MISLEADING EXPECTATIONS
Adam Blatner, M.D.
May 23, 2010
Misleading expectations
represent common thought patterns in our world, subtle forms that
support oppression. They are fundamentally mistaken and misleading.
Let’s unpack this idea:
First, they express a rather simplistic mode of thought. It’s okay for
kids to think this way, but, ideally, we need to be teaching people
that life is really quite complex. For example, even the seemingly
simple instruction, “Pick up that fork” denies the actual fact that
there are different ways of picking up that fork! Faced with an effort
to obey, a parent might respond in an exasperated fashion, “No, that
grasping the fork with your whole fist is crude, like a child!” Some
parents don’t realize that they’re communicating reproach and evoking
shame by phrasing the correction that way. Instead, they might say,
“That’s it. Now let me show you a more refined way to hold your fork.
Okay, that’s closer. Try it this way. Um, nice!”
Most tasks are complicated, have many components and often
sub-components. All of these often can be mastered at a level of 10% -
99% skill. Let’s say that an eye surgeon has mastered his procedure
through practice so that his skill is at 99% But residents in eye
surgery taking on a given small part of a procedure may only do it at
an 81% skill level, and that’s after practicing the skill on cadavers
or other models so that their competence advanced from 30% up to
80%—and that required eight practice sessions, each one of which
entailing four task practices.
Even that is simple compared to the problems of working with a moving,
weaving target, and then, when working with people, the task isn’t
simply aiming, but rather negotiating, cajoling, empathizing, and in
other ways involving the hundred-odd component skills of working with
people. More, what if seeming adults—no longer children!—nevertheless
have problems with initiative, perspective, confidence, and other
qualities that you thought only kids had? (Well, they do!)
What I’m getting at is that competence is highly complex and few people
if any attain perfection. No, I’ll go a step further, and say that
competence, like perfection, or the speed of light, is what’s called an
“asymptotic limit,” meaning that the closer you get to your
destination, the harder it gets, and as the Paul Simon song (of the
1980s?) goes, “the more you keep slip-sliding away.”
In other words, the reproach or blaming statement, “You should have
gotten it right” is actually oriented to the realms of (1) a simplistic
view towards skills; (2) a corresponding ignorance of the nature of
learning and doing, a systems understanding that appreciates the
function of ongoing feedback; (3) and some roots in an educational
system that believed that much of reality could adequately be described
in terms of right answers, true and false.
Stated another way, what we need to do is to simply give feedback,
encourage, and create opportunities for correcting and correcting
again. That’s ideal. Sometimes this is harder to do because mistakes—or
even just mediocre instead of high competence—has unfortunate
consequences.
I became aware as part of a dream that even when I thought I knew what
I was doing, in situations where I felt somewhat confident, unexpected
frustrations or developments could throw me off, prove me wrong. I
reflected on a goodly number of times when I was judged not to be as
competent as I thought I was, and got into varying degrees of trouble
because of it. There were many significant moments of grief, shame,
guilt, fear, and other extensions of screwing up. And these were for
the times I didn’t know I’d messed up. Then there were ten or a
thousand times the number of incidents in which, to use a metaphor, the
ball didn’t go in the direction I threw it and the window broke. (Of
course, the ball did indeed go in the direction I threw it, but it
would be more true to say that I overestimated my capacity to throw in
the direction of my aim. Let’s try to accurately state the case and
avoid excuse-making.)
The excuse, on another level, is just the point, though: I often do
things with moderate confidence and it turns out that this level of
confidence was over-estimated. Then there are times that perhaps I
under-estimate my confidence and avoid trying what I could in fact
probably achieve. The key to this conundrum is the process of feedback.
If I can (1) expect that my assessment of my ability is at best only
rough and that sometimes I’ll overshoot and sometimes under-shoot the
mark; and (2) expect that I’ll get feedback from others or my own
observations as to the effectiveness of my efforts, then perhaps I may
be encouraged. Or perhaps, if I expect overwhelmingly negative
feedback, blame, reproach, “why didn’t you do it right the first
time?!”—then I may be discouraged.
My point in all this is that I see discouraging feedback happening far
more often than it needs to or should, and the feedback is based on a
general worldview that is itself complex, but includes such ideas as
the following:
– If you couldn’t do it “right,” you should not be
in that high-status position—politician, consultant, parent, teacher,
etc.
– If you tried, paid attention, you would have done
it right. (This is true in perhaps 8% of the situations—there are
indeed occasions in which attention and/or effort makes a difference.
But the problem is that around 92% of the time, these are irrelevant.
The task was too complex.
– People are qualified for their jobs.
