Your Expectations are Killing Your Impact as a Leader
by Dr. Dave Kasch
I have a confession: I’ve had expectation setting all wrong for the past 20+ years of being a leader, coaching, and training other leaders.
I came by it honestly enough. I was taught and mentored to believe that “setting clear expectations” is crucial to good leadership and an essential part of what team members need from their leaders.
This focus is even part of the training I got as a Dare to Lead facilitator, but I’ve recently come to understand how those “clear expectations” may have been quietly killing my impact as a leader and derailing my team’s performance without me even knowing it.
This change in perspective for me came from Steve Chandler’s work on effective leadership and coaching, where he suggests that we have two basic ways of relating to others – having expectations and creating agreements.
At a first pass, it might seem like a subtle or semantic difference at first, especially when it flies in the face of years of effort and guidance to use expectations to drive performance, but when we dig deeper, we find fundamental differences in power and relationship dynamics that lead to very different impacts, motivations, and relational outcomes.
Or as Steve has said, “Expectations are toxic, and they ruin people’s chances at a good relationship.”
Oof! Toxic? Ruin? Really?
Yes, believe it or not, but the good news is that most of the groundwork you need for creating agreements probably happened in learning how to set clear expectations.
My goal in this article is to tease apart expectations and agreements so they feel distinct and different and then make shifting from expectations to agreements easier to put into practice.
Expectations versus Agreements
So what’s happening here with expectations? What makes them “toxic” and how are they potentially ruining our relationships? How are they killing impact and derailing performance? And importantly, how are agreements really that different?
Let’s return to Steve Chandler, who has been exploring the difference between expectations and agreements for more than a decade. He describes how people fundamentally don’t like having to fulfill the expectations of others and will rebel against them when they can.
I invite you to take a pulse check here: think about a recent expectation someone had for you and how fulfilling was it? My guess is that they feel more like obligations you have to complete than opportunities to connect and contribute.
Part of why Steve argues that expectations are toxic, beyond the power and imposition of them, is the limited set of outcomes from expectations – exceeding expectations, meeting expectations, and missing expectations – and how each of those typically play out.
In contrast we have agreement, which Steve has found that people like being able to co-create agreements and being able to fulfill their commitments as part of those agreements, and that fulfilling commitments helps people feel more productive.
Pulse check here: think of a recent commitment you fulfilled, how did that compare your expectation example?
Reduced down, the difference between expectations and agreements is a difference between fulfilling obligations and fulfilling commitments, between having a thing done to us and having agency in the process.
What do these look like in practice though?
Expectations in Practice
Let’s say you have an expectation for Shiva to send you a report by 5pm on Friday.
Setting that expectation with him will look like you sharing what you want from him.
“I need you to get me that report by 5pm on Friday.”
“Okay.”
If we peel back the words, we see you shared a clear expectation of what you want, by when, and Shiva responded with an acknowledgment of your expectation. (We could flex the language here to argue that he has committed to deliver the report by Friday at 5pm, but mostly what he has done is acknowledge your request. We’ll come back to this difference later.)
Expectations have three basic outcomes
Fulfilling the expectation
Exceeding the expectation
Missing the expectation
What happens when he fulfills your expectation and sends the report in on time? You may offer a quick “thanks” or “got it” and move on with your day. You might even have a “meh” response because he was just doing what was expected.
What about if he exceeds your expectation and sends it by Thursday at 5pm? You might experience some delight at getting it early (before raising your expectations of them for next time). So a positive impact, but now you may expect him to deliver a day early as a matter of course because he is able to.
Now flip it.
What happens if Monday morning arrives and you still don’t have the report? Let’s say that another leader had also requested a report by Friday and Shiva didn’t feel comfortable telling you he couldn’t get both reports done on time, but also didn’t feel like he could say no to you. Now you’re left with no report and not knowing why.
You’re probably creating a story to fill in the gaps for why you don’t have the report and feeling disappointed, confused, frustrated, upset, or some combination of those. You might even be thinking about the accountability conversation to have with Shiva to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.
The emotional load of someone not meeting our expectations is surprisingly high, and now you likely find yourself investing a significant amount of time and energy into managing those emotions and the fall out from the missed expectation, in addition to the work of holding that person accountable and getting him to send you the report.
So what did we really get out of the “expectations” pathway?
