Expectations vs Reality ... It's Everywhere

Game time my friends ... We'll go all cliche' and call this

Expectations Vs. Reality

Why? Because that's what my day's been full of.

Last night, under the gun, my husband and I migrated all our old office emails into the new Office 365. It took some time, but we got it done.

When I went into work today it was kinda like this ...

Expectation:

Everyone cheering and saying, "OMG Marybeth, you are SOOOO fantastic. How did you manage such a feat? This is SOOOOO amazing. You're so my favorite person since 1979!" (or something at least 5% of that ...)

Reality:

One angry grown man because none of his office programs would work who admitted, "Well, I don't hate you as much as I did yesterday."

One indifferent young man who was confused at first and then was like, "Meh."

So yeah ... there was that.

I guess we could have also called this game "Unrealistic Expectations."

I have a tendency to unintentionally try to be a little bit too awesome. I always have that great idea that should work out perfectly and make everyone super happy and joyous and full of absolute glee (I know those words all mean the same ... I'm trying to get a point across ... roll with me). I don't know why I do it, but before I even think about it the words leave my mouth, "I know how to fix that!" And in THEORY I DO know how to fix that. However, in reality, that doesn't mean that I can.

I walked into this email trap in much the same way. I knew WHAT the fix was for the problem, but I was really kinda reaching into a deep dark cave full of werebats when thinking I COULD fix the problem.

Expectation:

I'm going to fix this and it's going to be awesome!!!

Reality:

I'm going to TRY to fix this and as many things that can go wrong totally will.

Story of my life? Quite possibly.

What I do is I set my expectations upward. I set them so high that people leave thinking I know how to solve world hunger. When what I should do is set them so low that all people think they are going to get out of me is a day of facebook postings and maybe two cookies. (Oh who are we fooling? I don't bake!) 

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Jared Sandberg wrote, 

"You would think the tactic of managing expectations downward would be so obvious that it wouldn't work. But as Wendy Wood, a professor of psychology at Duke University, notes: "You can be a physicist and study gravity and still fall down.""

To be honest, I'm not even sure what this has to do with communication or changing communication because no communication was going to stop my expectations from being shattered. But still, perhaps it was a good lesson in managing expectations downward from here forward in hopes that I don't need to communicate to others that I'm awesome, because it will be super apparent! 

#dreambig

Reference:

Sandberg, J. (2007, Jan 16). Career journal; CUBICLE CULTURE: Managing expectations. Wall Street Journal Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/308722742?accountid=28644