21. The Leadership Formula

Season #1 November 03, 2025

Most leaders think their biggest challenge is people: motivation, attitude, or accountability.
But in reality, 80% of leadership problems come down to something far simpler—clarity.

When expectations are fuzzy, actions are vague, and follow-through is inconsistent, frustration builds on both sides.
The good news? You can fix most of it with one formula.

Clear Expectations + Actions + Accountability = Desired Results.

In this episode of Unlearning Work, Erin breaks down the Leadership Success Formula—a simple behavioral system that helps you align, engage, and activate your team without micromanaging.
You’ll learn how to set clear expectations, define the three critical actions that create focus, and build a rhythm of accountability that turns effort into results.

Because leadership isn’t about doing more—it’s about leading with clarity.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

Why most leadership breakdowns aren’t about skill or motivation—they’re about clarity.
How to set clear expectations that define what success actually looks like.
The difference between an expectation and three critical actions—and how they work together.
Why three actions is the behavioral “sweet spot” that creates focus without overwhelm.
How accountability builds trust, not tension, when handled as partnership, not punishment.
Why tracking small wins and communicating progress matters more than chasing perfection.
How to make this formula your weekly leadership rhythm—not just a one-time fix.

Behavioral Science Highlights:

Cognitive Load Theory: Why focusing on three priorities increases execution and memory retention.
Commitment & Consistency Principle: How regular accountability check-ins strengthen follow-through.
Feedback Loops: The science behind how tracking progress motivates sustained effort.
Social Learning Theory: How modeling accountability teaches others to take ownership.
Behavioral Clarity: Why ambiguity triggers anxiety—and how clear expectations reduce cognitive friction.

Real-Life Examples:

A project lead who shifted from vague requests (“Stay on top of this”) to clear expectations (“Send a two-slide summary every Thursday at 3 PM”)—and watched performance skyrocket.
A new manager who replaced a ten-item to-do list with three critical actions per week—and cut missed deadlines in half.
A leader who used the “freebie rule” to reset expectations without blame—transforming accountability into trust.
A team that rated progress weekly, measuring small gains, and boosted engagement by focusing on improvement, not perfection.
Erin’s own story of learning to stop over-explaining and start defining what matters most—and how that small shift simplified everything.

Try These Unlearning Moves:

✅ Clarify the expectation: What exactly needs to happen, by when, and how success will be measured?
✅ Name three critical actions: The specific, observable steps that will make success most likely.
✅ Apply the “freebie rule”: The first miss is on communication; after that, accountability shifts.
✅ Track progress weekly: Ask, “What’s one thing we improved since last week?”
✅ Use micro-check-ins: 5 minutes to close loops prevent 5 hours of rework.
✅ Model accountability: Let your team see you follow through on your own commitments.
✅ Reinforce progress publicly: Celebrate the behaviors you want repeated.

Reflection Prompts:

Where am I assuming clarity that might not actually exist?
How often do I define success in observable terms?
What are my three most critical actions this week—and do my team’s match mine?
Where am I rescuing performance instead of reinforcing accountability?
What small tracking habit could make progress more visible for my team?
How might clarity and consistency reduce emotional tax—for both me and my team?

🎧 Bonus for Listeners

Inside the Unlearning Work App, you’ll find the Leadership Success Formula Worksheet from this episode—a one-page tool to help you:

✅ Define one clear expectation and link it to business outcomes
✅ Identify your three critical actions to create focus and alignment
✅ Structure accountability conversations that build trust
✅ Track progress weekly and reinforce small wins

Because when you master this formula, you don’t just get better results—you get a calmer, more consistent way to lead.

You’ll also unlock the Work Style Quiz, which shows how your natural tendencies (whether you’re an Inspired Starter, System Strategist, Just-in-Time Performer, or Thoughtful Planner) influence how you handle friction—and how to tailor it to your brain.

👉 Download the Unlearning Work App today in the App Store or Google Play, grab the worksheet, and start building friction that works for you, not against you.

Join the Conversation

✨ Take the free Work Style Assessment to uncover your natural work style and where your friction points should live.
💬 Share your takeaways! Tag @erinmerideth and @unlearningwork and use #UnlearningWork to connect with others learning to work smarter, not faster.
🔗 Download the Unlearning Work App to access quizzes, worksheets, and custom behavior tools for your work style.

📲 Subscribe & Stay Connected

📥 Download the Unlearning Work App for exclusive tools and behavior design resources
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⭐ Leave a review if this episode resonated—it helps others discover the work
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Episode Transcript

