Dealing with Disappointment 2 of 4 (Dr. Brent Lindquist)

Hello again.  I’m back with the second in my series on dealing with disappointment and failure. Today I want to talk about whose expectations we are operating from anyway.  This whole series grew out of an email that I received from George – I’ll call him George – in which he shares that he’s very frustrated.  He doesn’t know what to do.  Everything he’s doing is wrong and he’s sure glad he can cry on our shoulders.  I’m glad he can too but we’re trying to help George to deal with disappointment and possible failure.  Now the thing about all of this really comes down to ‘expecting the best of myself and others and they resent me as being too pushy’.  This is one of the sentences from George’s email.  The email wasn’t long so I’m grabbing onto that as a way of making a radio program out of this.  Our expectations for ourselves and others often get us into feelings of difficulty and magnifies the disappointment that we feel.

What are some of the underlying expectations that you and I bring to our cross-cultural work?  Well if we’re being honest, a lot of times we go in thinking, ‘Whatever it is that they’re doing, they’re not doing it the right way and we will teach them.  That’s what we’re here for.’  This is kind of a one way thing.  I’m the expert.  I’m coming in.  You’re not the expert and I’m going to help you with doing things the right way.  How many of us have those attitudes?  Raise your hand.  Good.  No hands are raised.  Well, we probably don’t have them all that way.  You know – I don’t think so.  We don’t go and say that.  Who would admit to that?  Realistically, however, there is a lot of truth to that particular expectation.  We go somewhere to do something because we think we have the answer for that particular problem that they’re experiencing. Sometimes we may not always understand all the issues involved in what people need to learn or do.  That’s why it’s important to spend time learning the culture and language so we can be more effective at what we’re doing.

A second expectation is – I know what is best.  That’s it.  I know what is best for these people.  I know what is best for my friends.  I know what is best for everybody.  Now once again, a show of hands here… How many of you have felt that way or go around saying that?  Of course none of us really do.  Once again, these are underlying expectations that are hidden very deeply.  I once consulted with a guy who was deeply disturbed and really had failed.  What were the things that made it so difficult for him?  It turns out that some of the core expectations that he went in to do his job with, was that he had to prove his dad wrong.  He grew up in a really painful situation and his dad never really respected him.  As a matter of fact, his dad told him to his face that he thought he was useless. Well the son decided that he was going to prove his dad wrong.  The problem was that he set up expectations that were impossible to achieve, so he did in effect prove his dad right and that made him feel even worse.  Expectations are insidious.  They are hidden.  They are not clear and we need to identify those.

Those 2 rather dumb expectations I had in the beginning, that we all admit at times to having, if they’re really hidden then the local people that we’re there working with aren’t going to see them, right?  Well, I wish it were that easy.  Unfortunately some of these hidden things to us, we think we’ve hidden them well or we don’t even know about them, they come out very clearly.  The fact is that those people around you are going to see them and they’re going to respond defensively or at least protectively.  ‘Well, you think your way is best but let me tell you something – my way is better’.  I think that we have to be very careful with that and listen.  If somebody says those things, that may be an indication that we’re coming across as a know-it-all in doing that.  I’m not suggesting that I know George was doing this, but I’m saying that these are some of the things that go through people’s minds and then they give people like George a feeling of failure.

So then how do we change?  I don’t like to just pick apart things – I want to give George material or information that he can use right now to make a difference.  I think we need to start over.  If you’re just new in your situation you don’t have to make these same mistakes again.  You don’t have to make them the first time.  If you’re the situation of, ‘Well, we’re in our fourth year too and we’re seeing the same kinds of things that George saw’ then you need to start over. Now starting over is not just leaving and then going to a new place.  It’s kind of starting over in your heart and your mind and then that will flow out into your relationships.  Start over with having an attitude of – let’s both learn.  Share with the people around you, whether they’re your teammates or people from the local community, an attitude that you really want to focus on, ‘Let’s both learn’.  Let’s both learn about everything.  Well, what do you mean?  Well, about everything and anything.  Can you learn?  Can you ask questions?  When we both learn we both ask questions.  When only one of us learns, one of us listens to the other but when we both learn we both ask questions and listen to each other.

The second thing is starting over from – I don’t think I understand this clearly, please help me.  That’s a request for assistance.  George, and all of us, struggle with these kinds of feelings like we should know everything so therefore it’s hard for us to admit that we don’t.  We really don’t and we really don’t understand the perspectives, the philosophy that the other person has.  It’s not a problem to say.  As a matter of fact if you say, ‘I don’t think I understand this clearly. Help me’.  That person is likely to say, ‘Well I didn’t think you understood it, but here, let me help you’.  And they do help.  Requests for help are usually honoured.

Thirdly, start over or start from similarites.  Are there other things like this in your context, in your culture? Tell me or teach me about them. What you’re doing is you’re modeling to the other people, whether they be teammates or local people, that you’re interested in understanding their perspective.  You think their perspective has value in helping you to understand what it is that you need to do or how you understand yourself.  Tell me, teach me things that are different are wonderful attitudes.

Finally, and I think this is big thing for me, start from the ending.  That sounds a little bit bazaar, I must admit.  When I do something I want to say to myself, ‘How do I want people to talk about me after I’m gone? What do I want people to say about this information that they’ve been learning after it’s done?’ That’s starting from the ending.  If I want people to say, ‘Well, George is full of himself.  All he does is tell people what to do and I didn’t learn very much from him’.  Well, George, you’re on that track.  That’s really working there but you don’t want to do that.  As a matter of fact, that is hurting you desperately.  You’re really grieving over that.  If we want people to say, ‘He’s interested.  He cares.  He wants to understand us.  He learns from us and he asks for help’, what usually happens is that they want to learn from us.  It’s much more of a give and take type of thing but I know our unrepentant attitude is that we’re going to work in a new cultural context because we’re going to tell them something that they need to learn how to do.   We’re going to be the experts and they’re not and they need our help. They may not know what we’re teaching them but when we act like we’re the experts they pick up on that and then that can be a put down for them.

As you look at all of this, think about how you can come across with a learner attitude.  That about sums up my dealing with disappointment and possible failure today.

Talk to you next time!