On Expectations

What we know is that our expec­ta­tions of one anoth­er strong­ly influ­ence whether or not we feel con­nect­ed or dis­tant in a work­ing rela­tion­ship. One stream of log­ic around giv­ing and receiv­ing feed­back, espe­cial­ly of the “per­for­mance” kind, is that it always makes sense to first clar­i­fy and express those expec­ta­tions — espe­cial­ly hid­den or new­ly dis­cov­ered ones. “These are my expec­ta­tions of you as a col­league, and as a boss.” “These are my expec­ta­tions of you as some­one in a cus­tomer ser­vice role.” And so on. 

Sim­i­lar­ly, it makes sense when pro­vid­ing feed­back to do so in the con­text of a per­son­’s own goals for them­selves. Which is to say in the con­text of their self-expec­ta­tions. “What I’m try­ing to be as a col­league.” “As a cus­tomer ser­vice representative.”

This is a crit­i­cal junc­tion point in under­stand­ing the dif­fer­ence between interper­son­al skill and intraper­son­al skill. The “inter” part is how we express our expec­ta­tions of oth­ers to them. The “intra” part is about under­stand­ing what expec­ta­tions we place on ourselves.

If I expect myself to be charm­ing, feed­back about my uncharm­ing habit of mak­ing awk­ward, some­times crude jokes is bound to lead to some defen­sive­ness on my part. If I expect myself to be wise, a col­league’s insight­ful com­ment into a com­plex sit­u­a­tion may arouse my envy and sub­tle under­min­ing, espe­cial­ly if that per­son has less for­mal pow­er than I do.

So the ques­tion is, do you real­ly know your own expec­ta­tions of your­self? Are you con­scious­ly aware of them? Do you know what you expect your­self to be and to do? These are not easy ques­tions. After all, self-expec­ta­tions range from behav­ior in moment-to-moment encoun­ters with oth­ers to long-term life projects (like sav­ing the earth or work­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly or mak­ing a movie) — things that make the dif­fer­ence between a good life and one expe­ri­enced as only mar­gin­al­ly ful­fill­ing. And they can also be quite subtle.

I’m just guess­ing, but assume for many of us there are some parts of our lives where we have met these pri­vate expec­ta­tions, and oth­ers where we have not. And for those we have not, it’s almost always a source of self-dis­ap­point­ment and pain. When I’m in the mood to be bru­tal­ly hon­est with myself, these areas can light up for me like a neon car­ni­val from which I just want to avert my eyes. I just don’t want to go there.

Yet in that con­fronta­tion may be a small piece of redemp­tion as well for me because I can begin to judge whether these self-expec­ta­tions are rea­son­able, why they hook me so. And they have a chance of becom­ing insid­er friends — hon­est friends — that express what it means to pur­sue a mean­ing­ful life, a mean­ing­ful dream. There’s a lot of cul­tur­al con­jec­ture, some of it near­ly mys­ti­cal about the pur­suit of dreams. In Amer­i­ca, we love to believe all things are pos­si­ble and, as a con­se­quence, we have a right to those things. 

But, of course, all things are not pos­si­ble and our rights have lim­its. I recall watch­ing an episode of Oprah one day. A woman and her daugh­ter were in con­flict. The daugh­ter had cho­sen anoth­er woman as her part­ner and the moth­er did not approve of either a les­bian rela­tion­ship or the spe­cif­ic woman her daugh­ter had select­ed. She was angry; full of ven­om and tears. The daugh­ter strug­gled to express her own frus­tra­tion, hurt and con­tempt. Oprah turned to the moth­er and asked, “So what was your dream for your daugh­ter?” And the moth­er, again with tears in her eyes, explained her vision of how her daugh­ter would meet the right man and there would be a het­ero­sex­u­al rela­tion­ship and a fam­i­ly and there would not be ten­sion and pain around the daugh­ter’s inde­pen­dence. Oprah lis­tened and then calm­ly sug­gest­ed that the moth­er “find anoth­er dream.” The audi­ence clear­ly got the point that the expec­ta­tions for the daugh­ter were an exten­sion of her expec­ta­tions for her­self. She was see­ing her daugh­ter as an exten­sion of who she was, and she was try­ing to con­trol her with her own vio­lent emo­tion­al swings. In the text­books, they call this fusion, the unwill­ing­ness to let anoth­er per­son stand on his or her own. 

The same phe­nom­e­non con­stant­ly shows up in the work­place, where man­agers who are expect­ed to dri­ve oth­ers’ per­for­mance sud­den­ly begin treat­ing employ­ees as if they were objects, a com­mod­i­ty, prop­er­ty — essen­tial­ly just an exten­sion of man­agers’ own self-expec­ta­tions to do well. It can lead to yelling. 

It’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the per­son who has been hijacked and is yelling is the per­son whose expec­ta­tions of self are not being met. It actu­al­ly does­n’t have that much to do with oth­er peo­ple’s per­for­mance. If it did, if it real­ly did, then it would be han­dled much differently.

All of which is to say how impor­tant it is to get to know these “insid­er friends,” these dreams we hold. They lead us for­ward. They can be our great­est gifts and ani­mate our choic­es in life. Maybe our work will help save the plan­et. Maybe we will make the movie. But it won’t be a des­per­ate act. It will come from what is good and true with­in us. It will come for­ward as a prod­uct of self-com­pas­sion bal­anced with our best self-expec­ta­tions. It will be a real­i­ty more than a dream come true.

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