Ever wonder why people aren’t performing the way you want them to, why your team hasn’t gelled, why the project is delayed, or why or your boss never seems to be happy?

There’s a way to avoid all this frustration; start with expectations. Rarely do we take the time to think about what we really expect from others at work or communicate those expectations.

Stop suffering in silence! Executive coach Hanna Hart is back in The Legal Department with specific tips on how to talk about expectations. She explains the three different kinds of expectations we need to address and shares tips for communicating them to our teams and our bosses. From on-boarding to performance management, expectations are key to harmony at work. Bonus: we talk about how to bridge generational differences about work.

This is a great companion episode to Hanna’s debut on the show, Episode 63: “The ‘F’ Word: Feedback in The Legal Department.”

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Listen to the Podcast here

  

Stop Being Frustrated At Work: How To Set And Manage Expectations With Hanna Hart, Executive Coach

My name is Hanna Hart. I am an executive coach and facilitator. A fun fact about me is that I swim in cold water without a wetsuit for 20 to 30 minutes a couple of times a week.

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On this episode of the legal department, I’m excited to welcome back Hanna Hart, who’s an executive coach. She was here for episode 63, where we talked about feedback. That was very highly rated. I got a lot of feedback on the feedback episode. As I was reflecting on it, the opposite side of feedback, and we talked about this in episode 63, is setting expectations. That’s what I wanted to talk to Hanna about.

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Hanna, thanks for coming back.

I’m happy to be with you. This is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart.

It comes up all the time. It came up for me not long ago. I led a big meeting with a lot of different people in it. I was working on agenda setting with someone who supports that meeting. We were talking about how we want more people to contribute or whatever and give reports. I said, “Don’t you think people know that I want them to do that?” She said, “No.” It was interesting.

Something that was obvious to you was not necessarily obvious to others.

The mirror is in my face all the time. I am excited to dive in. Let’s start off with using my meeting as an example. When is the right time to set expectations? You have a new hire on your team. It doesn’t come naturally to me, so help me find out what’s the best way to set expectations.

Distinguishing Among Different Kinds Of Expectations

I’d like to take a step back and distinguish among different kinds of expectations. I think about it in at least three categories. One is behavioral expectations. What are the norms and communication preferences? How are we going to work together? That is something that you can have a periodic conversation about. At the outset of a relationship, you might set some expectations, but you want to be in conversation about it and renegotiate. The idea of negotiating expectations is an important one.

Another is task expectations. Timing, content, context, quality, and milestones are task expectations. Those would be set at the time of delegation or assignment of roles and responsibilities. That sense of roles and responsibilities is also an expectation. That is something that could be baked into a role. When I’m hired, I’m hired to do A, B, and C. These are expectations of me that I will fulfill these key responsibilities. Then, there are always blurry lines. When you’re talking about cross-functional work, there may be overlapping areas on what’s mine, what’s yours, and who has responsibility. That is a third category.

As you can hear from those different categories, there are probably a number of inflection points at which it’s useful to clarify or set expectations. A lot of relationship friction is caused by mismatched expectations. If you have the ability to name an expectation and check whether that expectation is shared. That’s an important relationship skill.

A lot of friction in relationships is caused by mismatched expectations. Share on X

It’s all about me here. When you mentioned friction, the meeting I’m talking about, I do feel a bit of friction about it. It is because I don’t feel like I’m getting a lot of contribution from others. It does go back to, as my colleague pointed out, I have not set an expectation that this is a shared dialogue. It’s a two-way street.

Depending on what your position is relative to someone else, you might have the authority to set an expectation, or you might want to make a request. Make your preferences or needs known, and then negotiate about that. If you’re leading this meeting and you have clear positional authority, people are probably looking to you. They might even feel that they need permission to contribute. That’s something where you need to be aware that the hierarchy that is invisible to you might be impeding them from making exactly the contribution you’re looking for.

Negotiating Expectations And Creating Space For Discussion

Another word that stuck out to me is when you said negotiate expectations. Talk about that.

For example, as somebody’s manager, you may come to the table with a set of expectations of what their role is, etc. That’s fair. You’ve got a task that you need to assign to someone. It turns out their plate is already full with things that someone else has given them. You may wish to set an expectation like, “I need this by Friday.” There may need to be a conversation where they explain the context on their side.

