Category: expectations

shift shock

Shift shock, also known as “quitter’s remorse” or “new job regret” is a term coined by Kathryn Minshew, co-founder and CEO of online career platform The Muse. In short, shift shock is the (unfortunately all too common) feeling washing over those who have switched jobs only to find their new position is not living up to their expectations.

According to a study by The Muse of more than 2,500 Millennial and Gen Z job seekers. Nearly three in four respondents (72%) have experienced surprise or regret surrounding a new role or company.

Are careers something we’d like to spin the roulette wheel on? Hoping a new job makes adequate use of your existing skills, offers the development opportunities you have been looking for and provides the longer-term career path you had in mind. Hope seems a bad strategy for significant life events.

If expectations are indeed the root of all heartache, surely there must be something we can do?

At Kazi we’ve been referring to shift shock as a “mismatch in expectations” since 2016. Semantics aside; to have a crystal clear understanding of the expectations of the job on the one hand, and the expectations of the candidate or employee on the other hand, are the indispensable building blocks for sustainable employment.

universal desire

What desire is more universal than the pursuit of happiness in life and work?

Abraham Brill, an influential psychiatrist, believed that emotional factors are the primary cause of fatigue among desk workers. Anxiety and feeling unappreciated create nervous tension, which ultimately exhausts desk workers.

Despite Brill sharing this insight in the 20th century, it remains remarkably relevant today, especially given the unfortunate increase in burnout rates.

However, within this challenge lies untapped potential.

Imagine a workspace where mental exhilaration is not just a concept, but a practice. Where recognizing and appreciating efforts becomes a routine, fostering an environment that energizes rather than drains.

The reason we often fail to create such environments is because job expectations are rarely explicitly communicated. Without clear expectations, workers struggle to effectively utilize their knowledge, skills, and abilities.

By understanding workers’ professional expectations and soft skills, and aligning them with precise job expectations:

🌱 Employees feel appreciated and valued. 🤝 Collaboration improves. 🎯 Focus and efficiency replace exhaustive and inefficient work.

Mental exhilaration overcomes physical fatigue. However, without setting and managing mutual expectations, this becomes challenging to achieve.

fifty percent gone

Almost half of the intensive care unit nurses are thinking about quitting. How could they not? They’ve had to endure immense pressure during the past couple of years.

Throughout the entire labor market though, the number of people thinking about quitting their job during the first year of employment is the same, almost half. Reason why? Mismatch in expectations.

A moment that’s typically well-suited to re-establish job-fit is when the context of the job changes due to a pandemic, for instance. To avoid the old; wait a minute, this is not what I’ve signed up for, or worse.

pro pro-activity

You can spend years learning about customer- or talent-centricity, devouring books, courses, and keynotes in the process. In the end, it all boils down to this. Be a pro about pro-activity.

In marketing, anticipating your (potential) customers’ needs and desires is considered standard practice.

In HR, anticipating your customers’ — the people who work with you — needs and desires, is a rather novel idea.

Anticipate your customers’ expectations as well as you can, and cater to them, preferably before they manifest themselves.

clue in the game

My brother-in-law helps manufacture rubber in the port of Antwerp. His HR department literally sits in an ivory, sorry, glass tower. Alongside an R&D department, some managers and executives. The workers, on the other hand, are in the plant, which is a different building altogether. HR doesn’t have the slightest clue of what’s happening down there.

The good thing is, they’re very well aware. That’s why HR uses proverbial antennas and satellites. Just to create an understanding of what’s going on. Also, for hiring purposes, they must consult with team leaders from manufacturing because they wouldn’t know how to begin to express what the job entails precisely to future candidates.

Situations like these are, by no means, an exception. Every day, HR is involved in hiring and interviewing candidates for a job that they know nothing about. When HR isn’t involved with a particular job, how can they provide legitimate advice?

Create a thorough understanding of the actual job-content and team roles for a specific job. In other words, feel what it’s really like to work that job on a daily basis.

levels of love

Bernard de Clairvaux, the twelfth-century French monk, described “four levels of love.”

The first level is loving yourself for your own benefit.

The second is loving others for your benefit.

The third level is loving someone else for their benefit.

The fourth is loving yourself for the benefit of others.

From an HR point of view, the fourth level is where you want to be with your company. Suppose a company makes a deliberate choice to actively contribute to the well-being of its employees. When that company provides them with perspective, recognizes their value, and aligns its jobs with their expectations (or vice versa), that’s when individual employees thrive.

If I shine, you shine. When individual employees are at their best, their positive vibe(s) rubs off throughout the company, boosting engagement and productivity.

professor jerk

Years ago, when I was diagnosed with a benign tumor in the face, the professor was an absolute jerk about it. The way he relayed the diagnosis was terrible. Sadly, I’ve seen cats communicate better.

What that man lacks in social skills, he makes up for in medical and surgical skills — a brilliant professor, without a doubt.

If that’s the communication style this doctor applies with his patients, how does he communicate with his colleagues? What’s worse, this professor, in particular, is no exception.

We can’t all be communication gurus, but there is room for improvement in many cases.

Bad interpersonal communication styles in healthcare can literally have fatal consequences.

Mapping professional expectations and soft-skills in healthcare can be leveraged to provide learning & development trajectories and build better teams.

In the end, engaged healthcare teams save more lives.

expected goal

Expectation is the root of all heartache. A quote usually attributed to Shakespeare, but as it turns out, Shakespeare never said that. Regardless, when we build up expectations in life, there is much potential to be let down eventually. Obviously, instead of disappointment, a delightful surprise could manifest itself just as well.

If we can avoid disappointment, why go through the pain? A pleasant surprise, on the other hand, is more often than not a welcome event.

In business (as opposed to life in general), that’s not really the case. Not formulating expectations is a recipe for disaster.

While launching new initiatives, a clear expectation must be articulated prior to launching them.

anticipation training

We can anticipate some situations, definitely not all. Nevertheless, we can train ourselves to deal with both types of cases as they arise.

Those situations that we can anticipate, we should anticipate. Full stop.
If you’re selling ice cream, you should probably expect reduced revenue during wintertime. Many businesses deal with cyclical seasonality in one way or another. Ideally, strategical planning occurs as meticulously as possible.

For customer-facing businesses and jobs, anticipating should be done as wholeheartedly as possible. This is what the Japanese refer to as omotenashi. From a customer-centricity point of view, we should understand our customer’s desires before they can even express them. After all, who doesn’t like to be catered to their needs?

Situations that we can’t anticipate, on the other hand, require mindset training. In the end, you can’t control what you can’t control, so predicting the unknown consumes much energy. These types of situations require, when they manifest themselves, a combination of flexibility and resilience.

Anticipate when you can. Train your mindset for when you can’t.

past performance

People often get promoted as a result of past performance. What’s true of investing is also true of talent. Past performance is no indicator of future results.

It’s slightly more nuanced than that. If a talent typically performed well over the past, chances are, they may continue to do so. Provided there are no fundamental changes regarding the job content, trauma is suffered, and the talent feels valued and appreciated.

However, as a result of a promotion, the talent might now be responsible for other people. The way the talent has to report has now completely changed. If reporting costs much effort, it might be the case that there was no desire to change job (content) or be promoted (within the company) for starters.

Here is a simple solution; ask. Cater to the expectations of talent and ask them what they want, rather than making an unsolicited decision for them.