The other day, I was talking with a friend about their child’s recent school transition, when they shared something that is all too common. Their child had been miserable at their previous school because they simply weren’t challenged. A variety of factors had left the student a few grades behind in math. Rather than pushing the child to catch up, the school focused almost exclusively on shielding them from embarrassment. The result wasn’t comfort; it was frustration. The child didn’t want sympathy. They wanted to understand how to do the hard work to catch up.

Fast forward, and after switching schools, to a place where the expectation was that the student could and would catch up, the student is much happier and gaining math skills. They still have a ways to go, but they are being pushed, and can tangibly see their growth. They finally feel challenged, supported, and proud of their progress.

This story struck me because of my own professional experience in education. Love him or loathe him (I admittedly fall in the latter camp), George W. Bush captured something profound during his 2000 presidential run when he spoke of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” [Side note: if you want a view into how radically the Republican Party has changed in just 25 years, here is the full speech] Bush powerfully voiced the empowering belief that human beings are wired to rise to any occasion. If you don’t expect very much from your students, your employees, your friends, your family, you will of course not get very much. However, if you instead set high expectations and match those expectations with the tools and the pathway to get there, people will almost always rise to the challenge—and often exceed the loftiest goals. Expectation without support creates anxiety; support without expectation creates stagnation. Growth towards greatness requires both.

This dynamic sits at the core of what we are building at Ethosphere. Our partner brands are often best-in-class at developing selling frameworks and training their teams in them. They set high expectations, and are very clear about what great looks like. At the brand level, expectations are clear. But—as in school systems—setting ambitious goals is only half the equation. Unless organizational leaders (teachers, managers) and frontline performers (students, associates) are equipped with tools that make those expectations achievable, the system will fail to deliver the outcomes it hopes for.

We launched Ethosphere with a simple goal: give frontline retail teams superpowers. While our technology does this, the simple act of using Ethosphere also delivers a surprising emotional one: confident calmness.  

One of retail’s biggest challenges is that many great individual contributors get promoted into management without ever being taught how to coach. Too often new managers are more concerned about whether their team likes them, than how they can support the team to perform at their best. Great associates clearly see greatness and areas of opportunities in their peers, but that doesn’t mean they know how to deliver the feedback constructively.

Ethosphere changes this dynamic by giving both the associate and the manager the same observations and coaching. The temperature in a feedback conversation drops instantly. Managers no longer walk in rehearsing a nervous compliment sandwich. They enter with a calm confidence that there are no surprises. Associates arrive already understanding the “what,” which allows the conversation to move quickly to the “how.” This of course is where managers bring their real value to teams.

In truth, Ethosphere doesn’t create managerial superpowers – it unlocks the ones managers already possess. By providing clear, shared data and reducing the emotional friction around coaching, growth accelerates. Teams develop faster. Confidence compounds. Expectations stop feeling threatening and start feeling inspiring.

To bring it back to my friend’s child, Ethosphere empowers brands to challenge their teams to achieve greatness. It provides the tools and the pathways for human actors to not only hear, “do better,” but to receive support that technology has never before been able to provide. Because in the end, the most human thing we can offer someone — a child, an associate, a leader — is the belief they can do hard things, and the support to prove it.