Everything Your Parents Did Not Tell You About Expectations
There are few things in life that effect our relationships, our ecounters and our interactions with other people as much as expectations.
Every time we move in a new experience of any kind we conciously or unconciously create different sets of hopes about what it will be like, what will happen and so on. Often we also create fears, things we do not wish to happen. Meaning we create a set of expectations. These can be a powerful ally and they can also be a pit fall that can mess things up in the most well meant interactions.
Imagine the following scenario; a Thursday meeting has been called at Department C3. On the agenda that has been sent out well in advance there is the item “Purchase of new computers”. Charlie goes to the meeting filled with a feeling of “finally it is time to get new computers” and looks forward to a quick decision that leads to buying and even better starting to use the new computers.
On his way to the same meeting is Brian. He looks forward to meeting his collegues again and having time to discuss things that will lead to improvements in the workplace and of the company. He thinks “it is a great thing that a meeting has been called so we together can really find the best alternative for new computers”. Charlie arrives at the meeting looking forward to a fast and powerful decision, Brian arrives inspired by the thought of thorough discussion that leads to a well thought through decision.
About fifteen minutes later Charlie and Brian have collided head on. Either in a verbal flow of words or in wordless communication in the form of sighs and frustrated body language. Charlie is highly annoyed perceiving Brian as a slow thinking snail and Brian feels that Charlie is a high-speed bulldozer that just wants to run people over. This image of each other, is not spoken of though, instead they hit it out by being extremely not in agreement on the size of RAM-memory in the new computers.
Continued on Page 2 of Expectations
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