They say, “If I’m going to do that by Friday, then I may need to push something else off or I can’t get it to you by Friday 5:00, but is Monday noon enough?” Hopefully, there’s some conversation. Much like feedback is a conversation, where you’re trying to share information. You would want to know from the other person whether this is going to work for them or how it is going to fit in with their workload.

Similarly, with behavioral expectations, let’s say I have a preference for communication by text, and you have a preference for communication by Slack. What are we going to do about that? If there’s positional authority, one of us might be able to dictate it, but that might not be the smartest move. There are so many different areas where we need to have some alignment about something. It is to your benefit on both sides to understand that flexibility is important and you have to have some agreement or buy-in in order to make it work.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you again is that I feel like, especially post-pandemic, people are lacking some communication skills. People find it challenging to relate, especially in the workplace. As you’re talking about negotiating expectations, it strikes me both as a leader and somebody who is on the other side of that, having some language around how to open up these conversations would be helpful. As a leader, and then we’ll take it from the other side as well. What would your advice be to a leader to help them create a space where there can be a conversation and negotiation around expectations?

It points to the need to create space, and you can do that in a number of ways. Let’s think of a couple of different examples. One might be I’m giving someone a task. It’s part of their job, and I’m delegating. If I take adequate time with that delegation to set expectations upfront and make room for the other person to ask questions, I say, “Here’s what I would like. In the ideal world, I’d like a draft by Wednesday. I need to review it and finalize it by Friday.”

If I want to be super warm and friendly, I could say, “How does that fit in with your workload?” I can affirmatively ask a question. I can make space and say, “Where would you start?” It is asking a few questions to assess whether the person understands what they need to do and that they have a plan going forward. It is asking a few questions and making sure that they have a little space.

You can go overboard and ask for permission to direct someone’s work. We want to steer clear of that. A weak delegation is one that says, “It would be nice to have this by Friday.” The person is pretty unclear. Is Friday a deadline? You’re mad when they don’t give it to you on Friday. You know if someone said they thought it would be nice, you would do it. You would get it to them by Thursday. Maybe, depending on the authority. It is making sure that you’re clear when something is not open to negotiation and making space when it is open to negotiation.

A lot of my work is dictated by external deadlines, like a board meeting, a court deadline, or something that I don’t have authority to move around. What I try to do is make sure the folks that are working with me know these are the deadlines that I’m working against. I’d like our CEO to be able to review them, or I want to have a pre-meeting with certain people. I try to problem-solve together around the calendar.

That’s a great approach. What you’re talking about is making sure they understand the context and some of the why behind the request or the deadline. That helps in helping them understand, and they can figure out where their work fits in the larger picture, which is nice. People like to know that they’re not a tiny little node, but they’re part of something larger.

People like to know they’re not just a tiny node, but part of something larger. Share on X

It also gives them some agency to make sure to prioritize on their own and understand the why. People will feel like, “Why is someone making me go through this fire drill? I know the meeting’s not until fill in the blank date.” They’re not thinking about those various other steps. That’s helpful. It’s also, in effect, a form of training around project planning. What do you do? You back up from the deadline and think of what the various milestones are. It’s part of developing their awareness as well, if you’re hoping that someone may ultimately step into greater responsibility, that they get that bigger picture.

One of the reasons I do it is because I’m somebody who resists authority naturally. I, honestly, don’t want people doing things because I’ve asked them to do them. I want them to have a larger context and be in it together, like, “We want to put out the best work product. It’s going to our board.” We want to make sure we’ve gotten this input or had time to polish it. I’m going to give myself a gold star on that one.

Setting Relationship Expectations During Onboarding

Good for you. I do want to go back to a different form of negotiating expectations, and that is relationship expectations. A great time to talk about setting up a relationship is onboarding.

It’s so hard.

What’s hard about it?

What’s hard about it, for me, is that we’re already here. If you’re not new to an organization or a role, you don’t see what the other people don’t know. It can be, for me, difficult to know all these different things I need to make sure that I’m letting you know about.

That’s one model where what I need to do is dump all of this on you. All the context. All the things. That’s not feasible for one thing. You’re right. There are all kinds of things that are invisible to you. It would also be overwhelming for the other person. What you can do is set the expectation that, number one, you want to have open communication with them.

