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At the root of every upset is a missed expectation.

That gap in our expectations often results from assumptions about a situation, a miscommunication, or a misunderstanding.

Essentially we can trace every disappointment, frustration, or altercation to an Expectation Gap.

• We expect the price to be $100, but there’s a hidden $10 fee.
• We expect the room to be quiet, but someone starts talking loudly on their cellphone.
• We expect people to wait in line, but someone cuts to the front.
• We expect the meeting to end at 3:00, but it drags on until 4:00.
• We expect a peer to help, but they don’t.

We can bridge these Expectation Gaps using a myriad of strategies:

1. plan for delays
2. document verbal agreements
3. clarify expectations
4. ask questions for context
5. confirm deadlines, time zones, acronyms
6. lower expectations

And then I stumbled upon a powerful way to bridge the Expectation Gap when I met Alfredo recently…

Alfredo’s teenaged son is autistic and an avid skateboarder. When he goes to the skate park, he watches in awe as other skaters perform tricks. Eager to learn, he immediately approaches the skaters to ask for advice, often getting too close and in their face.

This creates an Expectation Gap – the skateboarders are not expecting the overzealous new kid to invade their personal space. Armed only with assumptions, their automatic reaction is to recoil.

But before they do, Alfredo’s son immediately explains, “I have autism so if I’m acting inappropriately, please let me know and I’ll back off.”

A powerful strategy: to deal with a potential or inevitable missed expectation, acknowledge it!

By pointing out the gap, we not only reset other people’s expectations, we bring vulnerability and transparency to the situation.

ps. Since Alfredo and his wife empowered their son with this strategy, the skaters have taken him under their wing, teaching him many new skating tricks and protecting him at the park.

Shaquille O’Neal and I were each raised by a father who unapologetically employed Error Training.

As Shaq described it in a recent interview, “Every time an athlete got into trouble, I would be punished. When Len Bias passed away from a cocaine overdose, my father said, ‘If you ever do coke, I’ll kill you.’ We learned from everyone’s mistakes.”

Similarly, whenever anyone in my high school got into trouble with drugs, drinking, or teenage pregnancy, I got a lecture about it over dinner. Their errors were our lessons.

What is Error Training?

It’s the scrutiny and exploration of errors in order to prevent their recurrence.

Sharing “war stories” about what went wrong or could have gone wrong promotes a culture of reflection and learning. It forces us to think critically about situations and projects in order to identify insights and learnings.

Many professionals (ex: doctors, pilots, fire fighters, military) use Error Training to examine errors like a case study and to question their routine application of skills. This allows them to conceptualize the best approach for managing similar situations in the future – a fast-track to adaptable experience.

While we tend to train people using best practices and success stories, researchers believe that learning from failure is far more effective than learning from success, because errors are more arresting and memorable.

How can we employ Error Training?

• Reframe errors in a positive way – as opportunities to learn
• Inquire about the mistakes people made before they hit success
• Find failure stories and study them
• Encourage team discussions of errors made or near misses to avoid in the future
• Engage mentors – leverage their mistakes

“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” – Otto von Bismarck (former Chancellor of Germany)

Recently clients have asked me the following questions:

• How can we prevent harmful Mentors from destroying our program?
• How do we ensure the honest motive of our Mentors?
• What should we do if dreadful Mentors get into the program?

My response: There are no evil Mentors.

I’ve worked with Mentors for almost 20 years, and I’ve never met one determined to ruin a Mentee.

Disgruntled people don’t sign up to be Mentors. It’s discordant to be disengaged and engaged simultaneously. Even when these people are volun-told to be Mentors, they typically find an excuse to escape.

No one joins a mentoring program intent on destroying the program or a Mentee. People participate because they want to contribute, not contaminate.

Could they fumble, fluster, and flail and even express their frustration about the program and/or their experience? Sure! Because being a Mentor is as much a development experience for Mentors as it is for Mentees.

Here’s the secret: people learn how to mentor others when they actually start mentoring others.

Sadly, most people cower from the challenge because they feel inexperienced, untrained, and unprepared to mentor others. Understandably, they don’t want to fail. But Mentees can be very forgiving when Mentors demonstrate authenticity and perseverance.

