Expectation management has been my most powerful tool in impressing managers and clients.

It sounds like a meaningless corporate-speak cliché that makes you want to punch someone (me) in the face. I’m going to show you that it’s not.

I noticed early in my career that my relationship with senior coworkers was generally better than my peers, even though I wasn’t especially friendly or outgoing.

I heard stories of others at my level working nights and weekends, having their project managers hound them, and being overwhelmed and stressed all the time. I knew these people weren’t bad at their jobs, so for a while, I just chalked it up to being lucky.

Whenever there was a happy hour, I’d be one of the first ones there. I never missed a company softball game due to a client deadline, which was a regular occurrence for half the team. When I had to leave work early for a concert or sporting event, no one ever questioned it. I can count on one hand the number of weekends I’ve ever worked.

It wasn’t until I had reached the management level and had to rely on others to help me complete projects that I realized what I did that so many others didn’t.

Sound like I was slacking off? If I was, I would have been reprimanded, not consistently promoted.

Sound like a magic trick? I guess it kind of was.

It’s called “managing expectations,” a wonderfully concise phrase that described (almost) everything I was doing to keep my managers happy that my coworkers weren’t. At its core, it’s simply letting those depending on you know what to expect from you; or put another way, being unbreakably dependable.

We’ll analyze how managing expectations works in five parts:

The worst part is not knowing

Let’s say you arrive at a train station by yourself at 8pm to catch a train home, and the station is empty. Your friend told you there was an 8pm train, but she wasn’t sure the exact time. You pace back and forth wondering if you just missed the train and will be waiting a long time, or if one is coming any minute. You realize you’re not even sure how often the train runs…will you have to wait another ten minutes or an hour? Frustrated, you take a seat on the bench when an even darker thought crosses your mind: You do not know when the last train runs tonight…is a train even coming at all?

Waiting in an empty train or subway station is brutal if you have no idea what time, or even if, your train is coming. Nowadays, train stations generally have digital signs up indicating what time the next train is arriving. This puts your mind completely at ease, even if that time is far away, because you know what to expect.

Your coworkers, your boss, and your clients all feel the same way. They’re sitting in that train station, waiting for you to finish that project. Do you leave them sitting alone and anxious on the bench, or do you put up some signs to let them know when it is coming?

When you effectively manage their expectations, they feel at ease. They have a sense of calm around you and think good thoughts. When you don’t, you always feel on edge around them, wondering if they are going to ask about “that thing” you have to do. Even if you do it in the exact same amount of time, that negative feeling stays with people. It also has a negative effect on your mental health and potentially your personal life.

You need to know yourself before you can tell others

This step is where most people fail. The train company can’t put up signs that tell you what time the train is coming if they don’t set schedules and employ sophisticated technology to track the trains and estimate their arrival.

Managing expectations isn’t just about communication. I’ve dealt with people who are completely silent, and I’ve dealt with people who communicate with me constantly, both of whom were terrible at managing my expectations because they didn’t know themselves.

The biggest problem most people have with managing expectations is managing their own. You need to be self-aware enough to know how much you (and your team) can get done in a given time period.

Do not skip over this part. Be brutally honest with yourself: can you complete this project by the end of the week considering everything else that is on your plate?

Here are four rules for helping you to manage your own expectations correctly.

