Clarity and expectation-setting are vital to building trust and opening the door for high quality conversations between you and your direct reports—especially on remote teams.

Expectation-setting begins as early as the hiring process. At MeetEdgar, I created a job outline called a "Work Agreement" for every employee that documents responsibilities, success metrics/indicators, expectations for how to handle work and approach problems, and concrete examples of how roles can live out our company values.

These were meant to be ever-changing, living documents—a useful tool to benefit employees, but also helped managers lead with clarity.

Employees could reference these any time they were unsure of how their performance was being evaluated, identify how the scope of their roles was evolving to start conversations around official role changes and/or bringing on additional team members, and to help managers discuss career development progress with team members.

You can check out the template and borrow the format here: https://link.sarahpark.co/WorkAgreement