Expectations

How often do you have expectations of others? Expectations of your boss, the company you work for, the team you are on, and your co-workers? What about your family and friends, or even that driver in front of you on the way to work or the person right before you, in line, at the grocery store?

How often do you share your exceptions with those folks? Never, one percent of the time, or as much as one and a twelfth percent of the time?

How often does never sharing your expectations with people end up hurting the relationship you have with that person? Every time, every time and then some, or just all the time?

Even if you are good about sharing your expectations with some people, I bet there are a number of other people you don’t share with. But, in turn, you get really upset with them for not meeting those private expectations. You get really frustrated when they don’t do what you want them to, or you get angry when they fail you.

It is interesting that people have no problem ‘sharing’ that they are frustrated or angry, but they may never share what they are looking for from others. It almost seems more acceptable to tell a person how horrible they are rather then talk to them about results and objectives.

Or maybe you prefer to keep everything to yourself. Not only do you keep your expectations to yourself, but you also keep your frustrations and disappointments inside as well.

Leaders share their exceptions early and often. They are not silent about what they are looking for from each individual, and they repeat what is expected, as much as they can, to give support and reminders to their team.

Think about reading or writing a test report. What is one of the first sections that shows up in a test report? The Objectives! This is no coincidence as we want to know what we were trying to accomplish with this testing. Let’s not waste the readers time if this test report is not useful to the reader. Let’s not waste our team’s time; let’s make sure they know exactly what we expect.

Once they know what to expect, they now have a much better chance of being successful and timely. When people are able to meet our expectations, our anger and frustrations disappear. When these negative emotions disappear, relationships can grow, improve, and come alive.

Leaders are in the vocation of relationships. It is our job to improve and expand relationships within everyone on our teams. Our job becomes much easier when we begin from a positive emotional state rather than a negative one.

Keeping our expectations from others is a deadly ingredient to our relationships.

Let’s build and improve all our relationships by sharing our expectations sooner and with more frequency.

And, if we forget that step, let’s remind ourselves to be patient rather than frustrated. Let’s remind ourselves that we may have forgotten to share our expectations with that person, in the first place.