1. Be realistic. Most people overestimate their own abilities. Nothing I can say will change your perception of yourself, but you’re only hurting yourself by not knowing. So look closer: did you get that thing done in a week with no sweat last time, or did it cost you stress and hurt your social life and were you late on it anyway? Being realistic doesn’t mean you’re not pushing yourself; in fact, it actually improves your performance. You will have time to learn the work, see the big picture, and provide high quality output. Not all work is equal. Furthermore, your wellbeing is part of your work quality; you cannot do any work if you burn out. Build in time for your company softball games, time with your family or significant other, or whatever else matters to you.
2. Be confident. Do not get pushed around or persuaded by outside forces. You may feel that you have no control over your workload, but you’d be surprised. Often your manager just does not know your situation. You may even think you’ve told them, but you’re not being direct and assertive. Be specific and confident. Tell him or her exactly what you have time for, and be specific about what else is keeping you busy.
3. Learn the art of saying no. You want to say yes to as much as you can, and you should continue to do so, but I stress the end of that phrase: as much as you can. Being realistic means sometimes saying no. It really is an art to be able to turn someone down with tact and grace, so that they do not feel rejected and keep your relationship intact. I could just give you a script to use, but you should change your mindset first.
   • You don’t actually want to flat-out dismiss them; you want to commiserate with your manager’s needs and find a way to help, while making it clear that you are in no position to help.
   • My favorite way to do this is by offering alternatives. Can someone else help out with it? Can you do it on a later date? Can your manager shift some other project off your plate so that you can prioritize this instead?
   • More than half the time, the manager does not even know how busy you are, and a simple and thoughtful no like this will be the end of the discussion. Other times, you will have to work with him or her to dig into the alternatives. This is a low price to pay in exchange for not having to take on the entire project and be overwhelmed.
   • At the end of the discussion, no matter what, you make it clear that you simply have other important things to do and cannot do it.
   • Entire articles, books, podcasts, and TED talks have been dedicated to this, and can offer you a lot more than I can if you are uncomfortable saying no.
4. Don’t underdo it. Should you set expectations too low in order to easily exceed them? No. It may bring short-term success but has numerous negative long-term consequences. First of all, you want to be a top performer; but, if your goals and output are consistently lower than your peers, management will notice and treat you accordingly. Additionally, if you are indeed a high performer and you blow away expectations, management will lose faith in your ability to set your own expectations; meaning you lose the power to manage them.

You may be looking for more concrete tips like plotting your expected workload for the year in a spreadsheet or tracking your time on a site like Toggl. This is sometimes called doing a “time audit.” I didn’t do these things, but they work for many people. If you’re having trouble accurately self-evaluating, this is a good place to start.

The point is you will always struggle externally if you do not have a good handle on yourself internally.

You need to tell others what you expect

Once you have the systems in place to know what time the train is coming, it’s time to put up a sign to tell your passengers (your manager, your coworkers, your clients, even your friends and family).

The first thing you’re going to do is set a concrete date (or dates) and assign specific responsibilities. Do not assume anything about any of this. For example, your manager may say something is due Friday, but in reality, he or she needs to review it first and is expecting it Friday morning or even Thursday or Wednesday. You need to confirm this ahead of time.

There are (at least) two dates you should always ask for, any time you receive an assignment via email or during a planning meeting:

1. Delivery Date (when the whole project needs to be complete and out the door)
2. Check-in Date (when the next meeting is, when to get it to someone for review, etc.)

Again, nail down what exactly needs to be done by that check-in. Is it supposed to be client-ready or just a rough draft? Do you need to prepare an entire presentation or report, or just set up a spreadsheet? Does anyone else need to contribute or review besides you?

Establishing all of these specifics is the setting of expectations. You are making sure all parties have the same expectations going into the project.

Put these specifics in writing. This is one thing I did that many others didn’t. It does not matter how specific we were in our meeting or on the phone. My very next step is always to email the project manager (or the whole team) exactly what was agreed upon…the specifics. Putting this in writing (1) allows it to be a reminder for you, and (2) allows it to be backup (proof) in case you are ever questioned.

You did it! If you know yourself and what you can accomplish, and all parties have agreed to the same expectations, all that remains is to complete the project by all agreed-upon dates. You are done “managing expectations.” It’s not quite what you thought it was, is it?

Remember, you are the one who came up with these dates or at least agreed in writing to these specifics. This puts a higher level of scrutiny and importance on them. Do not miss these dates if at all possible. The more consistent your record of meeting your own defined expectations, the more freedom you’ll have to define them in the future. (This is why I was always left alone to plan out work on my own, while coworkers had managers breathing down their neck, sometimes pushing them to deliver things days earlier than needed.)

One final nugget about when everything goes right; it doesn’t hurt to check-in anyway, or what I call following up first. I try to do this informally, at the end of a meeting about something else, in passing in the hallway, or via IM. “Hey, we’ve made some solid progress on your project, still looking good for Friday.” That’s it; no additional discussion.

Look, your manager or client is human. They get antsy even when they know the train schedule if they haven’t seen the sign update in a while. They will often follow up with you, and that is annoying and unnecessary…I get it. But, you can get ahead of this by following up first. That one sentence used to make me a favorite of all those annoying superiors that no one else could stand. Who do you think that annoying superior spoke up in favor of when it came time for a performance review?