A senior leader once admitted, “I would love to mentor, but I don’t know how.” While his vulnerability was refreshing (…most people just say, “I’m too busy!”) it was a missed opportunity for him and the organization!

How can we rouse people to courageously mentor others?

• Model it
• Offer mentor training
• Encourage practice
• Frame it as development – it’s an essential leadership skill!
• Launch mentoring programs
• Nominate people to be mentors
• Share mentoring resources and articles
• Applaud people who mentor others

There are no evil mentors. Just inexperienced people who want to make a difference.

When I biked from Key West to Maine in 2012, I hired a young woman to drive my RV and support me as I pedaled up the East Coast. In New Hampshire, she flooded the RV and destroyed my computer which had been on the floor.

It ruined an otherwise fabulous experience for me. I couldn’t get past it. I was obsessed with “why” it happened. Why did she forget to empty the tank? Why did I leave my computer on the floor? Why didn’t she feel contrite?

I was stuck – I needed an explanation, a story, a lesson to be learned. As a result, I wasn’t making the shift from “why?” to “what’s next?”

Why are we fascinated with why something happened? Because we all love a good story! The world does not make sense to us without identifying a cause-and-effect. The Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb says, “Explanations bind facts together. They help them make more sense.”

Behaviorists call it “Narrative Fallacy” – our tendency to look at a sequence of facts and weave in an explanation to give a situation meaning. This mental game seduces us into thinking that identifying the cause-and-effect actually makes a difference.

But the problem is that we get stuck in the backward-looking story instead of using the facts for forward-looking action.

Many bosses are obsessed with explaining the story behind their results instead of just looking at the results (the facts!) and moving forward.

“Why something happened” is merely a distraction from taking action.

By shifting our language from “Why?” to “What’s next?” we can shift our focus from the story to the facts, thereby freeing us to determine the only thing that actually matters: what are we going to do next?

Movie star Mae West (1893-1980) was famous for her fearlessness. She’d walk into saloons and say, “Who here needs to know me?”

The rest of us walk into rooms of strangers and look for anyone we tangentially know to save us from the dreaded awkwardness of appearing alone.

But navigating new people is not about looking like we already belong.

Research by the University of Waterloo reveals that the best way to make a great impression and get new people to like us instantly is to believe that the people we are about to meet will like us.

In other words, the secret is self-confidence.

When we expect to be accepted, we behave warmly and people want to connect. But if we expect to be rejected, we behave coldly and people don’t want to connect. Face it, who wants to talk to the frosty, standoffish new person in the room?

But confidence isn’t a networking skill like strong handshakes, eye contact, and listening. Confidence is an emotion. And like all of our emotions, we just need to manage it. How? Through self-talk, emotional intelligence, and practice.

My favorite strategy? Don’t tackle the entire room. Start with the first person you meet, like the receptionist, the waiter, the meeting planner, the executive assistant. Smile, connect, share a laugh, and get ready for the next person.

Boost your confidence one connection at a time, like stepping stones.

Some easy ideas:

• Practice with strangers everywhere
• Ask, “What’s the biggest difference I can make with this one person right here?”
• Find something to compliment right away
• Remember they’re struggling with confidence too
• ps. Wear what makes you feel great!

If you want to progress your ideas, your career, and your opportunities, walk into a meeting or a room of strangers from a standpoint of contribution, not fear. 

In 1989 college senior Wendy Kopp wrote her senior thesis proposing a national teaching corps to recruit college grads to teach in underserved schools. To launch Teach for America she needed money. She knew that successful businessman Ross Perot was passionate about public education and could fund her idea.

Wendy wrote Perot 11 letters before he finally called her. She pitched her vision and he gave her $500,000. Today Teach for America has a $300 million budget and 50,000 alumni.

Most people would have concluded Perot was disinterested, and then start to doubt themselves.

But Wendy’s perseverance demonstrates the power of separating ourselves from other people’s actions.

The secret is to ask, “What about this is about me?”

