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Role, Responsibilities and Expectations (RREs)

 
 
 

Overview: Role, Responsibilities and Expectations (RREs)

 
Good supervisors or leaders need to connect their employees to the vision, the strategies and the priorities of the business...[RREs] should be developed between supervisors and employees...to help guide what the employee works on.

- Dave Robertson, Co-CEO and Vice Chairman of Koch Industries  

 

What are RREs?

 

Role, Responsibilities and Expectations help you and your supervisor work together to ensure your ROLE is an individualized bundle of responsibilities and expectations that fit your aptitudes and interests and help you make the greatest contribution relative to others.

RESPONSIBILITIES define what you “own” or take care of based on comparative advantage. You are held accountable for your responsibilities. Examples include products, services, assets, activities, employees, projects, systems, and processes.

EXPECTATIONS focus on the desired outcomes rather than on the activities that might be required to produce those outcomes. They should be clear, specific, and, whenever possible, measurable.

 

A Principle-Based Approach

It is important to understand the principles that inform our approach to RREs. Without this knowledge, misapplications often occur. Here are some common misapplications (RREs are NOT...) and principles we strive to apply instead. 

 
Principles to apply with RREs... RREs are NOT...
Respect: Treating people as individuals.

Division of Labor by Comparative Advantage
: Arranging responsibilities so everyone is doing work they are good at and care about in a way that maximizes the team’s overall results.

Accountability
: Because we are to hold ourselves accountable for results and achieving them in a principled manner, clarifying responsibilities and expectations is essential.

Supervisor Responsibilities and Expectations
: Supervisors have a responsibility to ensure employees have a clear, shared understanding of their responsibilities and expectations - and revisit them as team members and conditions change.
  • Generic job descriptions
  • A task or activity list
  • Simply a document or a complete-the-form exercise
  • An HR requirement
  • A one-time event
 
 

What Does Developing Your RREs Look Like?

 

Fundamentally, developing RREs is a series of ongoing conversations with your supervisor. You will discuss and consider:

  • Your business/team vision and associated strategies, goals and objectives.
  • The nature of the work and what good looks like.
  • Your gifts, skills, interests, development opportunities and possible stretch assignments.
  • The gifts, skills and interests of other team members.

While many people find it beneficial to summarize their RREs in a document, that’s not the primary goal. Creating a document without conversations and a shared understanding is wasteful.

You might find the RRE Development Worksheet to be helpful as you work with your supervisor to define your responsibilities and expectations.

 

How Do You Use Your RREs?

 


You should use your RREs to focus your efforts and increase your contribution by…

  • Understanding how your work contributes to business results
  • Prioritizing work and eliminating waste
  • Leveraging your gifts and demonstrating entrepreneurship
  • Exemplifying stewardship with the resources entrusted to you

 

 
 

Examples: RRE Conversations

Developing and using your RREs to focus and increase your contributions is an ongoing process – one that prompts you to adjust as conditions change. Here are a few examples of RRE conversations. 

 

RREs are one aspect of employee development—because each of us can develop through the work we are doing. All employee development activities have a purpose and are interrelated.

Learn more about our principle-based approach to Employee Development