Let's get ready for some serious shift. This is a podcast shifting Inside Out hosted by your quantum shifter Angela McCourt, we are diving into ways to empower and enable a quantum shift. Inspiring topics hacks and guest speakers take us on a journey around authenticity, challenging status quo, personal power and living a purpose filled life. All right, so we're gonna hit on expectations today. And this is in chapter five of my book, Love your gifts permission to revolutionize authenticity in the workplace. And the reason I have this very early on in part one, which just to give a recap, part one is all about all of the ways that we could actually rewire our subconscious, and use it as our superpower. And really, it's important to be able to do some of this inner work to get out of comparison to get out of competition to really understand expectations and communicate what we need, really to show up in our authentic identity, not just one that we cling to, or that we make up, or that we mirror from someone else. And then many other things like limiting beliefs and other parts, right, and then part two is all about the gifts. So being able to do all this work really unleashes and unlocks the 16 elevated gifts that I share in the book. And the reason I call them gifts, is because in the world of professional development, we have become so much about hard skills, soft skills, you know, and it's this very structured approach yet, the things that we're seeing people do, and leaders who are really effective in this new world, this new world of unpredictability, uncertainty, and nonlinear speed of light. And also, you know, just the ability to be able to navigate in a different way. Because we can't use the same formulas that we've used over time. These gifts are the ones that are showing up these gifts are the ones that are making a difference yet they're not quite understood. They're not quite accepted and practiced, and they're not quite supported. And so this is why I wanted to really hone in on this book and share these gifts. And and then the third part is where you learn how to integrate, and how to activate and how to support each other in the workplace. Okay, so today, I wanted to talk about chapter five, which is on expectations, and why expectations can be a problem. Okay, so the first thing I want to start out with is expectations of ourselves. And I can say that, you know, there's this struggle that many people go through where they feel like they set the bar really high for themselves so that they can achieve, okay, so they can find success. And sometimes this comes from childhood, sometimes this is a decision that's made after you go to school, or as you become an adult, and you say this, these are the things that I want to do, I want to achieve achieve success. And here's my view in my picture of that. Now, what happens is, we can set the bar so high on ourselves, that not only does it impact us, but it does impact the people around us. So expectations of ourselves being kind of way out here. And you're leading a team, guess who else feels that your team does. So there's a healthy balance between pushing a team to unleash their gifts, and to really innovate and move forward and, you know, be able to to work through change at a really quick speed to be able to develop things that maybe weren't even in the picture a year ago or two years ago, to really get them motivated. So that their potential is exposed and they see it and they drive. And they they motivate that's that's the healthy side. The unhealthy side is just putting pressure so that the team feels like they have to do everything that the boss says. And the team feels that they have to do it by certain timeline. Now, here's where things get really tricky in that world. And this is why I wanted to talk about this when we shift from expectations of self to expectations of others. And this particular example where you set the bar high for yourself you want to achieve it's rah rah rah, but it's aligned to the company. It's not just for selfish reasons. And but you're not doing it in a way that's motivating to the team. You're not doing it in a way that's supportive of how they are able to show up to the table and that means working a normal job, not not, you know, 80 hours a week, not expected to work on the weekends not expected to work on vacation. Okay, so the healthy side is those things, the unhealthy side is you put all these expectations out on others without being real clear. So clarity is a key here. They then have their own bar set, they want to get promoted, they want to make more money, they want to get to a new title, they want expanded responsibility. