Are you in sales? Do you have a boss or have people working for you? Got people working with you? Do you work with people?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, there are people who expect things from you.
The question is, are their expectations consistent with the reality you are prepared to deliver? Will you meet their expectations, or will you disappoint?
Half the answer lies in what you deliver. The other half lies in what they expect.
THE INCOMPLETE SET
Last month, I placed an order with a marketing company. They told me, “Your marketing product will go live in no more than 30 days. Maybe sooner.”
That’s expectation setting. They gave me an expectation about timeline.
They also told me that I’d have a “success manager” assigned to me and my marketing efforts, and that I’d hear from that manager to get my input along the way.
They gave me specific time when I should expect completion, but no specifics about when I’d hear from the “success manager.” Because they left a gap in setting expectations for me, I filled the gap with my own expectations about what the interim timeline would look like. Because I set my own expectations about their service, they set us both up for confusion, disappointment, and anxiety.
Indeed, two weeks later, when I hadn’t heard from anyone, I touched base with the sales rep who brought me on board to ask how things were progressing. “The holidays have created a backlog. I’m sure you’re still on target. You’ll hear from someone soon.”
Cool. Reassuring. A little bit.
When I called again a week after that, I heard, “There’s a bit of a backlog because of the holidays, but I’m sure your release will happen on time.”
Less reassuring. Kind of vague.
When I heard from his colleague that same day, “I received your search landing page today, and you’ll see it for review in about an hour,” that truly reassured me.
Why?
THE COMFORT OF SPECIFICITY
Was it the tangible progress that reassured me? Because someone had seen actual work done on my project…?
Well, that was part of it.
A bigger part of it, however, is that the info they gave me was specific. It was not a general assurance like, “I’m sure you’re still on target.” Or, “You’ll hear from someone soon.”
I heard instead, “I’m currently looking at this specific aspect of our deliverables to you.” She said, “You’ll see it in one hour.”
It was nice that I’d see it so quickly. But, “tomorrow morning by 10AM,” would have been almost as good. It’s the level of specificity that gave me something to hold on to. My worries are gone. And I know when I should start worrying. I can directly compare the reality on the ground with the expectation they set for me.
IMPROV’S LESSON FOR SETTING EXPECTATIONS
What I’d like to impart to you is a bit of wisdom I learned by training as an improviser…
The more specific you are with others in your life — those who work with you, live with you, depend on you, employ you, work for you, buy from you, sell to you… whatever — the more specific you are with others, the more comfortable they will be.
And guess what, the less likely they are to irritate you as well. I think I got under my vendor’s skin a bit, by writing a few times to ask about the status of my order.
What would have saved me the worry that my order would be late? What would have saved my vendor the irritation of my, “Are we there yet?”
One thing would have saved us both the stress — practicing the improviser’s tool, “Be Specific.” Had they been specific, not only about the deadline for the finished product, but about the timeline of every deliverable along the way, I’d have rested comfortably and left them to do their work.
BE SPECIFIC
So, dear reader, the next time you find yourself in a situation where someone else is looking to you for answers about what to expect:
- When will you…?
- What will X look like?
- How will costs be calculated?
- What do you like about…?
- What are the metrics for success?
- Where can I find X?
- How can I attain X results?
Be as specific as you possibly can.
Expectations are like bowling. When you’ve got a seven-ten split, you can’t expect to knock down both pins by simply rolling the ball down the alley “that way.” You’ve got to hit the seven pin just so, in order to send it spinning into the ten. That’s a specific task.
So is communication. You’ll be rewarded for your specificity.