Leadership Expectations for Managers Come First
Leadership Expectations for Managers: Define Good Leadership Before You Train
Quick answer: Leadership expectations for managers are the few behaviours your leadership team agrees every people leader in your organization should show. In an August 2026 Betterworks survey of 521 HR and business leaders, 48% named leadership expectations as the top source of friction for managers, and lack of manager training ranked last of the named barriers, at 25%.
Key takeaways
48% of 521 HR and business leaders said leadership expectations create the most friction for managers, ahead of communication at 43% and performance management at 40%.
Lack of manager training ranked last of the named barriers to manager effectiveness, at 25%.
64% of HR leaders said HR plays the biggest role in improving manager effectiveness, and 32% of business leaders agreed.
Loblaw, with about 220,000 employees, wrote down leadership expectations for four stages of leadership, organized around the same five areas.
At 30 to 300 people, one page with three to five visible behaviours for each level of leader is enough to start.
A 20-minute exercise with your leadership team shows where your leaders agree and where your managers are getting mixed messages.
Mickey Anderson explains the research and the Loblaw example on UNLEASHED, the LoyaltyOps podcast.
Turn your leaders’ lists into one page of behaviours
The free Cultural Standards Builder takes the behaviours your leaders write down and turns them into standards your managers can see and practise. It follows the same exercise this post ends with, step by step.
Get the Cultural Standards Builder
What gets in the way of managers before training does?
Unclear leadership expectations get in the way first. When the leaders who manage your managers disagree about what good leadership looks like, each manager who reports to them hears a different answer, and training can’t decide which answer is right.
Betterworks, a performance management software company, surveyed 521 HR and business leaders in the US and the UK in August 2026, 263 in HR and 258 in the business, all at director level or above. Asked what creates the most friction for managers, 48% named leadership expectations, 43% named communication, and 40% named performance management.
48% of 521 HR and business leaders named leadership expectations as the top friction for managers, Betterworks, 2026.
A separate question asked what’s most likely to keep managers from being more effective, and a lack of manager training ranked last of the named barriers, at 25%. When a manager struggles, many organizations sign them up for training first, and the leaders in this survey put training last.
The order of those answers makes sense, because a manager can’t communicate well or manage performance well until they know what good leadership means in your organization.
Mickey Anderson, Co-Founder of LoyaltyOps, said on UNLEASHED:
“Training builds skills, and it can’t tell a manager what your company expects of the people who lead others, because that’s a decision only the leadership team can make.”
What are leadership expectations for managers?
Leadership expectations for managers are a short, written set of behaviours that describe what a good people leader does in your organization. Your leadership team agrees on them, and your leaders use them in every people decision.
Each expectation describes something a person does, in words two people could agree they saw happen, such as “raises problems early” or “makes the decision and explains why.” A label like “good communicator” doesn’t work as an expectation, because nobody can see it happen or practise it. Your values say what your organization cares about, and your leadership expectations say what a leader does each week to show it. We cover that step in more detail in Cultural Standards: Turn Values Into Behaviours.
Written expectations also give leadership development something to work against. Once they’re on the page, you can develop each leader against clear leadership competencies and measure the change, which is how the Leadership Competency Assessment works, with each leader assessed by the people who see their work.
Why does nobody own the definition of a good manager?
Each group often expects another group to write it. In the same Betterworks survey, 64% of HR leaders said HR plays the biggest role in improving manager effectiveness, and 32% of business leaders agreed. Business leaders named executive leadership most often, at 62%, followed by strategy at 52%.
64% of HR leaders and 32% of business leaders said HR plays the biggest role in manager effectiveness, Betterworks, 2026.
“When each group thinks the other side owns it, nobody ever sits down and actually defines it or takes ownership,” Mickey said on the episode. In an organization of 30 to 300 people, there may be no HR team at all, which makes the definition your leadership team’s job whether anyone decided that or not.
Every team feels the result. Gallup estimates that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units, so when expectations are unclear at the leadership team level, people experience it through the manager who leads them.
How did Loblaw define effective leadership for 220,000 people?
Loblaw wrote down what effective leadership means for each stage of leader before building it into its people decisions. HRD Canada reported in September 2026 that Loblaw, which employs about 220,000 people across grocery, pharmacy, e-commerce and corporate services, found that different parts of the business held different views of what effective leadership looked like.
“We saw an opportunity to create greater clarity and consistency around what effective leadership means at Loblaw,”
Mark Coulter, Loblaw’s Director of Talent Development, told HRD Canada.
According to the report, Loblaw built leadership expectations for four stages of leaders: leading self, emerging leader, experienced leader and executive.
At every stage, the expectations are organized around the same five areas, which are shaping strategy, building talent, fostering collaboration, driving performance, and demonstrating the company’s “blue culture.” Expectations change by level, so a frontline leader knows what good leadership means in their role, and the next steps are building those expectations into hiring, performance assessment, succession planning, and development.
The order Loblaw worked in is the part any organization can copy. Mickey said on UNLEASHED:
“They defined what good leadership looks like first. And every other people decision gets built on that definition.”
Many organizations work in the opposite order, holding reviews, promoting people and sending managers to training before anyone has written down what they’re measuring against.
What do leadership expectations look like at 30 to 300 people?
