Expectation and Criticism

"We could all learn something from the weather; it never pays attention to criticism."

That's one of the taglines that pops up on my personal email from time to time, and every time I happen to notice it I seem to take notice of it and think about it for a little while. There's often great truth in very small messages that's pertinent to most of our lives, that we sometimes gloss over, yet could use to our benefit.

A trap that many consultants fall into is thinking that we're supposed to be perfect, and when we're not, we sometimes start questioning ourselves and wondering whether we're up to the task of working independently. We might hear criticism from a client and think we're less than what we thought we were, and, when that happens, it can be hard to turn it back on and feel as competent as we felt going into an engagement.

Of course, the other side of this equation is that it's not always the consultant who's missed the point on these things. Sometimes, our only error is not fully understanding what the client's expectations were, because what they've told you they want turns out not to really be what they want, or thought they want. On one of my consulting gigs, myself and the client weren't on the same page at all. I was trying to give the client what his organization needed, but his expectations were that I was going to solve his immediate need, and right now. There was no way to achieve that result, based on the infrastructure problems that existed, but the client didn't care. It resulted in a bad working relationship, and questions of my competency. Of course, before I left, I gave some information to the client that would help him get exactly what he'd been looking for, something I'd been saying for a time that he just wasn't hearing from me, and those questions of competency went out the window; too bad, at that point, the relationship couldn't be repaired.

When managers interview potential employees, their expectations are usually fairly high of just what kind of person they're bringing into the mix; the expectations of the potential employee are also high. The problem with expectations is that they're based on each side putting their best face forward up front, without any real basis in fact. It's a lot like a first date, where both parties parry with their least controversial conversation, trying to get a feel for how the other person will react to them, their words and mannerisms, the way they're dressed, how they eat, etc. The person you meet on day one is never the person you thought you knew two weeks later; sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. When it's a bad thing, sometimes employers say things in a way that will make things even worse.

One of the things healthcare has over most over industries is that, even when they hire someone with known skills, they take the time in training that person to make sure they know how to do things the way the particular healthcare provider wants them done. In most of healthcare, the interviewers know the person they're interviewing has skills already. They had to get special skills pertaining to special equipment, take all sorts of tests, and pass at a certain proficiency level that showed they really knew what they were doing. Nurses are a prime example; they go to school for years, learn all different types of nursing based on which areas of a hospital or what types of practitioners they're going to be working in, but once they're hired the hospitals or physicians spend more time integrating them into those areas, even if they're worked in other hospitals, because each hospital and each physician is different and has their way of wanting to do things.

In many other industries, if someone with a background in that field is hired, they're often expected to start on day one knowing everything about that business and not needing to ask questions. A salesman may have the luxury of having to learn a different product, but for most everyone else, the thought is that, on the resume it said you could do this and that, so I expect you to do this and that now.

Those kinds of expectations are harrowing to the new employee whose expected to hit the ground running; I know very few people who could actually walk in the door doing that sort of thing. It doesn't mean they're not proficient; it means they haven't even learned what it is your needs are yet, or how it is working with you. Just like some consulting assignments, it often takes a little bit of time to review data, see how people work and what they're working with, then maybe there's the possibility of being able to begin the process of making good things happen.

Whenever I've spoken on a diversity topic, I've found that most people already have an expectation of what I'm going to talk about and where I'm going to come from when I walk in the room. They see the brown skin and immediately think I'm about to talk about how bad most of them are because they don't have brown skin themselves. Of course, I don't go down that road, because one doesn't get any positive responses from people by walking in and beating them up. I try to speak in global terms, while being direct when needed, and I work on challenging people to come to grips with their preconceived notions of others, no matter who those others are. On surveys taken after the classes, most of the participants will say they learned some things they didn't think about before, and that they actually enjoyed the class because it wasn't what they were expecting. Yet, even here, there's always at least one survey that comes in saying "same thing as always"; can't win 'em all. Even here, though, the criticism could throw you off, because you're hope is to make an impact on everyone, and it's an unrealistic expectation.

As people, we're all allowed to have expectations of others, of things we buy, or our own lives. As managers, supervisors and leaders, we're still allowed to have expectations of others we hire and work with. We just have to learn how to temper those thoughts from time to time, giving people time to learn our ways and our expectations of what it is they're going to do, learning how to back off those expectations when we realize someone might not be capable of doing what we were hoping they could do because it might be how we did something. Other people aren't us, and to expect them to be is unfair to them, and unreasonable for us to believe. How managers decide to talk to employees to let them know they're not living up to expectations tells a lot about their character, but could be used to help train those same employees better.

Just like the weather, what you see is what you've got. Unlike the weather, how you criticize may change what you get. Expectations,… well, you'll figure out how to deal with those.