-the-time-because-it’s-just-such-a-nice-world-and-we’ll-all-be-happy-forever-after.

Anytime you need to improve performance, you need to start with a brutally realistic assessment of current conditions. If productivity is low, then it’s low, and you have to acknowledge that fact. If cycle time is horrible, then it’s horrible, and you have to acknowledge that fact. If quality is poor, then it’s poor, and you have to acknowledge that fact. Without squarely facing reality, you’ll never be able to improve performance.

Consider this possibility: Part of that brutal assessment should be to look in the mirror. Maybe, without realizing it, your underlying beliefs are contributing to the performance situations you see around you. If so, you need to acknowledge that fact—and begin correcting it.

Let’s say productivity isn’t where it should be. Don’t start by looking at "them." Start by looking at "you." Just as you have the power to create a new reality around productivity, cycle time or quality, you also have the power to create a new reality around your expectations for others. Positive expectations are not about denying reality but about acknowledging reality and then saying "we’re going to create a new reality and here’s what it looks like."

In the next installment, you’ll see how to go about a brutal assessment of current conditions regarding the messages you send to others about your belief in their performance excellence. Three components make up the messages you send: the words you use, the way you say them and your non-verbal cues.

About the Author

Tom Connellan is a High ROI Keynote speaker regularly used by leading firms such as GE, Neiman Marcus, Dell, FedEx and Marriott to strengthen customer loyalty and leadership practices. When looking for a keynote speaker, Tom probably belongs on your short list of possibilities.