Last week, my snotty-nosed husband shouted down the stairs, in a suitably croaky voice, asking if we had any Lemsips. (For clarity, I do mean snotty-nosed literally.)
“There’s some in the medical kit,” I shouted back.
Ten seconds later, he yelled down that he couldn’t find them, so after rolling my eyes, I charged upstairs and found them exactly where I’d said they were.
I’m embarrassed to admit how satisfying that was, because there’s something rather pleasing about finding evidence that you’re right, especially when you can hold it up in a small white packet.
Now, you might expect this to be an article about how irritating our partners can be – especially when they have man-flu – and how satisfying it is to be right, but you’d be wrong. This is about expectations and how they can leave us overlooking the bleeding obvious.
My husband was looking for a slim green packet of lemon and honey powder, but I’d bought the supermarket’s own-brand version, so the packet was white. And before you ask, I hadn’t done this as some kind of psychological experiment to mess with his poorly head; it was all they had in stock.
He was expecting a green packet and apparently looked straight past the white one.
How many times have you searched EVERYWHERE for your car keys, only to find them where you’ve already looked three times, leaving you briefly wondering whether someone has been moving them around just to annoy you?
Or perhaps you’ve hunted for a document because you’re absolutely certain you remember what you called it, then spotted it the following day in exactly the place you were looking?
Before you think I’m being judgey about my husband, just yesterday I did something similar myself.
Our dog, Cookie, usually sleeps in our son’s room, so when I get up early, I don’t expect to see her downstairs. I switched on the kitchen light, made myself a cup of tea and went into the lounge, where a few moments later Cookie wandered in to greet me.
She’d been in her bed in the kitchen all along, and I’d walked past her and must have looked in her direction without noticing her: a big brown Labrador, the furry love of my life, not an inanimate, slim white packet. And no, I don’t need to go to Specsavers.
I laughed out loud, although it did occur to me that when my husband missed the packet, I was self-righteous about his less-than-ideal searching abilities, whereas when I missed an entire Labrador, it was, well, just funny.
Clearly, I’m rather more generous with myself when allocating the benefit of the doubt.
What interests me about the cold remedy and Cookie isn’t simply that we missed something; it’s the picture we each brought to the situation. My husband’s previous experience had supplied “Lemsip equals green packet”, while my morning routine had supplied “Cookie is in my son’s bedroom”, and neither of us had thought to check.
Of course, I’m using a little artistic licence to explore these everyday incidents, rather than claiming to know precisely what was happening in our heads, but they got me thinking about the other pictures we carry around, where they come from and whether we notice when they need updating.
We learn from experience and get used to how things look, how people behave and what tends to happen next, which saves us a great deal of effort. Having to work out what a light switch does every time we enter a dark room would make getting a cup of tea quite an undertaking.
But people and circumstances change, and we can carry on expecting what we’ve become accustomed to, even when there’s information in front of us that deserves another look.
At work, that can have consequences rather more significant than failing to locate a cold remedy.
Perhaps someone joined your team as a graduate, when they needed support, made mistakes and regularly checked things with you. Three years later, they’ve developed considerably, but somewhere in your head they’re still “the graduate”, so you explain things they already understand and give the more demanding assignments to someone else.
When they make a mistake, you notice because it fits what you expect, but what about the work they handle independently, the problems they solve or the sound decisions they make? Do those things carry the same weight in your assessment, or do they pass with considerably less attention?
Meanwhile, they’re wondering whether they need to leave the organisation before someone recognises the experience they’ve gained.
While you may have good reasons for offering support, it’s worth asking whether you’re responding to what they need now or what they needed when they arrived.
How much opportunity do they get to show you who they’ve become if you keep treating them as who they were?
We can do something similar with ourselves, particularly when our circumstances have changed more quickly than our picture of who we are.
Perhaps you’ve been promoted into a senior role, but you still feel like the person who needs someone more experienced to confirm that you’re getting it right. You defer to colleagues you now work alongside, apologise before offering an opinion or wait for approval on a decision you’re authorised and equipped to make.
Your email signature has caught up with your promotion, but your picture of yourself is taking rather longer.
Then, when you hesitate over something, you think, “See? I’m not ready for this,” while giving rather less attention to the experience, judgement and results that helped you earn the role in the first place.
That can be part of feeling like an impostor: you’re assessing today’s capability through an older picture of yourself, and the moments that fit that picture keep catching your attention.
In my courses, I use virtual goggles as a metaphor for these familiar lenses, because our experiences, assumptions and internal rules can influence what we expect, what we notice and how we respond. In my work, I use “programmes” as shorthand for these learned assumptions and rules, which can help keep familiar patterns going even when our circumstances have changed.
The awkward bit is that we don’t necessarily experience them as a lens; we think we’re seeing things as they are, so it doesn’t always occur to us to question the view.
Finding the packet confirmed where I’d put it, but I was rather quick to treat that as confirmation of my assessment of my husband too, without giving much attention to the fact that I’d inadvertently sent him looking for something I hadn’t actually bought.
One thing you could try today
Choose one opinion you’ve formed about yourself or someone else, then ask:
“What has happened recently that doesn’t fit the picture I already have?”
Find a specific example and give it some attention before reaching for “Yes, but…”, because that’s a remarkably efficient way of dismissing something we might benefit from considering.
Perhaps your colleague handled something you would previously have helped them with, or perhaps you made a difficult decision and it worked out. Does that information deserve to change your assessment, even a little, and would you approach the next situation differently if you allowed it to?
You can still recognise mistakes and areas for development, but check whether they’re getting all the airtime while the evidence of progress barely gets a mention.
This is the kind of shift I help people make through individual coaching and tailored confidence, communication and leadership programmes: understanding the programmes behind familiar patterns and using that understanding to make different choices. I also teach others to coach, including how to ask questions that help someone examine a picture they might not be questioning.
And in case you’re wondering – yes, I use coaching questions on myself. My husband expected green, whereas I expected to be the one whose judgement didn’t need examining.
What are you expecting – and when did you last check whether your picture needs updating?