Hope is not a Strategy & the Road to Misery is Paved with One-Sided Expectations

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Yosi Kossowsky, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

A few months ago, I co-facilitated a change management workshop with my colleague, Melissa Miller. During the prep, I commented to Melissa, ‘I hope this session goes off without a hitch,’ to which she responded, ‘Hope is not a strategy’.

Her words were like a jolt to my system. In that moment, I realized how often I used hope as a strategy and how often that strategy didn’t pan out for me.

The following day, there was an important company meeting where the CEO was expected to talk through some major changes that had just been announced.

When the meeting kicked off, the CEO took the stage and began his opening remarks by talking about a recent news article regarding him and the White House.

While the story was interesting, it was completely unrelated to the hot topic that was on many people’s minds. Although eventually the CEO did address the business changes, many participants were disappointed that he chose to cover the White House story before addressing the issues on most employees’ minds.

The danger of one-sided expectations

As I continued to hear people around me rant about how the CEO had failed the employees, I decided it was a great time for a social experiment. I stopped a few and asked them when they had met with the CEO and agreed with him about his leadership style and how he would run the company meeting.

Mostly, I was met with blank stares and sharp responses about the responsibility of a CEO.

These comments were a stark reminder of the emotional and psychological impact of one sided and unmet expectations. Rarely do they make us happy or lead to a successful result. There is also an inherent connection between expectations and hope.

Hope, in the form of optimism, can be a powerful driving force that energizes us to go above and beyond for a greater good. It can also be a disaster when employed as a strategy to achieve something or when used to sustain a belief that others will magically meet our unspoken, one-sided expectations. At the same time, mutually agreed upon expectations can reduce stress and anxiety, and improve working relationships.

It seems that ‘hope as a strategy’ and one-sided expectations happen almost unconsciously. We usually become aware of them when we find ourselves disappointed by the way events play out.

How to avoid the misery of unmet expectations

To help my clients I adapted the Prosci ADKAR acronym to allow them to quickly identify these menaces.

I recommend that they print out and post this list next to their computer monitors, and encourage them to share it with coworkers and colleagues:

A = Awareness – Am I or anyone else using these phrases?

Should…
Must…
Have to…
Need to…
Ought to…
D = Desire – What is the unspoken yet desired expectation that is being expressed?

K = Knowledge – What would happen if that expectation was not met?

A = Ability – What can I do now to ensure mutually agreed upon expectations?

R = Reinforcement –How can I continually keep these expectations relevant in a dynamic environment?

I find that even with awareness of the pitfalls, this is still an easy trap to fall into. When it happens, I can sometimes feel judgmental, frustrated, disappointed or even angry. At those times, it serves me best to recognize that it has all been my doing. I set these expectations, I neglected to validate them, and I relied on them.

To make this part of my daily life, any time I begin a new business relationship, I have what I like to call an “Expectations Conversation.” The intent is to set clear and confirmed working agreements.

As a preparatory step, I ask myself these questions:

What do I want from and for this project, event or relationship?
How do I want interactions to occur?
How do I want to stay informed and keep others informed?
How do I want to ensure and confirm understanding?
There is no one right answer to these questions; the value is in attaining mutual clarity in these areas. It is also crucial to get agreement, which means that I also need to compromise in order to achieve mutually beneficial working dynamics.

Knowing that the ramifications of one-sided expectations can be so simply avoided has helped improve the dynamics of my relationships and has benefited both me and those I work with.

What about you? Do you recognize that you, too, may have used hope as a strategy and unwittingly set or bought into one-sided expectations?