If you have some clear preferences or habits, say, “I want to have a one-on-one with you with this frequency. Here are the kinds of things that we’ll talk about. Here are the key relationships that you need to start to build. You can do some onboarding that also helps set expectations.” It can also be the thing that says, “Three months from now, let’s check in.” That’s an expectation.

Setting a metric is saying, “Here’s what success looks like. You’re on a learning curve. For this first X period of time, think about building your familiarity with this system, meeting these people, and understanding the flow, whatever that is. Here’s what I expect you to be performing.” Ideally, that’s partly a manager’s job.

We might flip to the other side, which is what if your manager doesn’t do any of that stuff? What if nobody takes time to onboard you, and you don’t know what success looks like? I’ve mentioned this in various places. The book, The First 90 Days, is a great one if you are joining an organization on how to set the terms for your own success by setting expectations around deliverables, relationships, and what your learning agenda should be.

Take more of an ownership upfront. Let’s go back to the communication side. That was super helpful on how to communicate as a leader. If you are more junior, and there’s some generational aspect of this as well, if they are not getting clear expectations, or if the expectations feel unrealistic or unachievable, what’s some language for them to work on negotiating?

One place to start is initiating a conversation that says, “I want to check in on how things are going.” Make it a two-way street, if you are the more junior person, depending on the type of relationship you have with the more senior person, and how available they are. Oftentimes, I hear, “They’re not even making time for me. How would I ask these questions?” If you’re the more junior person, it’s never a bad thing to initiate a conversation with your manager where you are looking to improve your performance.

You say, “I want to do a good job. I want to grow and learn. I’m having some confusion about X, Y, or Z. I don’t know how my work product is being received. I don’t know how I measure up against expectations. I’m feeling some confusion.” Try to make your request as specific as possible. A global, “Help me figure it out,” is not a strong or useful position. It is figuring out what the thing is that you want to know about. Make time, initiate a one-on-one conversation, and be clear about that.

I perceive it as needy if this is a question a lot of times, but I would feel like somebody is invested in their own success and the success of the team if they were to affirmatively seek out some direction and feedback around expectations in the role.

The other thing is if you are struggling, the worst thing to do is to try to hide it. It never works. If you have been given a delegation that is unclear, where you don’t know what you’re supposed to do. You just plug a long way, go down whatever direction seems right to you, and then hand in a piece of work where you haven’t asked any questions. Chances are you’re going to get it wrong, and the person is going to be frustrated.

It is flagging early, like, “I’m unclear about this piece or I’ve hit this particular impediment or now that I get into it, I have a choice to make, and I don’t know which one is correct.” You want to come with a solution mindset and not present a problem that your manager needs to solve for you. The other end of the spectrum is soldering away, even though you don’t know what you’re doing and are flailing around. That’s not particularly useful either.

This gets me into the generational thinking a little bit. I’m a Gen X-er. I would describe us as the latchkey kids. No one’s bringing oranges to our soccer games. We figure it out. In our last episode, we talked about one of my early assignments at a law firm. They put a big stack of files on my desk and said, “This is the client’s problem. Go figure it out.” For people in my generation, the expectation is that you can figure it out. It’s a lot about independence. It’s the language that you gave in terms of framing questions and being specific about the direction and feedback. I noticed with the younger generations, especially the Zs, I perceive them as feeling very needy.

No judgment there.

Maybe there’s a different word. We come to life with our life experience. Where we are generationally is certainly a piece of that. How does that feed into expectation setting?

First, I’ll say that I hear you on that experience of generational differences. I think there’s some truth to that, and it’s always risky to stereotype. I want to recognize that it’s probably more helpful to treat folks as individuals than to lump them into a group. That said, a part of me wants to put it back to you. You wish they were different, but they’re not.

It’s more helpful to treat people as individuals than to lump them into a group. Share on X

Let’s say someone comes to you, and they are struggling. You think they should be able to figure it out, but they need some help. Wishing won’t make it so. What you want to do is try to help them build some capacity for thinking on their own and standing on their own. A way I like to think about it is figuring out what the minimal scaffolding is that someone needs to get a task done, and how you, over time, remove that scaffolding.

