Episode 47 | 5 Tips on How to Set Expectations with Yourself and Others

Sophia Noreen: Hello everyone, welcome to another fantastic episode of the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and I'm going to be your host for today.  Today, we're going to speak about managing and setting expectations with yourself, but also with your team and with your family. The reason why this is such an important topic is because that is where people fail, and there is always a breakdown of communication that occurs after you basically don't set the expectations.

So today, I'm going to speak to you about the importance of why we should be setting expectations, and potentially what could happen if you don't set expectations.  And then I'm going to offer you guys a few tips and tools that I use in my business and in my life to ensure that people know exactly what is expected of them. I know exactly what is expected of me in return,  so that way there are less communication barriers and then we are able to all reach our goals, and accomplish what we're going for.  

Let's get started, so the first thing is why do we set expectations? Why is it important to set expectations with ourselves and with our family and with our team, or with our colleagues? Obviously, the first one is if we don't set expectations, then people do not know what's expected of them, and there's inherently a communication breakdown.  A very simple example is if I am not setting expectations with myself, so if I don't say to myself: I expect myself to basically adhere to my calendar on a regular basis, that is the expectation I have set, then I am more confident that I'll be able to accomplish the goals that I have set out for myself. 

My calendar has broken down my day into chunks, so usually, they're in 2-hour chunks to 3-hour chunks sometimes, or 1-hour chunks if it's a very small task or a meeting of some sort, but it's broken down. If I don't adhere to my calendar, then let's face it, I'm not going to be able to complete the tasks that have been assigned to me at that time and I will unlikely complete the goal that I've set for myself. So I have set the expectation with myself that I absolutely have to adhere to following the calendar.  

I know it's so easy to just say that here's my agenda for the day, and then something happens.  Somebody phones you, for example, a lot of people will call you on the phone and you take the phone because that's what a good friend does. They'll take the phone call. But if the person that you're speaking with doesn't know your agenda, it's not their fault.  A friend won't understand what your agenda is going to say. It's going to say, "Sophia, you need to finish this podcast recording between four o'clock and five o'clock today." My friends are not accountable to that agenda, I am. I'm setting an expectation with myself.  That's a very simple example but many people forget when they're working for themselves, if they're an entrepreneur, for example, or they're starting their side hustle, or they're starting a passion project. Generally, what ends up happening is we don't take that time that we've accommodated for our business.  We don't take it seriously and we let it slip.  I've seen it time and time again. But if you do that, then it will be very difficult to accomplish your goals. 

So the first thing is to set expectations for yourself.  This can also work for anything to do with self-care.  You could say, I want to drink one liter of water before three o'clock today.  I'm going to try to reduce my caffeine intake because I know I'm not sleeping well at night.

Self-care is also an expectation you set. If my expectation is I will now drink that water, I will ensure that I drink every hour a good 200 milliliters. That's a good way of setting those expectations, and it's very, very important. It's important in all domains of life.  You can also go with your relationships. You could say, I need to ensure that I have a very positive relationship, a very healthy relationship with my significant other, my partner, or a positive relationship with my parents. I need to ensure that I will call them more regularly. 

Again, setting expectations for myself. I could say, I'm going to message my mom because we do a lot of WhatsApp-ing or Instagram messages.  I'm going to message her today if I cannot get on the phone with her. That's another very good example of setting expectations for yourself. So, guys, the first thing is to check yourself, where can you start setting expectations for yourself and then adhering to those expectations.

Let's talk a little bit about setting expectations with your family, especially if you're starting a new side hustle. Again, they may not understand the time and the energy value that you're placing towards your side hustle. What I mean by that is they may say to you, "Why are you putting so much time into this project?" Or, "Why are you spending so much energy? What's the point of this?" 

You may hear some of this language, and you have to set the expectation with them and say that, this is important to me and I want to do it because X, Y, and Z. Whatever the reasoning is.  You don't even need to necessarily give them a reason,  but sometimes if you explain why you're doing something and setting the expectation that this is an important goal for you as a person. You're giving back to the community or you don't have necessarily another hobby and this is your hobby, but you're not turning it into a good little cash-generating machine as well. Win-win because now your hobby is paying for itself potentially. 

The point is you need to set expectations with your family, and I've given the example before in past episodes and past life events that I have the expectation that I used to go to yoga. Now I said "used to" because I do not leave the house now for yoga as all of our gyms are currently closed due to the pandemic, but hopefully there'll be a reopening soon. But I always went to yoga on Sunday mornings, it was an expectation I sat with the family. What that meant was that my partner had to stay home with the children. He could not go make plans and say that I'm going off doing who knows what.