Let’s unpack this last item: Most jobs are complex, and—I’m just making
up these numbers to give an idea of proportionality—say there are ten
components. Most people are skilled or even talented in 3 of those
components—and that’s perhaps why they were hired. Then they’re average
or okay in 3 more of those components. What tends to be ignored and
denied is that in many complex roles many if not most people are
sub-marginal in 20% and pretty incompetent in 10-20% of those roles.
Most of the time their strengths compensate for their weaknesses, but
on occasion something comes up that requires the performance of that
part of their overall role repertoire that is under-trained,
un-talented, sub-optimal, and/or incompetent. Then you get trouble.
My insight is that in time this is bound to happen. What’s artificial
is our unrealistic expectation, our naivete, our cultural transference
from the attitude of a young child towards a parent: You can’t make it
mistake! That’s horrible, unforgivable, catastrophic! In fact, we
should expect this to happen as the product of a more mature
appreciation that life is complex, roles are complex, mistakes will
happen, and that’s just the way it is.
The Tendency to Blame
In part, this tendency arises from another type of skill
deficit—that of teaching, giving feedback, constructive criticism,
diplomatic support, encouraging correction, etc. Most people have had
little modeling from elders for learning the skill of constructive
feedback—and indeed, the opposite. The pulse of shame and guilt tends
to fix this message a little stronger in the mind. It also tends to
retard the development of more mature approaches, and what continues is
the mentality of the young child—which is more egocentric and either-or
in style—all of which supports a simple blaming modality. Alas, I
suspect this dynamic operates in over 70% of the human responses to
errors. Less, perhaps, when dealing with others who are young children,
who obviously can’t help making mistakes; or with students who
acknowledge that they’re making mistakes and are open to being
corrected. More, perhaps, when dealing with others whom we think
“should know better,” such as elders, peers, co-workers, those who seem
to have pretended to be competent, and even more for those who seem
resistant to our feedback and correction.
The solution won’t be perfect, either, but it involves all concerned
(a) knowing that complex activities—most activities, in fact—require
feedback, and often repeated feedback; (b) it’s possible and desirable
to learn to give feedback without vagueness, reproach and blame; (c)
even better to give feedback with encouragement, tact, and specificity;
(d) good also to be open to the idea that the feedback given was not
specific enough, overly vague, may have addressed the wrong component,
etc. (e) and thus the person giving feedback needs to be open to the
idea that the quality or content of the feedback may need to get
feedback in order to do a better job of giving feedback! (Teachers,
psychotherapists, managers, and other people helpers need to know this!
Their desire to help may not suffice; their efforts to help may not
work as well as they wanted it to!)
The process could be extended. It’s complex, it really is, and it has
to be, not because anyone is trying to make it complicated. I’m not
just doing an intellectual dance to show off. It really is this
complicated, and more, even.
The solution involves the development of a measure of trust in the
process. We’re working together. I’m going to (at least tentatively)
assume that you want to work on this with me. It will require a number
of gentle messages back and forth, a kind of collaboration, a tone of
cooperation.
Sometimes it takes time even to set the stage, to get the person who is
the helper to be patient, to trust that the helpee wants to learn; or
vice versa, to let the helpee know that the helper will be patient,
tactful, and encouraging rather than shaming.
Collaboration
The art of collaboration is multi-dimensional. First there’s
even getting some agreement on what is relevant, what is of interest to
the helpee. More often than not the helper, teacher, minister, leader,
is trying to “get” the subordinate to warm up to something that is of
little interest to him. Several alternatives operate here: Sometimes
the teacher can get the student’s attention and arouse interest.
Sometimes it’s better for the teacher to explore or be sensitive to
what is of more interest to the student. It may not be the
subject-matter that the teacher or helper had prepared or thought she
was going to use.
Can the teacher be flexible, explore with the student or person to be
helped what is of interest? Many teachers naturally exhibit this
intuitive flexibility, they find what catches the student’s interest
and build on it.
Paolo Friere sought to reform the art of education (i.e., “pedagogy”),
by promoting this kind of heightened collaborative attitude on the part
of not only teachers but also students. There’s some responsibility to
be shared here with people in the student role. Since Friere imagined
working with less-educated adults, this imagined the helpees to be
capable of being helped, first, to locate or identify that which was of
interest or relevance to them. Even this process may require a variety
of approaches, warm-ups, negotiations. Again, there is no place for
blame, which would be a symptom of impatience, which would be a symptom
of an underlying assumption that the other could if they only would.
But in fact the reason blame is most often irrelevant is because those
who seem problematic don’t fulfill the expectations of others because
they really don’t know how to do what is being asked.
