How To Deal With Disappointment At Work (without completely losing your sh*t)

As an executive coach, I’ve spent nearly 20 years working with highly successful leaders who’ve hit a bump in the road. I help these leaders get over that bump by clarifying their goals and making a plan to reach them. I work with my clients through my firm Paravis Partners and, with some of them, on my Harvard Business Review Presents Coaching Real Leaders podcast, where I take you behind the closed doors of real coaching sessions. I also host the Coaching Real Leaders Community, where an amazing group of leaders and coaches come together to take a deeper dive into the challenges of leadership. In this newsletter, I share takeaways from my many years of coaching conversations. My hope is that my efforts will help you lead (or coach) with more ease.

At the root of all disappointment is the gap between how we think things should be and how they actually are.

It’s the difference between what we expect should happen and how it all pans out in reality. Even when we try our very best, reality doesn’t always match up exactly with our expectations. For instance, think of the last time how others behaved didn’t align with how you expect them to behave. How did it make you feel? Such was the case with my coaching client who became disillusioned with his company’s senior executives when he felt they didn’t model the company’s values.?

But the more we resist the reality of what’s happening right now, the more disappointment (and all its negative tagalong friends) ensues. And those feelings can come out in a number of unfortunate ways that impact you and your team if not managed effectively.

How Does the Dissonance Show Up?

Think about a situation where you asked a team member to deliver on something, and then they didn’t quite do it the way you envisioned. How did you react?

Typically, when we’re disappointed by a failed expectation, a number of reactions can rear their unpleasant heads — sometimes individually, or other times, as a team:

1. Shut Down. Do you ever find yourself feeling so disappointed that you have no more words? You feel like you’ve discussed the topic with your team member several times or made your point to your leadership over and over again – but they just don’t seem to get it. And now, it feels best to say nothing at all.
2. Self Sabotage. You put in a lot of time on that project or presentation?only for it to be critiqued by your boss on the back end. Or not recognized. It’s not what you expected and you tell yourself, “why even bother next time.” By wanting to protect yourself from the sting of not meeting expectations, you aim lower thereby getting in your own way of your potential.?
3. Lashing Out. Sometimes, our disappointment in others or situations not meeting our expectations cause us to have tantrums. We resort to childlike behavior like raising our voices, insulting others and pounding out harsh emails (yes, this is the adult workplace version of throwing yourself on the ground and having? a full blown meltdown) thinking somehow it will make what we want come true.

The reality is that none of these responses solve the issue. And worse, they dilute your leadership impact. (Show me one leader who consistently shuts down, self sabotages and/or lashes out who you consider to be an effective leader.)

Resisting the reality of a situation does nothing to make it right.

So How Can I Respond When Things Don’t Go As Expected?

Here’s the thing — the point is not that you shouldn’t ever feel disappointed. The point is: How do you respond to that disappointment?

Emotional reactions like 1-3 above can be human default. But if you want to be more effective as a leader, the place to start is to see and accept your situation for what it is. Accept doesn’t mean being passive. It simply means being able to say “yup, this is where we are” in the most neutral way possible.? From there you can choose how to respond to the situation rather than react to your disappointment in the situation.??

Next time, I’ll dive deeper into how to more productively respond when we reach those moments when expectations and reality don’t line up and not get caught up in the disappointment trap. Meanwhile, please let me know about a time you felt disappointed as a leader or at work. How did you deal with it??

PS Episode 4 of my Coaching Real Leaders podcast deals with the tension my coaching client feels when he has to deal with his difficult new boss. For the senior leader I coached, this was a golden opportunity to manage his expectations and handle his own reactions. Listen here ??.

Thank you for reading my LinkedIn newsletter! Don’t forget to subscribe to Coaching Real Leaders on Harvard Business Review, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please join me in my Coaching Real Leaders Community, where I host members-only live Q&As, CRL episode debriefs, and more. You can also learn more about the coaching work I and my fantastic team do by checking us out at Paravis Partners.