For example, if we think about the classic situational leadership model of skill and will. How high is someone’s skill and how high is their will to do a task, your managerial style needs to meet them, rather than you expecting them to adapt to you. You want to assess that. “What do I know about this person? Have they done this task before? Are my expectations based on a wish, or are they based on something that I have some data to support?” What you’re describing is maybe a belief that the lack is will. They should figure it out. They don’t have the skill to do the thing, but they should be able to figure the thing out. If they want more direction, it sounds to me like you are identifying a will gap.

I want to be clear that I’m not bringing this to work myself, but I do identify with the figure-it-out generation. Maybe it’s not will, but willingness. I put this in the prep stuff. There’s a perception from folks in my generation of, “I shouldn’t have to handhold you. I shouldn’t have to step by step.” It is helpful to hear you frame it in terms of scaffolding and help people who might have a more rigid mindset to think about how this is a developmental path for somebody.

We might think about taking a coaching approach, or we could set out a spectrum. On one hand, you abandon someone, throw them in the deep end of the pool, and expect them to swim.

That may have happened to some people on this call.

Asking About The Person’s Plan To Assess Guidance Needs

On the other end, you micromanage and control them. There’s a lot of daylight between those two ends of the spectrum. What we might think about is, “Is this a person who needs to be taught how to do a task? Is this a person who needs to be given an objective and then run with it, or somewhere in between?” The first thing to do is, if you’re clear about what the task is, you give the context and identify the key points, like, “I need it by this date. This is what it is.” You can start by asking, “Where are you going to start? Make sure that you’ve gotten enough guidance from me, why don’t you walk me through what your process will be?”

I’m not telling you how to do it, but I’m validating whether or not you’re taking an approach that I believe will work. That’s something short of micromanaging because I’m making the assumption that you have an approach, but I’m checking up on it. That’s a form of scaffolding. If what I hear is that your step one is already off the path, then I can offer a correction early on. If I hear that you have a project plan, that’s cool. I can set a checkpoint. Taking time in the handoff of the task to ask what the person’s plan is helps with getting a sense of how much handholding they need.

I like that. We all have to be self-aware of what we’re bringing to conversations and what we’re bringing for our own, if they’re unstated expectations. Is my expectation that somebody has a will not to do it? I wonder about that.

What is coming to mind for me here is a conversation I had with a senior attorney in a law firm. He’s managing junior attorneys and is feeling frustrated that the work product they’re getting is not matching their expectations. We went upstream, like, “What does the delegation look like? They acknowledged that maybe they didn’t give quite enough scaffolding.” We then went even further upstream and said, “What’s the last piece of work that they did for you? How did they do? How did you give them feedback?” It was like, “I gave them the red line.”

That’s pretty typical.

We might wish that they had diligently reviewed that red line to understand why you made these changes and understand that there’s probably some negotiation point, or whatever it is. In the real world, if it’s not billable, it’s not going to get done. Them taking time to review the red line is not realistic.

That’s short-term thinking.

A Leader’s Job Is Developing And Retaining Talent

It is. Whose responsibility is it to help develop long-term thinking? If I think about what it means to be an executive or a leader in an organization, part of your job is developing people. Your job is to develop and retain talent.

It’s a big part.

It’s not just about, “Am I getting this brief done well and on time? Have I got this markup of the agreement?” It’s, “How am I building resources and leverage within the firm or the organization?” Everybody needs to take a little bit more long-term thinking. If you, as the manager, are not making time to talk someone through the why of your red line, but you’re expecting them to infer the reasoning behind your red line. Is that reasonable?

If you think about what is going to help someone learn and make them want to stick around and work with you again, that probably would weigh in favor of at least taking a little bit of time to walk through, maybe not every point. If there were a couple of big points that someone missed in the analysis, you want to point that out to them. If they’re doing a similar task the next time, you want to say, “You might want to look at the markup from last time because that will be helpful to you.” You might think they should figure that out, but let’s live in the real world.

I encourage people to check out the other episode, episode 63, because we had a great conversation about the feedback conversation. To me, it does lead to the expectations. The partner giving the assignment has hidden expectations in the example that you gave. That you’re going to get it right. If I had observations or corrections, you are going to have learned why I made those, and then you’re not going to make the mistake again. You’re going to go back and check the other work that we did together so that you don’t make the same mistake twice. All those are bottled up.

They may seem quite obvious to you, but they may not be obvious to the other person, especially a more junior person who hasn’t been around the block a time or two.

That’s where I say I think it’s somewhat generational.

