Every relationship we have involves expectations – mine about you, and yours about me. When we talk about ‘The Deal’, we mean these expectations, their fulfilment (or not!) and the impact that has on our feelings and behaviour.
 
Significantly, these expectations are almost always unwritten, and in the majority of cases unspoken. This applies both to our deeper personal relationships and to those with people at work. Even before our first face-to-face meeting, our mutual expectations start to form. In a work context, the moment we respond to an advertisement's or a head-hunter’s enticements, our expectations start to take shape: how it will enhance our career, enable a healthier work/life balance, how it will be working for an innovative firm, and so on.
 
When we conduct a job interview, we may have expectations about the interviewee arriving on time, answering our questions directly, not fabricating their previous experience, respecting our role as an interviewer and genuinely wanting the job.   Similarly, the interviewee will have expectations, typically including: a courteous greeting; not being kept waiting; an interested interviewer who listens and tells the truth about the job; and advice on when they will know the outcome. Unconsciously, both sides are assessing the potential deal with each other.
 
In the same way that we have expectations about an interviewee, we have even more powerful expectations about the people we work with regularly – our boss, colleagues in our team, and colleagues in other departments. You will have expectations about your clients – and, if you lead an HR team, you will have expectations about people in the firm who use and rely on your team’s services. Equally, all these people will have expectations about your team. You may see yourself as a strategic business partner, but if all the local partner wants is well-managed recruitment, you have an expectations gap and the Deal may be violated.
 
One of the important conclusions from academic research into the psychological contract is that the way our expectations are fulfilled drives how we feel - about our job, our boss, and the firm we work for. The very latest research shows that the way our expectations are fulfilled has a very powerful impact on how we behave at work – and in turn on the results we achieve.
 
Considering the impact of expectations on behaviour and performance it is quite amazing how little communication takes place about our ‘Deals’ with each other. Returning to our interview example - did you share your expectations before you began your last interview? Even if you did, did you invite the candidate to share expectations with you, and take these into account?
 
Last year, my colleagues and I ran a leadership and culture change programme in a business, and one of the main activities involved getting managers and their staff to discuss their mutual ‘Deals’. We provided training and a simple toolkit to help these discussions go smoothly and were amazed by the results.
 
By now, you are probably thinking that ‘The Deal’ is all about one-to-one relationships. However, I have found it equally useful for exploring relationships between different teams and departments. Other applications of the Deal include coaching, resolving conflict, team development and culture change.
 
One of the unexpected outcomes of the change programme involved discussions about ‘The Deal’ between different departments. Our initial diagnosis indicated tensions between departments and functions. This was particularly an issue between people in central finance and in business unit teams. We used the ‘The Deal’ to kick start dialogues between different business teams, which resulted in agreed actions on both sides to fulfil the others’ expectations and business needs.
 
The value of using ‘The Deal’ is that it provides a simple and very powerful framework for aligning individuals, teams, and ultimately clients. Once people understand colleagues’ different expectations, they can then create new and more productive ‘Deals’ across the business.
 
We have received very positive feedback from our client, and from an ‘Investors in People’ inspector who audited the company after the leadership change workshops. Her feedback included: ”this is one of the few change programmes I have seen that seems to have really made a difference”.
 
If you want to improve the Deal in your firm, an immediate and very obvious starting point is to explore ‘The Deal’ with job applicants in your interviews.