Generalities
One of the blocks here is another cultural illusion—that people
know what you mean when you use a word. Rarely this is true. Even the
old “pick up the fork” can be obeyed in different ways. People often
don’t realize how specific they need to be. Our educational system
tends to overly emphasize abstraction-building, which is indeed a good
skill. But equally needed is the capacity to deconstruct abstractions
and offer examples. Often the sub-types of a given abstraction are
crucial to the discussion. Anger is not always destructive: Sometimes a
bit of anger is the way to communicate the necessity to take one’s
position into account. Sometimes it partakes of righteous indignation,
and deserves respect. Sometimes it’s personal, but often it’s not
personal, but aimed instead at some facet of the issue at hand. The
idea that anger is bad or hostile is an over-generalization.
So, too, with almost any generality. Most of those words have ways of
doing them that can be overdone, under-done, aimed at the wrong target,
or just right. The mistake is the common belief that words are
equivalent, mean to others what is meant by the person speaking (or
writing) the words, and, in short, it is another over-simplification of
another category—language. And, like tasks, language needs a fair
amount of feedback to clarify what is meant. For example, one person
means by the terms “twilight” a period between afternoon and dark night
that may differ from another person’s meaning. “Dusk” and “evening” are
similarly ambiguous.
Nor is this superficial. Many of the words that evoke deep feelings are
similarly ambiguous. What is meant by being “really masculine,”
“feminine,” “God-fearing,” “honorable,” “patriotic,” and so forth? In
fact, different folks interpret these words in different ways, and
these differences make for a lot of misunderstanding in our culture.
Courage and Patience
Another corollary of all this is that much of life involves the
undertaking of tasks for which one is not (and perhaps cannot be)
completely prepared. Motherhood is one example, and chances are that
the kid will be in some ways not typical. This kid will be more
strong-willed; that one has an untapped talent that the parent doesn’t
even know how to identify; this one is clearly handicapped in some way;
that one is also handicapped, but strangely gifted. The “right” way to
respond as a parent is often nowhere in the books. Then there’s the
challenge of getting co-parents—spouses, other relatives—to get on the
“same page” in the parenting strategy.
Many other tasks are similar in complexity. We must also recognize that
as time goes on, styles of parenting, managing, and helping evolve; new
technologies and environmental or cultural circumstances evolve; and
what was mastery of a skill in one era may become obsolete or even
considered disreputable in another. The solution is an attitude of
enjoying the creative challenge; appreciating and cultivating
creativity and the kinds of attitudes and behaviors that feed into
creativity; an awareness of the necessity of constructive feedback,
giving and receiving it; a sensitivity to behaviors and attitudes that
stifle experimentation and learning, such as blaming and reproach; and
so forth.
I’ve realized that living requires a demand for role competence that
often goes beyond the actual competence that can be brought to the
task. In the face of such challenges, one needs courage. I had to try
to do things when I thought that I could, but wasn’t sure; when I was
pretty sure, but it turned out I didn’t have one component mastered;
when I wasn’t sure I could, but I had to go ahead; and even when I was
pretty sure I couldn’t—and even then sometimes I had to try. Sometimes,
it turned out, I could! (And sometimes, doggone it, I was right—I
wasn’t ready yet.)
This process, viewed from the outside, is by no means something that
operates within the mind of the individual. It’s relational. If the
others make the job so confusing, or so threatening as to drive away
all but the most dedicated—and some types of hazing serve to do just
this—that will discourage most people. If the others are skilled at
helping and encouraging—a skill that again needs to be developed
significantly by most people—then they’ll have a better chance at
evoking the courage to try and try again in those they are helping.
It’s mixed, too. If you think you’re encouraging a student, but the
system you’re in only offers one chance to succeed—no room for practice
and ongoing development—then you need to expand your awareness to
consider the larger context. Many well-meaning people operate in larger
social systems that are subtly oppressive. The point here is than in
considering the goal of promoting optimal performance, to include not
just the intra-psychic realm of the student, but the interpersonal,
group, and cultural realms, too. There’s also a need to break down the
task to recognize the more subtle but possibly essential components of
the task.
Summary
Life is complex, and we should become more forgiving and
compassionate. Much of life requires the need to forge ahead even
though one can know or sense that one is not fully competent for the
given challenge. This paper has noted some general cultural attitudes
that make progress harder. One is the expectation that people “should”
know what they’re doing, be masters of all components. Few people are,
in fact, and the expectation is overly-general and simplistic. Other
expectations include such things as thinking that blame and reproach
are effective forms of feedback, when in fact they are most frequently
discouraging. I hope this discussion can help others to think out this
complex problem that is relevant in all endeavors, from supervision and
management to parenting and teaching.
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for revision or additions, email me: adam@blatner.com
