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Setting Expectations Sets You Up for Success
26 August 2025
Allison pondered how ideas, attitudes, and concepts mean different things to different people and created a short audio recording to explain the importance of setting or resetting expectations.
Tags: allison read, communication, management and supervision, thoughtful candor
Today, I taught our Setting Expectations and Giving Feedback course to a group of managers I worked with last month. When class was over, one of them told me that how I explained the importance of describing what you want from others really helped her to see how she could possibly prevent some frustrations with her employees. Then, she said, "I wish I could listen to a recording of you before I have some of these difficult conversations." I told her I'd been searching for a topic for today's blog post and she had just solved my problem!
In this seven-minute audio recording, I explain how to talk with someone about why being on time to meetings matters. In my experience, very few people are intentionally trying to disappoint, disrespect, and frustrate us and yet when we don't have shared expectations, that's exactly how it sometimes feels. Whenever things go wrong between you and another person, I recommend starting from the assumption that the person doesn't understand why something bothers you or is important to you. Whether you need to talk with someone about being on time or some other expectation, I'm hopeful the example in my recording will give you a template for how to approach your conversation.
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