When it comes to setting expectations — for example, assigning a deadline for an upcoming project — always make it a two-way dialogue. Ask your team: “Is this an aggressive but reasonable goal? Is this something we can land?” And it almost doesn’t matter if the answer is yes or no, because what you’re doing is opening up the space to have a further dialogue about it and dig in more. There should be a healthy tension with how much you want the team to stretch — if you’re hitting your goals 80% or 90% of the time, in my estimation, that’s probably too much. It’s probably the case that you’ve not set them aggressively enough. And it’s really important that managers have a direct conversation with their team because it’s not going to be the last time that you’re setting expectations and you’ll want to get sort of more aligned every time you do it.
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