CALIBRATING PERCEPTION & REALITY

No one should ever guess the answer to “How am I doing”? The role of a leader is to learn how to close the gap between perception and reality. For their employees indeed, but for themselves as well. The first step in closing the gap is to have clear, well defined, non-moving standards/expectations, and we must make certain everyone knows them. Not every employee needs to know every standard, but they need to know the standards that apply to their position and job performance. A carhop does not need to know Food Cost Efficiency standards, but they do need to know RBS and SWB standards. Cooks can be excellent cooks without knowing RBS stanrds, but they must know quality and accuracy standards. 

When you make people aware of the standards and expectations they should meet, they should never be in doubt how they perform. In other words, their perception of how they perform should match closely to the reality of how they perform … if they know the standards and leadership follows up on employee execution to those standards. A carhop doesn’t have to wonder if I am a good carhop. They should be able to self-evaluate by assessing (or being told) whether they meet RBS and other service standards. 

Now, we know many (maybe most) employees will not self-evaluate. That is why we have layers of leadership – to keep that perception/reality gap closed for employees, with appropriate communication and follow-up. 

It is trickier to close the perception/reality gap of leaders. The primary responsibility of leadership is to keep the perception/reality gap closed for employees and to meet the specific management functions. A leader asking if I meet the service standards 1) needs to know the standards and 2) needs to know if those responsible for meeting the standards perform to that standard. A leader asking do I do a good job with service needs to ask, do my employees meet the service standards? Well, do they hit On Time, Keep CLT in line, do hops hit the RBS, is STC in line, are we accurate, are SWB scripts followed, and so on?  The standards are set in stone, so it should be easy to answer the only question that matters… did they or did they not hit the standard? That is what self-evaluation looks like for leaders. It is simple: no feelings, no emotions, no ego, no pride. It doesn’t require external input if you are honest and aware. Just one simple question: Did we or did we not hit the standard, period? That is self-evaluating. 

After identifying what standards were or were not hit, you can self-direct your energies to address missed standards. Acting to meet missed standards is self-correcting. 

The challenge for leadership in addressing missed standards usually requires addressing employee performance. For an employee to self-correct, they only need to address their performance. A leader’s self-correcting often requires correcting employees’ performance. That is leadership. 

How do we become better at self-evaluating, self-directing, and self-correcting? We have uniform standards set in stone. We honestly ask did we, or did we not meet them. Our leadership layers modify their and employees’ behaviors and actions to meet the standards consistently. It may be a tricky concept to execute, but it is a straightforward concept to understand. 

That is how you calibrate and align perception to reality.