How You Can Manage High Job Expectations

Many of us have, at some stage of our jobs or careers, had supervisors or managers that expects nothing less than perfection in your work. Therefore, trying to manage high job expectations can be challenging.  What are needed are the real skills to be able to cope with the stress of the job so that it never gets to a point that you care unable to continue. You can read on-line about many different ways to deal with the stress of high job expectations in such a way that allows you to become much more effective at your job!

What can you do?

As mentioned, there are many ways that you can find on-line, so the objective is to deal with your expectation in a more efficient and effective was so that you feel able to get more done in the time that you have. If you have a demanding manager, then this is a key skill to have and to develop.

* What you can do to prepare for the stress.  Understand what Stress is. If it is only felt when you are at work, then it is pressure. if you take the feeling home with you, then it can be stress. When you know you’re going to feel the pressure at work because the expectations will be high, you can be proactive by preparing for it in order to take that exhausting feeling out of the equation.  

For instance, if you’re worried about any situations over which you have no control, then you should engage your manager or team member to try and find out the answers.

If you find that it is almost impossible to second guess, then the only thing that you can do is accept the fact that you are unable to control everything and make a plan B that will help you feel more confident and comfortable. 

What you can do to rehearse for pressure situations.  

For instance, if you know that you will be making a presentation in front of an audience or that you have to present information to your manager, rehearse your presentation using the same materials you will use on the day.

How this will help you is by being able to see where you can make improvement and feel confidence in what you will be presenting.  When you rehearse, you take unknown elements out of the equation so you can simply focus on doing your best without adding any additional anxiety.

Personal awareness of your own thought processes.  

Many times, when other people have high expectations on your performance or output, then that’s when the negative thoughts can enter our heads. For instance, when your manager is being demanding, you may think to yourself, “I’m never going to be able to do this! or “I’m not good enough!” I call these ANTS – Automatic Negative Thoughts.

ANTs pop into our heads and are almost always overly pessimistic. This kind of self-defeating mind chatter gets you nowhere. You need to reframe the thoughts and challenge them.  

For example, they may say things to you like ‘I lost 12Ibs, but I wanted to lose a stone, so I’ve failed’. Reframe it to a positive – ‘ I’ve achieved a great milestone. Only 2Ibs to go’.

You will ‘fly’ when you manage negative thoughts and replace them with empowering thoughts.

Better organize your work.  

Always, always, always work with an action plan. When you do, you will quickly see that dealing with high expectations becomes much less of an issue for you.

Simply write a list of all of the things you need to get done; a great example is an Urgent/important Matrix which prioritises them, so if you start to feel distracted or the pressure mounts, you can always go back to the plan.  When you have a plan, your performance will live up to your expectations and you will see that you are less likely to give in to pressure, stress or frustration.

As you can see, there are some simple, yet effective, ways to deal with high expectations. 

Remember: when people expect a lot from you, it really means that they believe you’re capable of great things. That’s why you have to role. It’s actually a compliment!

Photo credit – Sydney Rae