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to meet your expectations. Now, here's where it gets really tricky with expectations, especially when you have expectations of others. And I go through this in the book. And I think this is super important to call out now, especially as we're going through a lot of changes in the workplace is expectations are filled with assumptions. They're filled with assumptions. I like to call assumptions of four letter bad word, because assumptions in this case are dangerous. Here's what happens. Sally, can you please go run that report and make sure that it includes all of these five things that I need to see data on? There's no deadline. It communicated. There's no. Here's how I'd like to see it. Just these five things. Okay. So what happens is Sally, it's Friday, by the way, Sally works the weekend to get this report done. Sally doesn't ask any questions. Sally just says okay. Well, let me just think I think this is how they would like to see this. Monday comes the reports already in that managers mailbox, email box, and the manager goes, Oh, well, that's not how I want to see it. I'd like to see it in an Excel sheet. Or I'd like to see it in this tool. Okay, well, could you not have asked that upfront? And this is this is and I say that sarcastically because this is the opportunity, we have one, Sally, can you please do this report, I don't need it. Until next Wednesday, please do not work on it this weekend. Because you know, she will. If you don't if you tell her if you tell her just to do it. And you don't tell her not to work on the weekend. And then here's how I would like to see I would like these five pieces of data. But I would like to see it in this way. In Excel format, by bla bla, bla, bla, bla, whatever the template is that you'd like to see, by Wednesday, end of day next week, I don't need it until Friday meeting, if you have to, if you even have to say that. What you just did is you allowed Sally to prioritize how the rest of her work the way she needs to prioritize it, what you just did was you reduce that go back and forth, because it wasn't exactly what you wanted. And expected. What you did was you gave her very specific direction not to work on the weekend. That's empowering. And that's good leadership. That also creates better trust. And it took about 10 seconds extra. This is Genius people genius. All we have to do is take a little bit more responsibility when we're sharing what we need. So let me just give an example of something that I started doing in the workplace is I had people who they wanted to achieve on my team, like they were go getters, they they worked hard, played hard, right? So this was something I had to be very conscientious of as a leader. And a lot of times, you know, we may come up with something or an idea or something. And it's like, oh, this is a great idea. Let's go do this. And all of a sudden, somebody took that down as an action item. They weren't assigned it. But they took it as an action item. The next meeting, oh, I've got this great idea. Let's go do this. And the next thing, you know, they take that as an action item before it before the end of the day, they have five new new action items that they have taken responsibility for in some way. And they're gonna go off and work on it. This is real world people. This is exactly what's going on with your teams today. They then work 80 hours a week, they put the pressure on themselves to do these things. And then they come back to you and you're like, Oh, I didn't realize we were doing that. How disappointing, right. For the person who did all that work and spent their weekend doing it. We have a lot of start getting clear on communicating expectations. More specifically, more specifically, it's we're having a brainstorming session. There is no action item out of it until we make a decision that it's aligned to our priorities to our strategy to our vision to our mission to fitting in with the priorities of the rest of the things going on. So here's something that I really started doing with my team besides saying that's a parking lot idea that nobody has that as an action item. Or can you take that as an action item and let's look at what else you have on your plate so we can reprioritize or it was please tell me when you are stressed And let's look at what you have on your plate. So we can reprioritize. Because honestly, that's part of the biggest challenge many, many people have in their work today is prioritizing, and assuming that everything is an urgent item, versus Oh, this doesn't have to be done for two weeks. And what I started doing was I started to really think ahead myself and say, Okay, what am I going to need way out here for this particular meeting for this particular launch that we're doing, or this particular communication? And I would start talking to people ahead of time and saying, look, here's what I'm going to need for that, do you think you can do that? What do you have on your plate and be respectful? Like, what do you have on your plate? How can I help you reprioritize, so that you have time to do this in your workday, not in your extended workday, and weekends. And you know, really being I'm being very sarcastic here, because this is a major issue going on. And this is why teams are burnt out. And this is why they're so stressed and why they're working way too much on things that probably aren't even relevant. That's the sad thing. So I would start, you know, not only really watching, not just listening, not just you know, from a point of responsibility, what are people working on, but like watching for, how are they doing? Are they do they seem kind of stressed? Do they seem rushed? That's a key if they, if you feel like they're seeming rushed? Or they're saying, like, those are symptoms of overwhelm, those are symptoms of I have too much on my plate right now. And all you have to do as a leader is ask, How can I help? What can I help with? Can we reprioritize you don't have to do these three things, these three things now are kind of like