Leaders + Expectations = Culture

Former Justice Department Leader Says Clear Expectations Are Key

This week’s DFW Leadership Series featured Dayle Elieson, who spoke on building a team culture that works. The series, sponsored by the Colleyville Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, hosts monthly events with insights from local business and government leaders. Early in her career, Elieson served as Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Texas and Assistant District Attorney in Denton and Dallas Counties.

She says leaders create a culture through their expectations for their team. The best leaders set clear expectations, repeat them often, and reinforce them by example. 

Elieson, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Southlake, says clear expectations save time, decrease the frequency of difficult conversations, increase employee satisfaction and productivity, unite teams, and protect the organization from legal issues. Studies show employees are happier when they know what to expect; people prefer a bad boss to an unpredictable one.

When she became Chief Counsel for the Drug Enforcement Administration, Elieson replaced a predecessor who had been in the job for fifteen years. She visited various offices across the globe to meet her team. She asked questions and listened to learn. She sought to understand what challenges they faced, how they interacted, and listened to what they didn’t say. 

Based on that information, Elieson developed a set of seven expectations she implemented across the organization:

1. Don’t embarrass the office.
2. Nothing is important enough to lie about. (Distrust degrades teamwork.)
3. When you make a mistake, own it. (Learn from it. Move on.) 
4. Keep confidences and use discretion. (The office gossip does not get ahead.)
5. Always be kind and civil.
6. Work hard. (Do more than merely show up. Every job matters.) 
7. Have fun. (Enjoy work; enjoy the people.)

Elieson personally articulated these expectations with each new hire and included the new employee’s entire chain of command while doing so. She referred to those seven expectations as often as possible during meetings, convinced that repetition is key, as one of the laws of learning.

Elieson also served as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada and Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Throughout her career, she’s observed a few common maxims:

1. Predictability is an underrated virtue in a leader.
2. People feel safe when they know and understand what’s happening.
3. Leaders often think they’re doing better than they truly are (at communicating vision and expectations).
4. Too often expectations are only expressed after a failure.
5. If the leader doesn’t live according to expectations, words don’t matter.

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All are invited to the next installment of the DFW Leadership Series on Thursday, October 27 at 7 pm. The speaker will be PawTree Founder and CEO Roger Morgan, who will talk about “How to Generate Power as a Leader.” The event is always held at 500 W. McDonwell School Road in Colleyville, Texas. Visit the Series on Facebook here, and sign up to receive email updates and reminders here.