We have all felt some level of disappointment with other people in our lives on various occasions. Whether it is when your kid doesn’t take out the trash, your partner doesn’t make dinner, or your co-worker doesn’t offer to help you on a project when you know they have time on their hands and you are overwhelmed. I would venture to guess most all of us feel disappointed by someone on a fairly regular basis.
A very common place where I see and hear about unmet expectations is in the work setting. I hear leaders’ frustrations with their employees and employees’ frustrations with their leaders on a regular basis. When I ask if expectations are clearly communicated and mutually understood by both sides, I often get a blank stare for a few seconds. We are just as bad about setting expectations at work as we are in our personal lives.
There is a very simple thing we can do to solve this problem that most of us don’t do well. That solution, ask for what we need. Think about it, if you have expectations that the other person isn’t aware of, how can they possibly live up to them? Many times we expect someone to read our mind or do something because that is what we ourselves would do in that situation. How is that fair to the other person? Even if that person is close to us, it doesn’t mean they can read our mind.
Why don’t we do a better job of asking for what we need? Vulnerability is the answer. It makes us feel vulnerable to ask somebody for what we need. What if we ask and they still don’t do it? Well, that could happen (good luck with the kids taking out the trash…), but it won’t likely happen that often with people we have a good relationship with and when it does there can be a conversation about it to find out why. That is way more productive than brooding with silent disappointment.
A lot of leaders are notorious for not setting clear expectations. I hear many of them say they don’t want to be too demanding. What they don’t understand is that most employees want to meet their expectations and they want to know how to do that. They can’t do that if the leader is not willing to have a conversation about expectations. If you are a leader, and everyone is in some way, think about how often people struggle with your expectations.
Bottomline, if we want to get to a place in our lives where we are disappointed less often by other people we need to start by taking a look at our own behavior in the situation. Did the other person even know I was expecting that of them? Why was I afraid to ask for what I wanted? How can I do better with that next time?
One Small Step
If you have a situation that comes up this month where you feel disappointed in another person, explore it a bit. Did you clearly communicate to the other person what you wanted? If not, why? Think about your role in the disappointment and see if you can improve something there. You are the only person whose actions you can control.