You asked about how a more junior person can negotiate over expectations. I wanted to raise one other element. I said, “Let them know early if you’re having a problem. Ask questions about how to prioritize if you’ve got different work streams that you’re trying to manage.” Also, if you have constraints in your life, like you have a child or an aging parent at home where you have some responsibilities. Trying to highlight that early on is helpful. What you don’t want is to have to dash out the door when someone is expecting you to be there, and they have no idea why.

If your manager or the attorney you’re working for is not asking you affirmatively about your life outside of work, you might think about trying to find an opportunity to share that. It is recognizing you have a job, because there are legitimate job expectations, but if you have a personal constraint, your manager probably would want to know that and be able to plan around it if needed.

Sensitive Behavioral Expectations And The User’s Guide To Me

They’d want to know it and also want to know what your plan is for how you will still accomplish the job or get the work done. This gets me back to where we started. This seems like behavioral expectations. I want to talk a little bit about that, especially in this hybrid remote world. Behavioral is a broad topic. It’s how we communicate, how you show up, etc. It can be sensitive things, like you need to have your camera on when we’re on a Zoom meeting, or you can’t wear a baseball hat.

This is going to make me sound old, but during the pandemic, I had some calls with high-priced consultants, and they’re in tank tops and have a top knot on their head. It was not my expectation, but I also didn’t feel empowered or that it was appropriate for me to be calling people out on that. For those more sensitive, personal preferences or expectations around certain code of conduct-type behavior, what are some communication tips for that?

The tank top one is a toughie. Although, I do remember the era where I had a friend who worked in an organization where pantyhose was required. You were not allowed to wear open-toed shoes, but slingbacks with peep toes were okay. It’s ridiculous. Talk about micromanaging, but I digress. One thing that is interesting that I’ve seen is for a leader to write up a user’s guide for me. That includes some self-disclosure about preferences, like, “I like this kind of communication. Here’s how you can know I’m under stress. Here’s the best way to raise an issue with me. Here are things I like feedback about.”

It’s an expectation-setting. Often, this is done somewhat hierarchically, like, “I’m your manager. I want you to understand me. Also, I want you to somehow accommodate my preferences.” I’ve also seen teams do it and share them. There’s a way of saying, “I’m an extrovert. I’m an introvert. I prefer to do things in writing. I prefer to have someone pick up the phone and call me. God forbid.”

It’s less expectation setting and more get-to-know-me. There are elements of that that set the tone for formality or informality, like, “Call me by my first name.” If someone chooses to share about their family or doesn’t share about their family. Those things are all cues to what a manager or leader might expect from you. If they ask for that in return, then great.

It’s less about setting expectations and more about helping people get to know you. Simple things like, ‘Call me by my first name,’ set the tone for how you work together. Share on X

What do you do when your boss likes to talk in person and you would prefer to email? You go into your boss’s office and talk in person. There’s a limit to the negotiation. If your boss at least understands that you’re more comfortable in writing and that it’s a developing skill for you to speak in front of a group or to have to deliver something verbally rather than in writing, then that’s good for them to know what your developmental journey is.

It’s like we’re working on this together, as opposed to like, “Why does Hanna always send these long emails?” and getting frustrated about that.

It also opens the door to feedback.

They are so closely correlated, so I’ve appreciated digging a little bit more into the front end of that. I end all episodes with the same fun question. You did give this before, but I don’t know if your taste in music has evolved. What is your pump-up song?

I am enjoying Bad Bunny. The particular song is, Tití Me Preguntó, which was part of the Super Bowl show. It has a few words in English that I can sing along with, which helps me. That is my current pump-up song.

Thanks so much for being here. Where can people find out more about you?

They can find out more about me at HannaHartLeadership.com. I can also be found on Forbes.

 

Important Links

• Hanna Hart Leadership
• Hanna Hart on Forbes
• M2Leaders
• Episode 63 – The “F” Word: Feedback In The Legal Department Hanna Hart, Executive Coach, and Forbes Contributor – Previous Episode
• The First 90 Days

  

About Hanna Hart

Hanna Hart is an executive coach and former attorney. She has coached hundreds of attorneys and other professionals and facilitates leadership development at law firms, start-ups, foundations and other organizations. Hanna also facilitates a class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business on interpersonal dynamics, including giving and receiving feedback. She is a regular contributor on Forbes and also on HBR.