Coping With Unrealistic Expectations at Work

Does your boss set the bar too high and then accuse you of not being accountable when you can’t get over it?  Do they ever consider that you aren’t living up to their expectations because those expectations are entirely unreasonable? Not doable? Certifiably cuckoo bananas? Here are a few tactics you can try when coping with unrealistic expectations at work.

What Constitutes an Unrealistic or Unfair Expectation?

What exactly is an unrealistic or unfair expectation from your boss? The most obvious one is that the amount of time it will take to complete the task is less than the amount of time the boss has given you to accomplish it.

That said, there are a few other scenarios that qualify as unrealistic expectations:

Beyond Your Skill

It’s unrealistic and unfair for your manager to expect you to do a task if it’s well beyond your skill level. If they ask you to write the proposal for a million-dollar pitch when you’ve never written a proposal before, that’s unreasonable.

Beyond Your Influence

It’s unrealistic and unfair to ask you to take accountability for an outcome if it requires input from people over whom you have no control or influence. If you need help from engineering and they tell you there’s no capacity and you’re at the bottom of the list, it’s not reasonable for your manager to expect you to deliver.

Conflicts With Priorities

It’s unrealistic and unfair if your boss piles one expectation onto another without reprioritizing which comes first. If the task would take ten hours and you have ten hours before the deadline, but your manager is unwilling to provide relief from the other task they previously assigned, that is unreasonable.

Infringes on Time Off

It’s unrealistic and unfair of your manager to expect you to repeatedly use your time off in the early morning, evenings, and weekends to complete your workload.

That said, I think there are times when people throw up their hands and call something unrealistic too quickly. It might be an ambitious goal, a challenging task, or something you’re not entirely confident in, but that doesn’t mean it’s beyond the realm of possibility or something illegitimate for your boss to expect.

So, before we talk about how to deal with unreasonable expectations, at least consider the possibility that they aren’t unrealistic, just lofty.

Something you haven’t done before but have the skills, resources, and support to make an honest attemptA task that you can’t accomplish in your routine work mode but you could accomplish in the required timeframe if you removed distractions and focused.An urgent issue that comes up and needs your attention outside of work hours (everyone has their own boundaries, but I would say as long as it’s not more than one one-hour task, no more than once a week, it’s probably not an unrealistic expectation for someone in a knowledge-worker job…but share your thoughts in the comments)What To Do If Your Boss Sets Unrealistic Expectations

When you’re on the receiving end of an assignment you feel you can’t accomplish (or shouldn’t be expected to), take stock and then try one or more of the following:

Clarify the Expectation

Before you run off and start working, ask questions to understand the what, why, who, and when of each expectation. The last thing you want to do is take on more than what your boss is looking for. If you know more about what good looks like, why it matters, who it’s for, and when it’s needed, you’ll be in a better position to make decisions about the order and thoroughness of your work.

Map Your Priorities

Once you understand the expectation, share the other things on your plate. Don’t assume your manager remembers everything you’re working on. Make sure they are aware of what they’ve assigned and also what’s coming at you from other directions. Your manager can’t be of any value in reprioritizing or reassigning your work if you are shouldering everything and suffering in silence.

Negotiate on Scope

Saying “no” to a request from your boss might not go well, but there’s usually room to negotiate on how big, or thorough, or polished the work needs to be. If the request includes multiple components, ask if you could deliver some by the original due date and others later. Alternatively, if some aspect of the request would be particularly cumbersome, ask if it is necessary or propose an alternative approach.

Ask for Advice

If you’re worried that you can’t possibly get the work done, ask for their advice about how to work more efficiently. Share your process and see if you are over-delivering on some tasks or if your boss has more efficient ways to accomplish something. I’ve even seen situations where, when the manager learns how long something is taking, they just abandon the activity altogether… “Oh wow, I didn’t know it was that hard. Don’t worry about it.”

Set the Order

If you have multiple tasks simultaneously, ask closed-ended questions about what comes first. “Based on that context, I plan to complete the customer report first. Is that the right choice?”

Find the Focus

Be ruthlessly efficient. Unfortunately, when you feel you’re drowning, your human defaults tend to make it more likely you’ll go under. You might be the type who becomes overly frenetic, opening ten files at a time and bouncing unproductively from one task to another. Alternatively, you might be the type who responds to an unmanageable to-do list by procrastinating and doing almost nothing. Either way, you’re making the problem worse. Get focused. Find a quiet spot. Leave your phone in another room. Do ONLY ONE thing at a time for at least 45 minutes. Get something done, and then move to the next thing.

Add More Planning

Another counterintuitive tactic is to spend more time planning with your manager. When you get busy, it’s understandable that you start living in the moment and flying by the seat of your pants. The problem is that it can become a vicious cycle where there is less and less planning, which leads to inefficient work, which takes more time, which leaves less time for planning and working more systematically. The more you have a heads-up about what’s coming, the better you’ll be at finding the right slots and getting a little breathing room.

There are few easy answers when you have a manager who assigns you an unrealistic workload. That said, if your default is to try to shoulder it with a smile slapped on your face, you’re only reinforcing their bad behavior. Instead, communicate with your boss more; negotiate, problem-solve, and plan to demonstrate that you want to be accountable; you just need the expectations to be reasonable.

Additional Resources

10 Helpful Things To Do When You’re Overwhelmed

A Personalized Approach to Feeling Less Overwhelmed

From HBR: Managing a Team That’s Been Asked to Do Too Much

 

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