People often hear that they have to exceed everybody’s expectations to achieve success. Let us try to see what it means and how to use it in real life.

Professional View

The main point of exceeding the expectations is to show that you are professional and can do a good job no matter the conditions and requirements you have. Consequently, everybody expects you to take the initiative in solving a problem, propose a better or more optimal solution, and then bring it to life.

There are two main aspects here — proactivity and leadership. As a proactive person, you should not expect somebody to tell you what you have to solve the issue — you should take the initiative, highlight the issue, and then start solving it. As a leader, you should be able to identify the issue, come up with a solution, discuss it with the team, and do whatever is necessary to implement it.

These are strictly theoretical statements, so let us see how to use this knowledge in real life. We are going to check the two most popular areas of interaction — with customers and with teammates.

With Customers

It is relatively easy to be proactive during the communication and work with a customer. It would be best if you understood what customer wants (his requirements), what problems he may face during the usage, and how to deal with them. The next step is to tell customers about your findings and discuss how to solve or overcome them.

Leadership will be needed to solve the issue, and this is usually a bit harder. Of course, the customer will want to solve the problem, but he will not want to spend extra resources (time, money, people) on doing that. First, you should substantiate why the solution is needed and why it is worth spending the resources. Second, you have to plan, organize, and implement the solution for the problem. Finally, it would be best if you did a little more than you promised to impress the customer and maintain good relations.

With Teammates

The situation is a bit different here, as teammates usually have less motivation in changing comparing to customers. Excellent communication and soft skills are a must here.

Proactivity can be used to identify internal team issues. These can be any issues — business, technical, communication. But no matter the case, you have to highlight it in a way that does not offend anybody, make him feel ashamed or guilty. Second, you should find a solution that will satisfy everybody, and it is often very tricky to do that.

Then as a leader, you should work into bringing the solution to life. Building proper motivation is an excellent place to start. However, the most crucial part here is to make everybody see the progress and understand that the change was needed.

There are more areas where you can exceed everybody’s expectations and more best practices. Use cases and practices mentioned above are just the first steps to solve problems correctly and become a true professional.