I’ve gotten much better at setting expectations with my team, my clients and my family. But it wasn’t long ago that I struggled with it and didn’t understand how it linked to frustrations that showed up.
For example…
- If you work over the weekend and don’t tell your spouse, they will be frustrated.
- If your client shows up late to a session and has to wait for the next one, they can get frustrated if you didn’t tell them about that policy.
- If you tell your team that we don’t just state problems, we always state problems with a solution. You will be frustrated that they only bring up problems.
In all of these examples, you failed to set expectations and frustration showed it’s ugly face.
You are serving yourself and everyone in your life when you set proper expectations.
If you are focusing on your health, tell everyone so they don’t temp you with junk food and frustrate you.
If you are going into a season of business growth, tell your friends and family they won’t be hearing from you for awhile.
If you are onboarding team members, educate them about your core values and way of doing things so they know what’s expected of them in your company.
So much frustration can be alleviated if we just improve our communication on the front-end. It will save you so many headaches on the back-end.
But too many people wait to put on the fires that pop up from lack of expectations.
Once you’ve seen a problem pop up again and again and again. It’s time to go upstream and find the root of the problem.
Stop being distracted by everyone flailing around and drowning in the water. Find out who’s throwing them in the river. That typically where you find expectations are not being set.
Ask yourself, what are 1-2 areas of my life where I’m frustrated and where could I have set better expectations? How can I set expectations now so I can stop the frustration?