Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor.

I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm specializing in helping teams and organizations

optimize their workplace experience.

Right now, I'm spending a lot of my time running cohorts of new leaders through my simple

group coaching program.

One of my favorite things about this program is how much insight it gives

me into what's really top of mind for new leaders, which helps me keep our conversations super

relevant. One theme that's been coming up a lot lately is disappointment. Like leaders seeing team

members continuously drop the ball, or leaders giving team members a shot to do a thing in the thing belly flaps, or leaders giving feedback to team members whose behaviors just aren't changing.

All of these situations and many more can trigger real feelings of frustration and disappointment, and leaders naturally are looking for guidance on how to turn things around.

While they're often looking to me for help on fixing their teams, my advice, which they usually

hate until they give it a try, is to do a bit of reflecting on what may be going on here.

Because so often when leaders, yes, me included, are disappointed by someone else, the truth is

that that leader played a role in that not-so-hot outcome. And our job is to figure out what went

wrong so we can change the outcome next time. Here are some of the questions I urge leaders to

think about when a team member keeps doing a thing that needs to be undone or redone.

The first is, were my expectations really clear?

Last week, after peeking into my teenage daughter's room and seeing a full five-alarm disaster scene,

I told her she needed to clean it up, like now, and I'd hold her phone

for collateral until it was done. An hour later, sweaty but proud, she came downstairs to declare

victory. After a quick peek at a room whose floor I could actually see, I returned the phone.

Later that day, I went to grab something from her closet and, well, you can only

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