I'm going to the gym myself, he couldn't do that because I set the expectation that it's important for me. That's my gym time. That's my yoga time. I do not do that in the house. I am physically leaving the location, so you need to stay home.  

Again, another great example where I've set expectations with him that this is something that I'm doing for my time, and you have to be available to manage any household needs, including supervising children.  

Setting expectations with your family is extremely important. The final domain that I will refer to at this time is setting expectations with your team or your colleagues. If you have a growing team, if you're hiring a VA, if you're hiring contractors, even if you extrapolate and you set expectations with your customers, anybody in that work hemisphere of your life, you need to set expectations with them as well. 

I'll give you a few examples of why it's important to do that. When you set expectations with anybody that you're working with, then it helps reduce the breakdown of communication. Obviously, if you have a breakdown in communication, you likely will have a failure of execution or you'll have a failure of follow-through, or something will not be completed and in the end, your goals will not be completed. 

When you're working in a team, setting expectations is extremely important that can go with expectations of date setting, expectations of what the actual task is, expectations on who is completing that task, and expectations when you are meeting next, these are extremely important. In the beginning, it's difficult.  You may be so overwhelmed, but I'm going to offer a few tools that we use in our business that help us manage expectations and help us with the communication around tasks and goals and meetings and agendas.

The different domains of life, yourself, your family and friends, and finally your team, your colleagues, and even your customers. You should think about each one of these domains and say, how can I set expectations with each of them? Yourself is generally the one you should start with because many of us don't value the time we have with ourselves. We don't value the expectations we put on ourselves, and we'll set these goals and we don't actually accomplish them because we haven't set the expectation that this is a necessary goal for us.

So let's go to the tools now. The tools that I use in my business are as follows. We use a project management tool called monday.com, and I'll go through each one of these individually.  Now let's move on to the tools that I use in my business and personal life to ensure that I adhere to all of those expectations that we referred to earlier.

I use a project management tool. I use a calendar, paper-based calendar. I use a digital calendar, and then I also use Google docs. I'll tell you where I use each one of these tools, and I'll tell you why and who I use it with. 

So the project management tool is probably a tool that most of you may or may not use currently, but something you may want to consider using now or even later on in your business. The reason why is because when you bring on somebody to help you in the team, you may want to share this project management tool with them so they can easily organize all of the elements, all of the items that need to be completed for the goal to be completed. 

A very simple example is when we develop a product from concept to reality, there are 21 steps to completing that project. That particular product needs 21 steps. If I did not have the project management tool, let's just say, I'll be completely lost as to what needs to be done when. Now that we have a team, so I started using this project management tool one year before I brought in team members, and I needed it for myself.  

If you're just starting and it's just you, a team of one, you may still want to consider a project management tool. There are many on the market, the one that we use is monday.com and we use that one because it's a very powerful tool. It allows us to upload files and upload videos. We now have used the project management tool for also our orientation, so I upload videos on monday.com so when somebody is doing an onboarding orientation, they just need to go through the project management tool and watch the videos as opposed to having to go to another database to upload and watch the videos.

There are other project management tools, like Asana which are a little bit less robust but can serve you just as well.  I believe there's a free version for Asana as well. Another tool that I love to use is a paper-based agenda, and the reason why is because when I write something down, I am more likely to complete the task.  

Yes, a lot of individuals have moved to digital calendars and we do also use a digital calendar, but a paper-based agenda allows me to basically Review my to-do list. Yes, I still have a to-do list. Put it into the paper-based agenda in the time blocks that I have designated for task completion, and then I can also write into my paper-based agenda any meetings that are in my electronic calendar. 

I look at my paper-based agenda on a daily, but I'll go and look at my electronic calendar on a weekly, and then I can see the weekly spread. But for my daily review, I will go ahead and basically look only at my paper-based agenda. This way it prevents me from getting overwhelmed. It keeps me on task, and that way I'm ensuring that my "to-do list" is getting completed.

Many people have a to-do list and it just sits there, because it's just getting so long and it's so onerous and they're like, "I feel overwhelmed," and then they don't want to look at it.  So this way I'm ensuring that my to-do list is actually getting knocked off. The reason why the paper-based agenda is great for setting expectations is that it's setting expectations with myself. I am the one who is going to be looking at the paper-based agenda, and that is a tool I use to ensure that I'm basically adhering to what my expectations are for that day. 

