Stop Expecting Your Team to Be Mind Readers

It doesn’t work and only leads to more pain

“I’m so pissed, Charlie. She gave me some last-minute sh*t again.”

This one was going to be a tricky one. The murder in my client’s eyes let me know how hot and exasperated she was. That “again” gave me an important clue. I just needed to figure out how to not piss her off even more — the dance of being an executive coach is knowing how to challenge and stand with an intense leader.

“I totally get how frustrating it is to not only get last-minute work, but for it to be something that keeps happening. Before we figure out what to do, tell me what you told her.”

“I told her to send the document to me sometime this week so I can send it to my boss by Friday.”

Oh boy. I had a sense of where this was going.

“Okay, when did she send it to you?”

“Late Friday morning. I had meetings all afternoon and had to review and fix it after work. Who does that?!”

“I get where you’re coming from. You expected her to send it to you before Friday so you had time to review it before you sent it to your boss, right? You knew you’d need to make some changes and double-check a few things.”

I knew that because, like so many women leaders, she felt like she had no room for mistakes or faults, in anything, anywhere.

“Yeah, I have to do that every time.”

“Have you told her that you spend 30-45 minutes reviewing and correcting her work? Have you explained to her what patterns you’re seeing?”

“No. She already thinks I’m demanding and I don’t have the time to have that conversation and get specific about her work. It’s faster and easier if I just fix it myself.”

“So let me get this straight: you expected her to know that you’d need 30-45 minutes to review the document and that, by saying, ‘send it to my boss by Friday,’ you expected her to send it to you so you had enough time to do that. And for her to look at your calendar for the week to see when you’d be able to review the doc, even though you and I both know your calendar isn’t a reliable source of truth?”

“Well, uhm…”

“Did you ask your boss when he needed to send it on and if he wanted some pre-review time? Did you look at his schedule?”

“He didn’t exactly make it a collaboration, Charlie. He said like two sentences about it via text… which is what I gave her. Oh sh*t.”

She was starting to see it. We had already had the “expecting your teammates to be mind readers doesn’t work” conversation and she was new to practicing MTOE (Making the Obvious Explicit).

She was still hanging on to being wronged, though.

“Okay, I get it. I didn’t make the obvious explicit. I shouldn’t have to say everything, though. Who gives their boss last-minute work?”

“Lots of people. Sure, lots of it is a lack of personal effectiveness and being scattered. But I once had a boss that reprimanded me for sending something I completed too soon. He said I could’ve used more time to make it even better, though he didn’t see anything wrong with what I turned in or point out what would’ve made it better. I thought I was doing him a solid and giving him ample time to review it. He clearly saw it differently. After that interaction, I covertly figured out the Goldilocks amount of time to send it to him in advance so that I wouldn’t get either ‘too early, WTF?!’ or ‘last minute, WTF?!’ It was a dumb use of my time, energy, and attention, but it made my job easier.”

“That sucks! I have to do it with my boss, too, though it’s a little different. If I give it to him too early, he’ll move the goal posts or give me more work to do.”

She finally got it.

“Oh sh*t. I'm doing to her what my boss does to me. And she's probably doing the same things I do with my boss, but for different reasons. Or maybe for exactly the same reasons.”

“Yep. And how much of your current exasperation may not be with her, but with your boss? Or with yourself for how you’re contributing to the very outcomes you don’t want?”

“Fork. That hurts to look at.”

“Better for us to look at it together, in this container, than for you to blow up at her about something that’s not her fault. Not that you know anything about how that feels.”

Her face had shifted from “I will murder you” to red nose and quiver lip. Empathy and emotional imagination had transformed what could have been a conflict into a co-creative opportunity.

We spent the rest of this portion of our convo discussing how she was going to have a real discussion with her teammate about expectations, norms, and feedback on her work. This probably wasn’t the last convo we’ll have along these lines, but in the interim, there’s been much less tension and bumps between her and her direct report.

That’s what happens when you stop expecting people to be mind readers and start making the obvious explicit.

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This story highlights just one of the many unconscious team habits that create unnecessary friction at work. Curious about what other habits might be impacting your team? Our Team Habits Quiz can help you spot patterns and start making positive changes.