and not as big as these two things that we just talked about. So let's figure out timelines on the on the two things, and let's parking lot the three things. You just gave that person freedom, you just you just gave them a sense of control on their day and days. And I know not every job has more of like this proactive ability to be able to control their time, because they're in a very supportive role. They're in a reactive role. They have to respond, respond, respond, respond. But where there is opportunity, even in those roles, to, you know, work with and work with them on certain things that maybe they don't like doing these types of tasks, somebody else does, like divvy up the work to where the people like doing it, or they're really good at it. So there's this thing around expectations that I think we have such a major opportunity to reduce burnout to reduce overwhelm. And it really is all about opening up channels of communication. It's both ways. It is as a leader communicating out expectations very clearly, very specifically. And in a way that is not everything is freaking urgent, because you're asking for it get over it. It's not, it's not you have control over a lot of times when stuff needs to actually be done. So as a leader, that's the first charge I charge you with, is get real with what actually needs to be done and when to communicate very specifically communicate, here's what I really needed. Here's what I need, very specifically what I need. And please don't work the weekend, like literally call that I don't want you doing this tonight, do this in your day, or ask the question, can you do this? Or when can you get this done by now you just you just empowered this is when we talk about empowerment, I think impairments thrown around way too much. This is true empowerment. When can you get this done by? And if it can't get done sooner than I need it, then what can I help you with? Take off your plate? What can we readjust priority wise? Okay, what can I hand to someone else who may have a little bit of capacity opening up? That's the leaders role. Now the other person that is getting the, you know, expectation, they also should have expectations in this exchange, and their expectations should be asking questions around. What exactly do you need? Clarify? Because what happens is if there isn't clarity in the Ask procrastination concern, so it may not even be that that person has too much on their plate, it may be that they don't even know how to have to start this because there isn't clear direction and in the expectation and the ask. So the other thing is, is I have these five things on my plate. And now I need you to tell me how this ranks against those other five things. And is there something I can bump or hand to somebody else? So that I have time to do this and here's how much time I will need to do this. So the biggest thing is here is communicating asking for clarification number one, number two, communicate cating, here's what I have on my plate, I'm asking for help to redefine my priorities so that I can do this in a normal way. And then the third thing is do not do it at night or on the weekend, like seriously, if the manager or the leader who has had plenty of time to think about this is waiting till the last minute to ask for it, that is their problem, not yours. And you do have to set some boundaries around that. Because it is going to be a repeat behavior, a bad behavior. And you know it from a leadership perspective, if you're doing that, you're not going to be a leader for very long, because it is not going to be accepted for continuing behavior like that, you have to figure out how to make the adjustments, you have to put a little bit more care into how you're utilizing your team, you are responsible for the work that they are, they're actually doing, how they're spending their time. That is your responsibility as a leader to make sure that you get the most optimal, not just from a productivity perspective, but from an output of quality. And then also just being able to, you know, spread the work around, you know, being aware of of who's overloaded and who isn't. And who has capacity and whose over capacity, like being really in tune with that is super important. So on expectations, and I close this out. I know I was a little harsh in this one. But there's a reason for that. This is a big one. This is probably one of the biggest pet peeves I have. And one of the things I talk with clients all the time about, should you have to share in this and we only talk about the workplace like this doesn't even go into personal relationships of Oh, I couldn't read your mind. I didn't know you wanted that. Oh, this is important to you. Oh, okay, let me readjust. Now that I know, right? So there's so much more to expectations just from a personal relationship, even in the workplace as well. But I do go into a little bit more of that in the chapter. And then also there are some exercises in the workbook. So you know really just kind of diving in and looking at what you can do to make changes and then there's an Ask your manager these questions. So it gives you a little bit of a guide in here as well. So how to actually approach the conversation to get clarity to set expectations to ask for help for reprioritizing work etc. So anyway, I hope that you all enjoy it. And I will come back for some more