What about Perot’s initial lack of response was about Wendy personally? Nothing. Perhaps he didn’t receive the letters, got busy or distracted, was confused about the value, needed more information, or was stuck under a rock.

We tend to assume there’s something wrong with us rather than assume there’s something wrong with the other person or the situation… or nothing wrong at all!

Consider all the situations where we could instantly apply “What-about-this-is-about me?”

• Lousy customer service
• Aggressive drivers
• Bad bosses
• Ridiculous company policies
• Opposing political or religious views
• Rude, unkind people
• ”No!”

None of that is about us personally. And yet we often act like it’s a personal affront, triggering our defensiveness, frustration, or resignation.

What-about-this-is-about-me? can break the proverbial chains that stop us from operating with excellence and pursuing our passions. 

Wendy Kopp was so determined to launch Teach for America that she deemed everyone’s response as informational, not judgmental.

Once we stop making it (other people’s behavior) about us, we will find interesting experiences, valuable information, and insights.

As Shark Tank investor Barbara Corcoran remembers, she didn’t do well in school. But her mother always celebrated Barbara’s wonderful imagination.

When a teacher once told Barbara she’d always be stupid, her mother said, “Don’t worry about it! With your imagination, you’ll learn to fill in all the blanks!”

Always curious how far she could go in life with that imagination, Barbara launched her real estate firm in 1973 with a $1,000 loan. To generate leads, she created a quarterly report of real estate data trends called The Corcoran Report... because no one else did. She mailed it to The New York Times which published it, affording her instant credibility.

Barbara sold her firm in 2001 for $66 million and became an investor on the television show Shark Tank.

In her words, “It’s not that I was great at real estate. I’m just really great at marketing.” That’s her creativity at work!

Creativity Research
In 1968 systems scientist George Land, Ph.D. conducted a research study to test creativity in 1,600 children at age 5 and again at ages 10 and 15.

He discovered that their creativity plummeted from 98% creative at age 5 to 12% creative at age 15.

His conclusion: non-creative behavior is learned.

Likewise, psychologist Louis Mobley launched the IBM Executive School to ignite innovation in leaders. His approach: creativity is an unlearningprocess, not a learning process.

So how can we unlearn our own non-creative behavior?

• Ask radically different questions
• Question assumptions
• Self-knowledge (become aware of those assumptions!)
• Grant permission to be wrong
• Surround ourselves with creative people
• Play games, solve riddles, tackle puzzles
• Experiment, explore, experience
• Celebrate imagination!

We don’t need to learn to be creative – we already are! We just need to unleash that superpower from years of atrophy.

In 2006 Lady Gaga had dropped out of NYU to pursue music, but then Def Jam Recordings canceled her contract. After crying on her grandmother’s couch, her father gave her one year to figure it out.

Also in 2006, music manager Troy Carter’s star client canceled his contract. Carter’s business suffered, his home was foreclosed, his car was repossessed. He teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

Right after signing with Interscope Records, Gaga hired Carter to be her manager. They worked nine months developing her music, but Interscope kept giving Gaga’s songs to other artists to perform,relegating her to a songwriter.

Carter and Gaga fought for control of some songs that she would perform, like Just Dance and Poker Face. But radio stations wouldn’t play them.

So they took her songs and performances to global audiences directly via Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. In Carter’s words, “We super-served underground music communities” on these fairly-new social platforms and in clubs until her music caught fire.

And their perseverance paid off.

• To date Lady Gaga has sold over 27 million albums and 146 million singles. She has won Grammy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and an Academy Award.
• Since signing Gaga, Tory Carter has managed music stars like John Legend and Meghan Trainor, and launched his own investment company, Atom Factory.

Throughout their journeys, Lady Gaga and Troy Carter faced many opportunities to claim defeat, blaming a myriad of excuses.

Instead they found a way.

We all have excuses:

• Lack of time, money, resources connections
• Battling bad bosses, peers, technology, traffic
• Suffering injustices, trauma, and drama

But at our core, we are not unlike Lady Gaga…

• When we want something, we find a way.
• When we don’t, we find an excuse.

What lies between the excuse and the way is our conviction!