Of course, life happens and things come up. You won’t be perfectly on schedule for every project no matter how hard you try (but you’ll be better than most). That is where we get into the more traditional (but perhaps least important) definition of managing expectations.

You need to tell others when your expectation changes

The signs in the train station are just lights on a digital board, not etched in stone. They can be changed instantly the moment the conductor knows there’s a delay. The knowledge that the signs always display up-to-date information is part of what gives passengers such confidence in them.

Notice the title of this section: “…when your expectation changes,” not “after the project is overdue.” The moment you suspect a project might not be done on time, or a part of it might come out differently than agreed-upon, that is when you start conveying this information.

We call this softening the blow.

Much like you tried to be realistic in the beginning, you have to be realistic about your progress throughout. You can’t possibly find out the night before a two-week project is due that you won’t make it…unless something goes terribly wrong that night…in which case you can explain that. Managers really can’t stand when nothing went wrong at the last minute, and yet still their project did not get done.

There’s no fancy psychology required to soften the blow; you simply have to start telling your manager earlier. A week out, say, “this is looking like a monster…we’re still pushing for the end of the week but will keep you posted.” And then keep them posted! A few days later, say, “I would be surprised if we got this done by the end of the week. It will probably be Monday or Tuesday at the latest.” This is important: you must set a new date (and you better be right about that new date). Remember the theme: the worst part is not knowing, so do not leave them guessing.

These status updates enable your manager to evaluate how important this deadline really is and communicate back if necessary. They may be able to push back the deadline, get you more help on the project, or get coverage for you on a different project. However, if you never communicate, you may miss the deadline or work yourself until midnight for no reason, when your manager could have (and would have) helped out if he or she simply knew. Remember that you’re both working toward the same goal.

Here’s where the power of managing expectations really shines: what happens if you give your manager those warnings, but still got it all done by Friday? Well, now you’ve gone above and beyond their expectations – expectations that you’ve set and controlled – and will likely be recognized for that next time your performance is evaluated. (As mentioned earlier, you don’t want to make a habit of this. Keep expectations low but as realistic as possible. Do not underdo it.)

Putting it all together

We have identified 5 key tactics for managing expectations.

1. Be brutally honest with yourself about what you can take on and how long it will take
2. Master the art of saying no and finding alternatives for things you cannot take on
3. Set in writing extremely specific dates and responsibilities
4. Follow up first on long projects or for antsy managers, even if you are on-schedule
5. Soften the blow by communicating early and often when you suspect you might be late

Contrary to popular belief, the fifth tactic should be the least used, and therefore least important of the “managing expectations” spectrum. Many people overly focus on this. Some of the worst people ever to work for me were the most communicative about how much they weren’t getting done. If you set the correct expectations at the start and don’t take on what you can’t handle, you will seldom need to soften the blow. You’ll also achieve a healthier work-life balance while still being able to achieve top performance standards.

Establishing expectations goes beyond a single project. At my firm, most of us worked a few hours past 5pm most nights, but I had a very successful friend that left at 5 every day. Everyone knew this and expected it of him. He was still highly regarded and some of his peers thought it was unfair. But, he was in the office by 8:30am, got all his work done, and managed expectations accordingly. (Similarly, no one expected me to work weekends or on softball nights because I had established that expectation.)

This applies to your personal life as well. Applying these tactics, albeit in a less rigid way, will help you lead a more relaxing and fulfilling social life. You will be the friend or family member who is reliable, rather than the wildcard people don’t want to bother inviting. You’ll make time to do things you love, rather than being dragged to obligations. You’ll be happier, and therefore a more enjoyable person to be around.

Start tomorrow. With expectation management in your toolkit, you should feel confident discussing what you can and cannot accomplish with your project managers and your team.

TLDR: Managing expectations sets people relying on you at ease, freeing you up to manage your time the way you want. Start by honestly evaluating your own abilities and availability, and continue by communicating with extreme specificity before and during the project, especially the moment you realize you might be coming up short or late.

What part of managing expectations do you struggle with most, or do you feel will have the biggest impact?

Comment below, find me on Twitter @mjdesimone, or email me your thoughts at mike@michaeljdesimone.com. I read every email.