My sister was going through old emails this week and sent me something I wrote in 2013. I had absolutely no memory of it.
Apparently, I used to write a blog for my colleagues when I worked at GMAC. Once she sent it to me, I started to vaguely remember writing some of them. But this particular post? No memory.
It was about expectations. And because I have apparently been turning random things that happen to me into observations about work for at least 13 years now, it started with two books.
I had just read Focus by Daniel Goleman and loved it. I already liked his work, so I expected to like the book, and I did. Then I picked up a David Baldacci novel and was completely disappointed. I was used to reading his action thrillers, and whatever I had picked up…wasn’t that.
I might have known that if I bothered to read the book jacket.
Instead, I made an assumption about what kind of book I was getting based entirely on what I’d read from him before. The book hadn’t failed to deliver on its promise. It had simply failed to deliver what I expected from it.
From there, 2013 Amy made the leap to work: Have you ever been disappointed because you thought you should have been invited to a meeting and weren’t? Or asked someone for something and got back something completely different from what you expected?
My “lesson” to my colleagues was to define your expectations, communicate them, and then live them.
I mean, it’s not terrible advice. Go 2013 Amy!
But when my 2026 sister sent the post to me, she said something entirely more interesting than anything I had written. For her, the hardest part wasn’t even defining her expectations. It was knowing what they were well-enough to start defining them. Don’t you hate when older sisters are smarter than you? (And yes, the ‘older' is intentional. If she is going to be smarter, I at least get to point out that I’m younger.)
What if you don’t even know you have an expectation until someone fails to meet it?
Let’s go back to the meeting you weren’t invited to. Maybe you saw the invitation on someone else’s calendar or you heard people talking about it afterward. And almost immediately, your brain goes: Why wasn’t I there? It’s pretty easy to jump from that to “maybe they don’t value my opinion” or “maybe my role is changing.”
Fun spiral, but why not jump past it to what may be underneath all of those thoughts: I expected to be at that meeting.
The same thing happens when someone gets asked to lead something you thought would be assigned to you. Or your team makes a decision without consulting you.
We react to what happened, but we’re also reacting to the gap between what happened and what we thought was going to happen. And often, we didn’t even know that second part existed until the gap appeared.
Trippy, right? We often uncover our expectations when they aren’t met.
Which makes 2013 Amy’s advice to “define” your expectations a little more complicated than I realized at the time.
But back to that disappointment. It can be useful. Because once you get past the fact that something didn’t happen the way you thought it would, there’s another question: Why did I care so much?
Maybe I thought I should have been included because I actually want a bigger voice in those decisions. Maybe watching someone else get the opportunity bothered me because I want to stretch into something new. The fact that it hit me as hard as it did may be telling me something: I wanted that.
And once I know that, I have something to work with.
I can focus on the fact that it didn’t happen this time. Or I can also pay attention to what my reaction just told me about what I want next.
And that gives me some agency. Now I can tell my manager I want to be included next time and ask what I need to demonstrate to make that happen. I can look for ways to build the experience I’m missing. I can make sure that the next time an opportunity comes up, someone other than me knows I want it.
So yes, 2013 Amy, define your expectations. Communicate them. Live them.
But 2026 Amy would add something else: pay attention when they aren’t met.
Because sometimes an unmet expectation tells you something that you didn’t even know yet: what you want.
