A useful standard can be explained without pointing to the person who usually gets it right.

LEADERSHIP

WHAT THIS MEANS

Naming a person as the benchmark turns a standard into a comparison. The one held up feels watched and slightly set apart, everyone else hears that the target is a personality rather than a practice, and the useful information about what good actually looks like never gets said. Standards work better when they describe the work itself.

Write down what you want in terms of the thing, not the person who does it well. Say what it should contain, how long it should take, what counts as finished. If someone genuinely does it well, ask them to explain the method rather than holding them up as the example.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

Whom do you hold up as the example when correcting others?

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