A mild to neutral experience, maybe the occasional celebration for big milestones. Or a more intense emotional or adaption workload when expectations aren’t met or aren’t fully met.
This is not to discount the Ted Lasso’s out there who are actively celebrating people when they meet expectations, but I usually hear clients say some version of, “What is there to celebrate? They were just doing what they were supposed to do.”
Agreements in Practice
Agreements on the other hand behave completely differently from expectations. They invite the other person to share ownership with you about what happens, and they involve true requests, that is where you ask the other person to do a thing and they are able to say “yes,” “no,” or counter offer (“I can’t do X, but I can do Y”). (If they can’t say no or counter offer, it’s not really a request. It’s a direction in the form of a question.)
If we approach that initial conversation as a request where you are asking for a commitment, it might look like this.
“Can you send me that report by 5pm on Friday?”
“John has also requested a report by then. Can I get it to you next week?”
“No, I really need it for the project that starts next week. What would it take to get both reports done this week?”
“I can get both done if I can have Hannah help me with them.”
“Great! Can I leave it to you to figure that out with Hannah?”
“Yep. I’ll let you know if we have any trouble.”
Here the request and agreement are much clearer. You didn’t ask “What can you commit to?” but you did open the door for Shiva to find a solution with you, rather than scrambling behind the scenes or knowing he wasn’t going to be able to deliver.
Shifting from expectations to agreements may be as simple as asking for the thing you want so the other person can agree to doing it. As long as they can actually say “no” or give a counter offer. Because if the other person isn’t able to say “no” or give a counter offer, it’s not shared ownership, and you’re still in the expectations loop.
Creating space for someone to make a clear and explicit commitment or agreement is an important part of the conversation. Having an agreement conversation isn’t a guarantee that the other person will deliver on their commitment, but now if that happens, you have a much easier approach to holding them accountable. Mix in one Brené Brown’s rumble starters and that conversation might start with:
“We agreed that you would send me this report by 5pm on Friday, and I don’t have it yet. Help me understand what happened.”
All you’ve done here is restated the shared agreement, as you understood it, and then created space for them to own the broken commitment, share insights into what happened, (Tone is essential here. If you’re not ready to approach the conversation with openness and curiosity, take the time you need to get there first.)
The Connection Bonus
So why are expectations toxic?
It all comes down to the foundation of the relationships they create, their potential to fuel resentment from either person (especially around stealth or hidden expectations), and the fact that fulfilling someone’s expectations has so little intrinsic reward for either person.
In my experience with clients, expectations tend to be net negative with their team members over time. People will deliver but they slowly withdraw themselves from the process and only deliver what is necessary to meet minimum expectations.
Think back to that earlier example you had of a commitment you fulfilled. What was the impact on trust and connection with that person?
And for the example of an expectation someone had of you, what was the impact on trust and connection with that person?
Creating opportunities for people to make and fulfill commitments builds connection and reinforces trust because it creates a sense of shared ownership. It gives people the space to bring their best selves and do their best work because they’re acting from a place of choice rather than obligation.
It can also make your work as a leader easier. You avoid the “meh” experience of people simply meeting expectations, along with the frustration and extra work that can come when expectations are missed. I can count on one hand how many of my clients have enjoyed managing the emotional and workload fallout of a team member not meeting their expectations.
What happens when we move from managing compliance to building ownership?
There’s a meaningful difference between someone doing what they were told and someone making a commitment they understand, have had a voice in, and are prepared to follow through on.
That difference matters when an organization is navigating change, growth, restructuring, leadership transitions, or transformation.
Expectations can tell people what needs to happen. Agreements create a conversation about what will happen, who will own it, and what is needed to make it possible.
That conversation changes the dynamic.
Instead of:
“Here’s what I expect from you.”
It becomes:
“What are we agreeing to, and what do you need to deliver on it?”
That opens the door to clearer accountability, earlier conversations about obstacles, and greater transparency when a commitment is at risk.
For leaders, it also means looking at the systems around accountability. Are people given enough context to make meaningful commitments? Can they raise concerns before something becomes a problem? Do leaders make room for negotiation, clarification, and shared problem-solving?
These questions become particularly important when the organization is asking people to adapt, take on new responsibilities, or help move something forward.
At SZH Consulting, we help leaders examine how expectations, commitments, and accountability show up in the way work actually gets done, and build the conditions for people to take meaningful ownership of the work ahead.
What would change in your organization if accountability started with agreement?
