The difference between a leader and a boss is often reduced to memeworthy quips about who is at the frontlines and who’s issuing commands from the back, but underneath the clichés lies a profound truth.
Truly successful leaders inspire, guide, and model the path to excellence, while mere bosses rely on hierarchy to extract performance.
It is no surprise that great CEOs excel in creating an environment where their expectations alone can compel their teams to deliver their best.
This dynamic hinges on trust, vulnerability, and the subtle power of well-communicated expectations. When teams operate not out of fear or obligation but a genuine desire to live up to the CEO’s trust, that’s where the real magic happens.
Why High Expectations Are the Key to Unlocking High Performance
Human beings are deeply social creatures, driven by the desire to belong, contribute, and be valued by others.
This is particularly true when it comes to the workplace, where the social order is intrinsically linked with a bevy of personal goals and financial rewards.
Even in the most dysfunctional workplaces, employees are attuned to observe the example set by their leaders, and as long as we value their leadership, we often find ourselves all but compelled to respond to the expectations they set for us.
Research in organizational psychology, like Daniel Coyle’s work in The Culture Code, highlights that high-performing teams share a sense of psychological safety and a deep sense of commitment to meeting shared expectations. The knowledge that their contributions matter and their leader trusts them to perform is often one of the strongest motivators.
Brian Smith, founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of The “I” in Team series, underscores this idea: “When a CEO challenges a team and trusts them to perform, employees rise to meet that challenge, not because they have to, but because they want to. When there’s clarity and trust, people go above and beyond.”
Brian adds that the key to fostering this environment is being deliberate about expectations and framing them as opportunities to improve rather than mandates to change. “Most humans love to improve, even if they resist change. The narrative matters: shift it to growth, and you’ll see results.”
Here’s what’s so great about setting expectations instead of routines or oversight processes to motivate performance; they require nothing but the leader’s attention to set into motion.
The Science Behind Why Teams Respond to Clear Expectations
Mike Larsson, President of Dematic and KION Group Executive Board Member, has spent most of his time leading multinational teams, and what he has learned from the process is that soft power often motivates employees better than anything else.
“The biggest takeaway from my career is that people need to know the ‘why.’ They need to understand how their individual contributions feed into the broader mission,” Mike explains.
“When people see how their work ties into the company’s goals, they don’t just deliver—they innovate and outperform,” he continues, adding how the CEO’s role in being sincerely interested in the outputs, and signaling clear expectations of quality and pace, play a pivotal role.
Mike’s own method for leading by setting expectations involves framing them within a culture of accountability.
“Accountability should never be about catching mistakes, if you do that you only make people scared to get caught making one. Instead, the CEO needs to marry their high expectations with both a real opportunity to meet them, and a clear way to show that they did. When you do that, you unlock a level of performance that even the best incentives can’t match,” Mike adds.
Mike Lipps, CEO of Medallia, shares a similar view on accountability and alignment on high expectations.
“At Medallia, we focus on what we call ‘zero-daylight’ alignment. Everyone, from the janitor to the executives, knows their role in the mission, and there’s no daylight between our stated goals and our actions,” Mike explains. “When people have that clarity, their natural instinct is not to disappoint.”
In our recent conversation on leading with expectations, Mike shared an example of how Medallia has leveraged intangible incentives and employee-driven initiatives to drive performance.
“We revitalized our core values by bringing them out of the drawer and into daily operation, and we created a process that allows peers to recognize colleagues who live up to those values with something as simple as a t-shirt. Believe it or not it can be that simple, and what we’ve found is that it’s contagious,” Mike elaborated.
Examples of CEOs Using High Expectations to Inspire Teams
Setting expectations that inspire teams to not disappoint is not rocket science, but it does require intention and follow-through. Here are three ways CEOs can build trust and motivate their teams to exceed expectations even if they are entirely new to the concept.
Be Relentlessly Clear About the Mission
Brian Smith from IA Business Advisors highlights the importance of alignment and clear communications.
“A single person is an individual, but two or more people working toward a goal need a shared understanding. Too often, teams lose sight of the ripple effects of their actions on others because they aren’t aligned on the bigger picture,” he explains.
CEOs need to ensure that every team member understands the company’s mission and their specific role in achieving it.
Mike Lipps reinforces this at Medallia with his six-question framework that comes from Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage, which asks: What’s our purpose? What do we do? How do we behave? How do we succeed? What’s the most important thing right now? Who does what?
These questions aren’t just philosophical. They’re practical tools for maintaining alignment, and getting these right will set you on the right path to leading with expectations.
Build a Culture of Recognition and Ownership
Recognizing achievements tied to values is a simple but powerful tool. At Medallia, the introduction of “MegaMedallion” T-shirts for employees who exemplify core values created a grassroots movement of pride and motivation. Mike Lipps recounts how this seemingly small gesture “caught on like wildfire,” driving employees to self-regulate and strive for recognition.
Michael Larsson from Dematic also emphasizes ownership as a driver of excellence. “When employees feel ownership over their work, their commitment skyrockets. That ownership starts with the CEO, who must model vulnerability and trust.”
Although the results can be magical, there’s no magic wand to wave to make all of this come to life. Instead, CEOs need to begin with themselves and commit to recognizing excellence and empowering others to reach it at every level of the organization.
Frame Expectations as Opportunities, Not Obligations
One of Brian Smith’s key insights is that employees respond far better to opportunities for growth than directives for change. “When you challenge your team by asking for their best, not demanding it, you create an environment where they want to rise to the occasion,” he says.
Michael Larsson from Dematic agrees, noting, “The most successful teams I’ve led are those where expectations weren’t simply set, they were embraced as personal challenges. CEOs need to get smart about creating the pull, not just the push.”
Shaking off old ways of working, and traditional ways of managing, might not be easy, but the results are worth the trouble.
At the end of the day, all of the above boils down to a word as simple as trust.
Trust that employees will rise to the occasion when given the clarity, tools, and recognition they deserve. Trust that vulnerability and authenticity from the CEO will inspire others to follow suit.
And trust in the process of leadership itself; a process that, when done right, creates teams that don’t just work to meet expectations but strive to exceed them.