At 30 to 300 people, leadership expectations fit on one page. Loblaw needed four stages and five areas for about 220,000 people, and a smaller organization can start with two levels of leaders and three to five behaviours for each.
Loblaw’s four leader stages and five areas, beside a one-page set of leadership expectations for 30 to 300 people.
Write for the two levels you have
Most organizations this size have two levels of leaders: your people leaders and your leadership team. Write three to five behaviours for each level, and keep the list that short so people can remember it.
Write behaviours someone can see
Test each line by asking whether two people could agree they saw it happen. “Raises problems early” passes the test, and “good communicator” doesn’t, so rewrite a label like that as the behaviour you want, such as “confirms what was agreed before the end of each one-on-one.”
Your leadership team goes first
“People watch what their leaders do more closely than anything that’s written down,” Mickey said on the episode. Each leader on your leadership team picks one behaviour to practise before managers are asked to do the same, and the team points it out when a leader models a behaviour and when one doesn’t. The Leadership Modeling Reference Card sets out a 30-day way to do this.
Use it in every people decision
A written definition matters once your leaders use it to make decisions. Interview for the behaviours when you hire, talk about them in one-on-ones, assess against them in reviews, and use them to decide promotions.
The Betterworks survey points to what’s at stake. Organizations that said they were significantly ahead of the changing manager role said their managers were effective 94% of the time, and organizations that said they were somewhat or significantly behind said so 59% of the time. Both figures are what respondents reported about their own organizations, and a 35-point gap is still worth noticing.
Organizations ahead of the changing manager role said managers were effective 94% of the time, against 59%, Betterworks.
How can your leadership team start this week?
Ask each leader to write down three behaviours on their own, then compare the lists together at your next meeting. The comparison takes about 20 minutes, and every step is a decision your leadership team makes.
Send the question today. Ask each person on your leadership team to write down, in their own words, three behaviours they expect from a good people leader in your organization, and give everyone one rule: nobody compares notes before the meeting.
Compare the lists at your next leadership meeting. The behaviours that show up on everyone’s list are your starting definition, and the ones that show up only once are where your managers are getting mixed messages.
Decide on every behaviour that showed up once. Agree whether each one belongs on the page or comes off it, so managers stop hearing a different version from each leader.
Write the one page. List three to five behaviours for your people leaders and three to five for your leadership team, each one something you can see someone do.
Have each leader pick one behaviour to practise first. Your leadership team works on the page for a month before managers are asked to do the same.
Choose the first people decision you’ll use it in. It could be your next hire, your next round of one-on-ones or your next promotion conversation.
Mickey closed the episode with the reason the order matters:
“Before you train your managers, agree on what you’re asking them to be. That’s where every other people decision starts.”
Frequently asked questions
What are leadership expectations?
Leadership expectations are a short, written set of behaviours that describe what a good leader does in your organization. Your leadership team agrees on them, writes each one as something people can see, and uses them in hiring, one-on-ones, reviews and promotions. In an organization of 30 to 300 people, three to five behaviours for each leadership level is enough to start.
Why isn’t manager training enough on its own?
Training builds skills, and it can’t decide what your organization expects of its leaders. In an August 2026 Betterworks survey of 521 HR and business leaders, 48% named leadership expectations as the top source of friction for managers, and lack of manager training ranked last of the named barriers, at 25%. Agreeing on the expectations first gives training something to teach toward.
Who should define what good leadership looks like?
Your leadership team should define it. In the Betterworks survey, 64% of HR leaders said HR plays the biggest role in improving manager effectiveness, and 32% of business leaders agreed, so each group can expect the other to write the definition. In an organization of 30 to 300 people, there may be no HR team, so the leadership team makes the decision.
How many leadership behaviours should we write down?
Write three to five behaviours for each level of leader. Most organizations of 30 to 300 people have two levels, people leaders and the leadership team, so one page holds both lists. Larger organizations may need more stages, and Loblaw, with about 220,000 employees, set expectations for four stages of leader across five areas, as HRD Canada reported.
How do you write a leadership behaviour people can see?
Write what the leader does, in words two people could agree they saw happen, such as “raises problems early” or “makes the decision and explains why.” Leave out labels like “good communicator,” because nobody can see a label or practise it. Test each line by asking whether you could point to the moment it happened.
Give your managers one answer to what good looks like
If your leaders would each describe a good manager differently, a discovery call with us is a good first step toward agreeing on one definition and developing your leaders against it. LoyaltyOps is a leadership development firm that develops individual leaders and leadership teams against clear leadership competencies, so performance improves across your organization.
Sources
Betterworks, “2026 manager effectiveness survey: The multiplier most orgs haven’t turned on,” October 14, 2026. Survey of 521 HR and business leaders in the US and UK, fielded August 2026. https://www.betterworks.com/magazine/2026-manager-effectiveness-survey
Jeffrey R. Smith, HRD Canada, “Loblaw builds shared leadership expectations to strengthen talent development,” September 24, 2026. https://www.hcamag.com/ca/specialization/transformation/loblaw-builds-shared-leadership-expectations-to-strengthen-talent-development/591095
Randall Beck and Jim Harter, Gallup, “Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement,” April 21, 2015. https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182792/managers-account-variance-employee-engagement.aspx
UNLEASHED, “How Loblaw Defined Good Leadership for 220,000 People,” October 22, 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Im8_mlpIec