Managing Expectation - Part 2

Last week, we started introduced the concept of managing expectations.  This week, let's continue . . .

Meaningful:  We’ve placed information in a context, which will help make it meaningful.  But perhaps paramount in persuasive efforts is to know your audience sufficiently well to target the information against their individual needs.  This requires that you understand and respect their point of view or current expectations.  I’ve found that the first step in the “conversion” process (moving someone from one set of expectations to a different or modified set) is to state and give credence to their current expectations.  Confrontation only solidifies their views by forcing them to defend them.  Hearing my position accurately articulated back to me without bias is very disarming and is the first step in the modification process.  Then providing information that aligns with my individual needs or provides solutions to my problems completes the process.

Convincing:  Something that is meaningful is not always convincing.  Something that improves my situation usually is.  Managing expectations is a process of convincing someone that their current expectations are unrealistic or flawed (incomplete or contain unconsidered costs) and that moving to new or improved expectations is to their advantage.  Convincing requires that you first establish some form of common ground and then demonstrate a compelling case for change.  Uncovering and challenging underlying assumptions is a better means of encouraging change than to challenge information or facts.

Most communication is not as simple as we would like it to be, and communication focused on expectation modification can be very difficult and time consuming.  The difficulty frequently causes us to avoid it (in hopes that things will change without our effort) or hurry through important communications, and the overwhelming amount that is necessary to manage expectations can cause even the most seasoned of us to wince.  When you consider the fact that your job is to build support for the project and leverage that support to successful completion, the importance of this critical function becomes clear and the time seems worth it.

In the next post, I'll review the model used to identify where stakeholder expectations are not aligned.  This model can be quickly employed to develop your alignment strategy and identify specific stakeholders where this type of focused communication is needed.   Until next time . . . .