Section 7: Set Appropriate Expectations

Overview

Patrick and Li worked in the same group on similar assignments. Patrick was viewed by their manager, Connie, as having the ability to do high-quality work since he was much more experienced than Li. Li had been on the job for about a year. She was certainly knowledgeable but not yet an expert. Li and Patrick were both surprised when Connie gave Li the assignment to lead an investigation into a new opportunity for the business.

From Connie’s point of view, Patrick was not as reliable as Li. Patrick could do good work and perhaps even faster than Li. But unfortunately, Patrick tended to work on assignments for days or weeks and then pop up with the results at the end. This made Connie nervous because a few times in the past Patrick missed important deadlines with no prior warning. When Connie inquired how an assignment was progressing, Patrick responded, “Things are fine, I’ll get it done.”

Perhaps Li’s inexperience was one reason why she would keep Connie informed about the progress of her assignments, including the good news and the issues. So, paradoxically, Connie felt more in control of Li’s work because she knew there would be plenty of warning if the issues were going to endanger Li’s delivery of assignments. And on this new, risky investigation, Connie wanted confidence that issues would be highlighted and dealt with in an open way.

There is no doubt peoples’ opinions of you are based on how they see your contributions and behaviors––and also are based on their expectations. No doubt you expect your children to do different things at different ages: your expectations with respect to their skills and maturity should rise over the years.

So it is in the workplace. Your colleagues, bosses, and partners all expect you to deliver a certain amount of work, with given quality, in a certain amount of time. The neat thing about the work environment is that we have influence over these expectations. This means we also can influence the resulting excitement or disappointment when we meet or fail to meet expectations.

This is not the same as the demands or requests made by others. Your boss might ask you to deliver something by tomorrow morning. But, he or she might not actually expect that request to be filled. The expectations will be based on your previous track record, how you responded to the request, and additional feedback received from you or others concerning the difficulty of the job, roadblocks, and opportunities.

Your track record is based upon peoples’ perceptions of your previous work, which will probably be close to what you actually did. As people observe your actions over a period of time, they will have strong expectations for how you normally behave. Radically departing from those expectations will create surprise––either positively or negatively.

Other factors are easier to control in the short term. Whenever you accept an assignment, you have the opportunity to set the expectations. Chris received this e-mail:

From: Fred
To: Chris
 
Hey Chris,
 
Could you please get me a copy of those quarterly reports by Friday?
 
Thanks,
Fred

It is obvious Fred expected Chris to give him the reports by Friday but Chris had a lot of unanswered questions about this request. What time Friday? A report summary or all underlying detail? In e-mail or paper form? What would happen if Chris was unable to produce the reports? These kinds of open questions can be time bombs waiting for Chris to seriously disappoint Fred or perhaps opportunities to exceed expectations. That is why it is so important to close the gaps with a 15-second response:

From: Chris
To: Fred
 
Fred, I can e-mail you the quarterly report summaries by Thursday night, no problem. If you need the detailed spreadsheets behind them let me know ASAP because it’ll take a lot of extra digging.
 
Chris

With this simple message, Chris took the chance to exceed expectations (“Thursday night, no problem”), clarified some open questions, and avoided a potential disaster regarding the detailed reports. It is also quite possible he avoided some unnecessary work.

This kind of conversation is very important, yet it is something we seem to have lost during the last decade. Fortunately, you have the chance to take control over mis-set expectations, and it does not take a lot of work.

Why wouldn’t you want to always set expectations as low as possible so you can always exceed them? Well, because it damages your credibility and the peoples’ perceptions of your reliability. The trick is to be able to pleasantly surprise people most of the time while having them see you as an honest and dependable person.

The other trap in setting expectations too low is self-motivation: low expectations will result in low performance, little learning, and slow growth. Set commitments and expectations high enough that you are challenged to learn and improve, and not burn out.

Under promise, over deliver.

—Tom Peters

Never promise more than you can perform.

—Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)