The Art of Expectations
I am so truly the product of the women in my family. They say my grandmother never met a stranger. My mom was a reporter – both professionally and in every other aspect of life (which I coulda lived without in my early years). I think I’m kind of a blend of them both.
Like Mammaw, I’ll sit at a bar and leave a couple hours later with somebody’s secret Brussels sprouts recipe and having shared links to my five favorite podcasts. And when I travel solo, like I did last month, I find myself channeling my mom, making friends and “interviewing” artists, baristas, shop owners, servers and hotel staff.
The author’s own amateur mishima technique.
I met a ceramic artist at the Portland Saturday Market. We talked about a lot of things – mishima technique, the Farsi language, The Design of Everyday Things, and the challenge of selling art before it’s been made.
See, there are artists who build up a critical mass of work then release it all at once in their Esty shops or at events. You either like what you see and buy it or you don’t.
Alternatively, there are those who offer certain types of art in their shops and fulfill orders as they come in. Talking to this artist made me think about the latter in a new light.
She said pre-orders like that stressed her out because, “What if it turns out different than what they expected [when they ordered it]? I mean, I don’t know what part [of the work] they were drawn to. Was it the glaze? Or the handle shape? Or the size?”
What we like is so complex; change one element and it may change whether or not it’s really what we want. This complexity can make it really hard to articulate why you like something. How much of our interest is impacted by environmental, physical or emotional factors? Maybe we liked a piece because it reminded us of someone. Or it was just the perfect color for its future home. Or maybe we were just in an awesome mood.
“Dear reader, if you and I have had any kind of professional conversation that lasted more than, like, 20 minutes, I’ve probably talked about expectations.”
This train of thought, of course, made me think about expectation-setting. Dear reader, if you and I have had any kind of professional conversation that lasted more than, like, 20 minutes, I’ve probably talked about expectations. I spend a lot of time thinking about and working with clients to bring expectations out into the open – it’s the first step to building common ground and the best way to successfully lead change. And it’s hard AF.
Why? Because, like spelling out what you fancy about a piece of art, it’s challenging to
recognize that we have complex built-in assumptions that not everyone shares,
examine those assumptions for bias and reasonableness, then
articulate what we’re looking for in someone’s behaviors, attitudes, actions.
But we have to. Because no matter how much you and your team are in sync, reacting to and adopting a change happens at the individual level. And when everyone has their own interpretation of what it means to adopt the change, it can throw off the success of the whole thing.
So if you’re a leader responsible for the success of, really, any kind of initiative in which people have to change some element of how they work, channel your inner reporter and ask yourself:
What does success look like for this initiative?
At the most basic level, this is a description of the outcomes you’re looking for, like, X% revenue increase or Y fewer product returns.
But it’s also an opportunity to paint a vision of the future. Of how your team will be different if and when those outcomes are realized. This is the place to be both specific and aspirational. Channel your inner Henry V and craft a new St. Crispin’s Day speech about the glorious future your team will see on the other side of this change.
What will my team members need to do differently in order to get to that future?
In other words: What do you expect from your people? How will they know they’re doing the change “right”? Here, we’re looking for answers like:
use this new software instead of that spreadsheet
follow these new procedures
instead of doing this part of the job then handing it off to a different team, both teams should collaborate to complete the work
REMEMBER that leaders set the what; employees set the how. This means that you set your expectations then ask your folks to tell you how they plan to meet them. The autonomy of this approach builds trust and increases change adoption.
Just like there are those who think it kills the vibe to speak in explicit terms of what you like about art, there are those leaders who think they shouldn’t have to spell out their expectations; that their people should just get it. While I totally understand this mindset, I’ve never not seen it backfire to some degree.
Without wrestling with and getting clear about our expectations, we get a jumble of behaviors, mindsets and approaches across a team. Everyone ends up frustrated and disconnected, and you never get to that glorious future you’re aiming for.