The Limits of Expectation

We spend a remarkable amount of time deciding what enough looks like. How much someone should contribute. How quickly something should be finished. What support should look like. What a favourable result is. There are good reasons for this. Expectations make things clear; targets give us something to work toward. But I have been wondering whether an expectation can also become a ceiling.

This fall, I took on fundraising for a school event, reaching out to businesses in our neighbourhood and asking them to be part of it. I loved this part. I like making connections and finding the point where what someone cares about meets what a community needs. Businesses could contribute a fixed amount toward a particular part of the event, or donate something of their choosing to our raffle.

I assumed the fixed sponsorships would be the easier ask. They were clear. The alternative was much less tidy: what would you like to contribute?

And people surprised us. Businesses offered products, services, and experiences whose value often exceeded the sponsorship amount we might otherwise have put in front of them. When we didn't determine the size or shape of the contribution in advance, people often imagined something beyond what we would have asked for ourselves.

It would be tempting to turn this into a fundraising lesson, but it isn't that simple. Research on giving has found that suggested amounts can be useful, while other studies have found that greater choice can change people's willingness to participate. The broader research on human motivation is equally interesting. Psychologists studying autonomy have found that having meaningful agency in what we do is connected to motivation, effort, and engagement.

Autonomy, though, is not the absence of structure. It is having some authorship within it.

Perhaps that is why the fundraiser stayed with me. We had created the event, made the invitation, and explained what we needed. We simply hadn't prescribed every contribution.

There is a meaningful difference between structure and control. At work, a clear outcome can help someone understand what they are responsible for, while prescribing exactly how they should reach it can remove the good judgment and creativity we hired them for. With children, boundaries can create security without making every decision for them. In relationships, being clear about what we need can be an act of generosity, while deciding exactly how another person must demonstrate their care can make it harder to recognize what they are actually offering.

And then there are the fixed asks we make of ourselves. By this age, I should have accomplished this. By Friday, I should have finished that. I should exercise this often, earn this much, produce this much, have this kind of career. We create our own sponsorship packages and then assess ourselves against them.

Structure is useful. A deadline can make something possible. A clear request can be kinder than expecting someone to guess what we need. But there may be another question worth asking alongside all of those fixed measures: What is possible here?

It is different from What is expected? Expectation begins with a predetermined standard. Possibility begins with the actual person, circumstances, resources, and abilities in front of us. It leaves room for judgment and, importantly, for surprise.

The irony is that control often enters with good intentions. We specify because we want to make success possible. We create the metric because we want to know whether we are making progress. We give detailed instructions because we want something done well. But in making the path unmistakably clear, we may inadvertently limit the expanse of how far it can take us.

There are moments when we need to be precise about what we require from one another and ourselves. There are also moments when it may be worth resisting the instinct to decide the answer before we ask the question.

Give someone the boundaries. Tell them what matters. Be clear about what is needed. Then leave enough room for them to decide what they can bring to it.

They may give you exactly what you would have asked for. Or they may show you something you didn't know to ask for at all.