“Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.” ― Brandon Sanderson, ‘The Way of Kings’
I’ve just spent the past two months in paediatrics. And to say that it hasn’t been my favourite rotation might be putting it mildly. But perhaps that was because I had certain expectations going into the rotation and I got disappointed when it fell short of my expectations.
Expectations are powerful things. We all have expectations. We have expectations of our families, of our friends, of our leaders. After all, man is a social being, and the very meaning of “social” implies ‘expectations’. By social conditioning, we expect certain things. It’s how we’re built.
And those expectations can make all the difference. If you have unrealistically high expectations of someone, you could be disappointed when they don’t achieve what you expected them to. And it mightn’t even be their fault- they probably did their best. You just expected too much from them.
Conversely, not having high expectations of someone could be interpreted as you having no confidence in that person. And feeling like no one expects you to succeed can be one of the most discouraging feelings in the world.
There needs to be a balance. Keeping your expectations high enough to encourage the person but at the same time not pressure them.
I’m sure everyone at some point has suffered either because of their expectations of other people, or because of what’s expected of them.
And expectations go deeper than just expecting people to succeed or fail. We expect certain behaviour from certain people. We expect friends to have our backs, we expect parents to guide us.
And feelings get hurt, egos bruised, friendships tarnished because of ambiguity about what exactly those expectations entail. Because we’re all different people. We have different world-views. We see things differently. We interpret things differently.
So if someone doesn’t meet your expectations of them, it could be that they didn’t know what you expected of them. Some things need to said, to be stated explicitly so there’s absolutely no ambiguity.
There are the supposedly clear-cut rules, for specific roles, like being a daughter or a mother. And those are probably the easiest. You know pretty much what’s expected of you. There are lots of bright neon lines drawn in the sand to make sure you never overstep the boundaries of your responsibility. But even there we face ambiguities in a fast-changing world.
But what about when your roles overlap? People are put into leadership positions over their friends or family members every day.
It’s easier to reprimand strangers than friends. Because it’s your instinct to treat them as a friend not as if you were their boss. But yet, it should still be straightforward- separate personal feelings from the job, follow protocols.
But the lines get blurred when they expect you to treat them differently, to give them preferential treatment because they’re your friends or family. And then they get hurt when you don’t.
And then there’s the expectations that people have of who you should be or who you should become. The expectations you have to live up to. Persons expecting you to be someone you’re not. Expecting you to choose a specific career when you’re better suited to another career that could be just as good or better.
We all have expectations of each other. We just need to take a good look at those expectations. We need to check whether we expect too much or too little of each other. We need to look at whether our expectations are fair to each other.
What you expect of someone can make all the difference.
