Your Team Can’t Read Your Mind

You’ve probably had that moment. You introduce a new way of doing things, you’re sure it makes complete sense, and a few weeks later it’s quietly fallen apart. Nobody’s being lazy. Nobody’s trying to undermine you. It just isn’t happening the way you pictured.

So what’s going on?

Think of the gap between what you intend, how your team interprets it, and what actually gets executed. A good example: a morning TV show recently asked whether it’s okay to bring an iced latte to a job interview. A Gen Z guest said no way. Millennials said interviews are stressful enough, give us a break. A boomer said it’s an interview, not a coffee shop. Same question, wildly different answers, and everyone was convinced theirs was the obvious one.

Your team is the same. Different ages, personalities, and backgrounds, with new hires bringing habits from their last workplace that may look nothing like yours. What’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to them. You have to make the invisible visible.

Say you decide everyone who walks into your office will be offered a bottle of water. Great idea. But if you just announce it, you’ll get patchy results. Where does the water come from? Where’s it stored? Who restocks it? Who’s responsible?

In our offices we put a small bar fridge in reception. That’s the how. Then comes the why: in Brisbane’s heat, a tradesperson dropping off keys is delighted to be handed a cold bottle of water. It costs about a dollar, it cements the relationship, and that provider is more likely to look after you next time.

When people understand the why, they stop treating a standard as a chore and start treating it as part of how you look after people.

And a quick note: “we deliver great service” is not a service standard. Neither is “we’re client first” or “we’re very responsive.” Those are slogans. A real standard sounds like “we answer calls and emails within four hours” or “if we make a mistake, we acknowledge it and compensate the client.” If it can’t be documented, taught, and measured, it isn’t a standard yet.