The answer to the question “Is this glass half full or half empty?” is very subjective, and has the implication of revealing an optimist or a pessimist according to the way each person answers. I consider myself a “half empty kind of guy”… a pessimist by nature. If you knew me, you could argue that that isn’t true, but that’s how I see myself.
In spite of that, when planning a long term period, the optimism takes over and all tasks get scheduled in a unrealistic time frame. The exercise of creating a long plan (such a project or an activity to come) is very hard to master, and realistic schedules is always something that is difficult to assess. In general, when the task starts and during a certain period every thing goes well, but then the pessimist in me kicks in… and it becomes very difficult to shake the pessimistic feelings.
These feelings tend to grow until a certain point, which is normally a very specific time marked by a specific event, and then everything starts from the beginning.
After some web surfing, some googling and of one of Dr. House’s latest episode, the bipolar disorder became an interesting concept to me. A person affected by this disorder can present emotional changes ranging from depression to mania, this way going from half full to half empty and back in no time. Of course I’m not suggesting that such a disorder can be applied to me, but maybe some of my friends can use this argument to explain some of my mood changes.
Expectation can be defined in several ways. According to the wikipedia, expectation is “a belief that is centred on the future”; or following the dictionary.com, expectation is “the act or state of looking forward or anticipating” or “an expectant mental attitude”. Personal expectations refer to the way each personality looks forward into the future. It can be in terms of health, family or career.
This post is about managing expectation in terms of a professional career. When someone plans for the short or long-term future, he is creating some kind of expectations. The kind of expectations is closely connected with the current job. Whether your are being asked to or asking someone to do something, influences the way you create expectation on the final product.
To avoid ambiguity about expected results, each work plan detail and expected outcome should be thoroughly discussed and agreed upon. Even when an agreement is reached, the expectation levels must be monitored to avoid disappointment.
In a society (as happens to be the case when inside a company), the attention to the level of expectation in the people around you is very important. Expectation management is necessary to create a stable equilibrium between expectation and results, and is essentially a periodic monitoring process.
Almost everyone has expectations, personal expectations. It is natural that each person should rise or lower their expectation according their state-of-mind (I know I do!). The way to create a stable level of expectation is to offer an adequate level of compensation in demand of the corresponding workload.
At the moment, my state of mind is making me feel that I’m not receiving as must as I’m being asked for. Let’s hope this changes quickly.
