Many people find themselves building their success on the expectations others seem to have.

Expectations are all around us.

When parents present their children with expectations, it most often is the result of good intentions. They imagine how their children could have access to a good future and share it with them. In principle, the children are free to take these ideas as suggestions. However, their perception of the family dynamic can make it something they’ll rebel against or comply with. In such a case, their perception transformed it into an expectation.

Growing up, children learn that parents can be satisfied and believe that it is their responsibility to find a way to do so. Sometimes they learn ways allowing them to satisfy their parents, and sometimes they yearn for specific recognition from their parents. Whatever it is, their perception of the situation most certainly transformed these desires to satisfy their parents into expectations that need to be lived up to.

It doesn’t really matter if the expectations have been set by parents or if the children believed them to exist. At some point, they have become expectations the grown-up children continue to believe in.

It becomes part of how they want to establish themselves and relate to authority.

There is not much leaders can do about it.

Apart, maybe, from gaining as much clarity as possible about their own expectations. A way to do so is by being continuously willing to share their expectations with their team.