Heard of Expectation Alignment Dysfunction (EAD)? It’s not what you might be thinking.
I was unaware of this condition until I read an article by Tracy Maylett, CEO of DecisionWise – a management consulting firm recognized for developing leaders and organizations through assessments, feedback, coaching and training – and co-author of the award-winning book MAGIC: Five Keys to Unlock the Power of Employee Engagement.
EAD is “fast becoming the leading killer of employee engagement and a detractor from the Employee Experience (EX) in organizations today,” he writes. “Expectation alignment is the degree to which employee expectations for their experience in the workplace line up with their actual experience.
“When those expectations don’t align, EAD is the result,” and it is “an unfortunate condition affecting organizations of all types.”
Contributors
According to Maylett, the biggest contributors to Expectation Alignment Dysfunction include:
- Implied promises from the work environment and company culture.
- Poor management communication or perceived secrecy.
- Rumors and stories.
- Unclear employer expectations.
- Over-promising.
Remedy
There is a cure for EAD, however, says Maylett. Among the measures to take:
- Managers should to find out – on a regular basis – what their employees are thinking and what they expect from their EX.
- Managers should connect with individual employees about what they expect and how that aligns with what the employees expect.
- Minimize or excise aspects of the organization’s internal culture that may encourage employees to either form unrealistic expectations or cause their expectations to mutate irrationally.
- Check to see if the language the organization uses – especially in written documents – might inflate expectations, over promise or provoke fears of secrecy or falsehood.
