The power of intention, the trap of expectation

One of my favorite and sillier instances of expectations gone wrong happened many years ago when I was working with Target’s CMO Michael Francis. We had gathered his senior leadership team for an important workshop, and Michael’s support team had carefully planned a very specific lunch. They took me aside to tell me, sotto voce, “Mr. Francis always wants this salad and this arrangement — it’s very important to him”. I nodded, of course. Ten minutes later Michael strode in and as we stood in line to serve ourselves lunch, Michael turned to me, sighed, and said, “I don’t know why we always have to eat the same lunch each time I have one of these meetings.”

I cherish that memory. There are of course, far more egregious examples of people internalizing false expectations. If I had a dime for the number of times I have encountered spin cycles and overwork as teams operate on a set of expectations about what a leader wants, divorced from what they actually want, I’d be rich.

In some cases, expectations can be quite dangerous. Many a climber has perished because they expected the conditions on the summit of Mount Everest to be different than they were. Many a CEO has lost their jobs because they inherited a set of expectations about financial performance and never questioned or challenged them, just adopted them.

An expectation is not a true thing, but you start to hold it as true.

By contrast, good leadership is about a continuous dialogue between your intentions, and your reality.

Intention and expectation seem like they should be kin, but they are very different. Intention is about a commitment to achieving a particular aim or purpose. Intention is full of possibility and forward-leaning energy. It evolves. It emerges. It is dynamic.

Expectation is a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future. By its very nature it hardens and becomes fixed in our minds. It holds things in place, creates a false sense of security, and all too often leads to suffering when reality shows up different than our expectations.

The best leaders I see in action are explicitly intentional. I’d say that those who are working best in today’s complex environment are less in the habit of “setting expectations” and more in the habit of “expressing intent”.

That looks like use of phrases such as “here’s my intent,” or “the outcome I want to see is”, or “let me clarify my intent”. But it also looks like a constant self-questioning about whether the emerging reality of your life or your business is true to your intentions. It also looks like bearing witness to the expectations that can start to harden in your mind. As has been often said “inspect what you expect”.

Getting better at leadership means getting better at intention, and inspecting what you expect.

Here’s what I would suggest as a skills-based practice:

Ask the question, “What is my intent?”

Use this to yourself as frequently as possible, as a mindfulness exercise. Natural moments to do this are first thing in the morning, last thing at night as you plan the day ahead, and before every important moment in your day when you are about to interact with people.

Your body language, your tone, your presence will shift based on asking that question of yourself and seeing what emerges.

Embed “Here’s my intention” in your conversations

Natural moments for this are in clarifying what you’re saying (remember that people often project onto a leader’s words a set of expectations that may not be consistent with their intent), setting an agenda for a meeting (you always do that, right?), and negotiating a difficult conversation.

Inspect your expectations — especially those you inherited

There’s a future article I have to write about inherited expectations, especially for CEOs, who too easily adopt the expectations of others — be it shareholders, prior CEOs, the board, etc. For now, one of the best things you can do is occasionally stop yourself and your team and ask what assumptions or expectations people are operating under, and make sure they’re out in the open. It’s also worth looking at something as banal as your calendar and asking if it is a product of other people’s expectations or a manifestation of your true intent.

Use this phrase to create space for others: “I trust my intentions, but not their form yet”

This is one of my favorite idioms, first introduced to me by my lovely friend and former colleague Jessica Orkin. Leaders have to set intention and trust their gut, but all too often they and their followers jump to a form for that intention that is wrong. Just because you intend to have people collaborate, doesn’t mean you should now restructure your company, for example.

By indicating that you trust your intentions, you are signalling confidence in your leadership. But you are also creating the vulnerable opening to have everyone question what form that intention should take — allowing for debate and improvement.

Lead bravely,