The Most Dangerous Words a Leader Can Say
It's just common sense.
One of the phrases I hear most often when working with leadership teams is, "Well...it's just common sense."
I understand why.
When you've been doing something for years, it's hard to imagine someone approaching it differently. Expectations become so familiar that they stop feeling like expectations at all. They simply become "the way we do things."
The problem is that common sense isn't as common as we believe.
It's shaped by experience, past jobs, education, personalities, and the environments we've worked in before. What seems obvious to one person may never have occurred to another.
I've seen leaders become frustrated because an employee didn't complete a task the "right" way. When we step back and ask whether the expectation had ever actually been explained, documented, or demonstrated, the answer is often no.
The employee wasn't ignoring an expectation. They were working from a different assumption.
That's an important distinction because it changes the conversation from accountability to clarity.
Accountability matters. People should absolutely be responsible for meeting expectations. But they can't consistently meet expectations that have never been clearly defined.
One of the simplest ways to uncover these gaps is to ask a new employee to explain how they would handle a situation before telling them how you expect it to be done. Their answer will quickly reveal whether you're relying on common sense or clear expectations.
The strongest organizations don't assume everyone sees the work the same way.
They intentionally create a shared understanding so people can perform with confidence and consistency.