0:01
Erin, welcome to unlearning work, where we empower you to redesign your job by rethinking work habits, behaviors and strategies. I'm your host. Erin Merideth, a work behavior enthusiast and leadership strategist, join me as I explore various work related topics and provide practical insights and real life examples. We'll examine the nature of work from the ground up and deliver bite size episodes with actionable advice twice a month. You've probably asked yourself this as a leader, why isn't my employee doing what I asked? You've set clear goals, explained the task, maybe even followed up, yet somehow the result still misses the mark. It's frustrating, isn't it, most leaders assume the issue is motivation or capability, but more often, it's something far simpler, that is a lack of clarity. Through years of working with leaders, I've learned that almost 80% of performance problems can be traced back to one thing, unclear expectations, with scattered priorities and inconsistent follow through. That's why today we're talking about a formula that simplifies leadership and increases your odds of success. It's not a trick or a trendy framework, it's behavioral science applied to how real people work. The formula goes like this, clear expectations plus actions plus accountability equals a desired result, and that's my what I call the leadership success formula. When you get these three things right, when your people know exactly what's expected, what actions to take, and how they'll be held accountable, everything else gets easier. Communication improves, performance stabilizes, frustration fades. I'm Erin Merideth, and this is the unlearning work podcast where we will unpack how small science backed leadership shifts can change the way you work, lead and live. Let's start with setting clear expectation. The first truth is, most leadership breakdowns aren't about capability. They're about clarity. We think we've communicated clearly because we said the words out loud, but clarity isn't about what you say. It's about what the other person understands and can act on. So let me share an example. A senior project lead I coach, kept saying her analyst wasn't proactive. When we looked closer, her instructions were things like, stay on top of this report or make sure it looks good before it goes out. Sounds reasonable, but what does stay on top of it mean? And how do you measure looks good, so we reframed it as a clear expectation to every Thursday by 3pm send a two slide summary highlighting progress, risks and next week priorities. Now there's no guessing. The analyst knows exactly what to do by when and how success will be measured within two weeks, the performance issue disappeared. What changed wasn't the employee, it was the expectation, a clear expectation always answers three questions. One, what exactly needs to happen? Two, by when, and three, how will we know it's been done? Well, if any one of those is fuzzy, frustration follows so clarity gives you the destination next you need the route the three critical actions that make the expectation achievable. This is where most leaders lose momentum. They stop at the expectation and never break it into tangible behavior. Think of it like navigation. The expectation is a destination pin. The three critical actions are the turn by turn directions that get you there. So here's a quick comparison. An expectation is launch the new client onboarding process by May 1. Three critical actions are draft and test the client checklist with two pilot teams. By April 10, gather feedback and update the fat FAQ document by April 20 and train support staff using the final version by April 28 now the outcome is not just a wish, it's a workflow. And why three well, because the human brain loves triads. Three items create clarity without overload. If you give people 10 Steps, they'll prioritize based on comfort, not importance. Three forces focus. Here's a personal example from my career. Early on, I was that leader who handed out long lists. Here's everything we need to do to hit the deadline, and the team would nod, then they'd spend hours deciding where to start first. When I started using the rule of three, productivity soared, we agreed on three core moves that mattered most, and suddenly everyone knew where to focus energy. And here's another client style example, a department head I coach adopted the same system. Her expectation was improve internal communication way too broad. Her three actions became one, hold a 15 minute stand up every Monday. Two, post project updates in one shared dashboard. Three, end each meeting with one sentence. Owner commitments within a month, email traffic dropped 40% and deadline started sticking. So expectations to find what success looks like, critical actions define how to make it real. The. But there's still one missing piece, the behavioral glue, that holds it all up together, and that's accountability. Here's where good intentions become actual performance. Accountability isn't micromanaging. It's closing the loop. It's the conversation that ensures effort turns into outcome. Too many leaders avoid accountability because they think it's conflict, but accountability done right is clarity in motion. I teach leaders to use a freebie rule too. So the first time something slips, assume you might not have been clear, so reset and restate. That's your freebie. The second time you've clarified, the accountability is now theirs. Here's a quick illustration. A supervisor I worked with struggled because his team missed report deadlines. Instead of addressing it, he quietly fixed it himself. When he started following up with a simple three question check in, what's the commitment by? When? How will we check progress? Things shifted. He wasn't scolding. He was scaffolding. So within weeks, missed deadlines dropped sharply, and his credibility went up because people knew he said. Another example is from myself. I still remember the first time I held myself accountable publicly. I told my team, if I miss this deliverable, I owe you all coffee. They laughed, but it worked. When leaders model follow through, accountability becomes cultural, not confrontational. So far, you've learned how to set expectations, define actions and hold accountability. Now let's talk about keeping the system alive through tracking and communication. Accountability isn't a one time event. It's an ongoing dialog. When leaders track progress consistently, they replace guesswork with evidence. It's not about did you do it perfectly? It's, are we improving? So let's look at an example. One manager started rating each deliverable weekly on a simple zero to 100 scale. Where are we today? Her team hovered around 60% at first, so each week they discussed what would move the score five points higher. By month three, the team was averaging 85% and they were the ones bringing new improvement ideas. She didn't need a new motivation speech. She needed that feedback loop. And here's why this work. When people see measurable progress, the dopamine reinforces this behavior. They feel success before perfection, and that keeps them engaged. Even micro recognition matters. Hey, you got the report in early today, that adjustment you made last week clearly helped that one sentence can drive more change than a performance review. So tracking and communication are what makes this formula sustainable. But none of it sticks unless you see leadership as a long term practice, a marathon, not a sprint. This formula isn't a quick fix. It's an operating system, and like any system, it strengthens with repetition. Leadership is not about doing more. It's about doing what matters repeatedly. You might have to unlearn a few habits, like unlearn rescuing people instead of reinforcing expectations. Unlearn assuming they should just know and unlearn mistaking being busy for being effective when you practice the formula expectations plus actions plus accountability, you create predictable outcomes, reduce emotional tasks, tax and build trust that compounds over time. So let me end with a story. A new leader, I coach, started applying this formula one conversation at a time. At first it felt awkward. She said, It sounds too structured. Three months later, her engagement scores jumped, and she told me, I spend less time fixing problems and more time celebrating wins. That's the formula at work. It's not about control, it's about clarity that frees people to perform.

8:37
So here's your leadership challenge this week, pick one person or project and one set one clear expectation. Two, name three critical actions and three create one check in for accountability. Do that, and you'll start to see what I call the 80% shift, less chaos, more consistency. Inside the unlearning work app, you'll also find the leadership success formula worksheet if you want to learn more, it's fillable. You can define your expectations, identify three critical actions and plan your accountability rhythm, because Leadership isn't about working harder, it's about leading with clarity. Thanks for listening to unlearning work. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a leader who's ready to Turn confusion into consistency and frustration into flow. Erin, you Thank.