The next tool that I use in our business is Google docs. Google docs are amazing. We have a standing meeting with our team in the morning every day, and we go through a Google doc to-do list. This is separate from the project management tool because the project management tool has many layers, and sometimes it becomes overwhelming to look at the project management tool when you're planning your day. 

You could say that Google docs are great because you're able to clearly communicate during meetings. I also do this as a clinic manager when I'm having a meeting with somebody or the team. I will share my screen and as I am speaking, because your voice is also a tool which we'll talk about in a second, when I'm speaking out loud, I'm also typing the minutes. So the team can see the screen, they can see me typing.

This way, there's reinforcement. Everyone absorbs information differently, so as many of you are, you're auditory learners. You're listening to a podcast right now.  You like to receive your information through voice, and you like to sit in lectures and you like audiobooks and you like podcasts and you might like clubhouse,  but surprisingly not everyone is like us. Not like you, not like me.  Some individuals like to see texts. They like to read the information and that's the best way they can absorb the information. They will hold the book and they'll read it.  They will read the transcripts to the podcast, and so for those learners, for those information takers, I like to do minutes. 

They can see the minutes on Google docs, for example. They can see the minutes being written live. If I'm sharing the screen, they can see the minutes written live. Whatever medium you decide to use, either be at Google docs, or if you're going to do a Zoom or Teams or any of those virtual meeting rooms, ensure that you have the ability to share your screen and for you to be taking minutes as you are speaking.  That way you can say with confidence that the team understands the expectations that have been presented to them during that meeting.

The next tool is a digital calendar, and I've referred to this multiple times. When I have a digital calendar, it sets expectations for myself, but now it also sets expectations for anybody else who's trying to find a meeting time.  We are using Calendly now as our tool of choice because it has the ability to sync all my calendars up, and surprisingly, I have a lot of calendars. 

If somebody needs to book a meeting, we just send them a link and then they have the ability to look in the calendar and say, that's what meets my needs. This also sets expectations with my family and the team, because they know that they can't access me at certain times because there's a meeting blocked and they have visibility into the calendar.

So get a Google calendar, get Google docs, get something you could share with your team. Once you realize that more individuals need access to your calendar, it might be a better idea to go with a platform like Calendly because then they are able to just drop the link and book.

You as a solo entrepreneur or your VA will not need to go back and forth with having to negotiate times, that's why I love Calendly for that reason. And then the final tool, believe it or not, is your voice. Your openly communicating with your voice is so powerful, people forget about it. You need to be able to speak up when you have something to say. You have to be able to pronounciate and clearly communicate your ideas if you are struggling with something.

For example, many individuals may be fearful to speak up. When they speak up, they fumble on their words. So practicing speaking is actually a very important tool and it will help you, not only communicate more effectively with everyone, but it will help you set expectations with everyone.

Don't underestimate your voice. We've spoken about a few tools but your voice is the most important tool.  

So let's go from the top. We've spoken about project management tools. We've also spoken about paper agendas, digital agendas, and digital calendars, and google docs, or any type of platform that will allow you to type and verbally communicate at the same time, and finally your voice. So these five tools should help you communicate more effectively with your team, with your family, and of course, yourself and help set expectations with everyone including yourself so that way you get more accomplished and you feel less overwhelmed. You have great relations with everyone from your family members, all the way to your team and colleagues and potentially your customers depending on what industry you're in. 

Again, remember, I know it becomes difficult. I know setting expectations is scary because once you set the expectations, especially with yourself, there should be no going back. If you say that, "I'm going to do this at this time," you should really honor that. If you say that to somebody, I'm going to show up to do this, you should honor that. If you've set an expectation on your team member to complete a task, they should honor that.

And so remember, it is going to be difficult at first, but once you get used to something, once you get into the rhythm,  it becomes a lot easier. Okay, guys, that was a lot of information but remember, we want you to make a plan and take action. So think about one of the tools that we spoke about today and see if you can put it into use to help set expectations. It could be a paper-based agenda, it could even be a digital calendar, it could be using your voice and speaking up a little bit more clearly and setting the expectations with your family members regarding either your side hustle, a passion project, or even your health.  

So remember, I want you to think about what we spoke about in this episode. Try to pick one goal and go ahead and put it into action. And remember, you can make a plan and take action and yes, you can have it all.  We will see you guys again next week. Take care. Bye.

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