"I'd like to approach you about expectations"

During my first conversation with group director, I had asked him about expectations...

me: "I was hoping we could talk about expectations"

Apparently, expectation is some foreign notion to some o fmy new coworkers. Typically, at work, expectation from a manager to you will be with regards to clarity of communication, promptness in response to requests, timeliness of completion of projects, propriety of language, frequency and types of feed backs, and of course quality of work. It can of course be a peptalk: "I expect nothing other than the best from you!" Or it could be very specific: "Well, I want weekly report on friday with all progress, stumbling blocks, and new tasks." Or a little over the top: "You should let me know asap if I said something really dumb!"

I was told by a experienced worker that by laying these things out, how ever common sense they may seem, will help to improve not only day-to-day interactions, but also the criterion of discussion during review and bonus periods. It also give you a chance to tell your boss of your own expectations, which ought to start with professionalism, honesty, fairness, level of technical standard, clearity of communication, and reasonable degree of common sense.

I think this is a fairly good thing to have under the hat.

What do you say

When you get a really small raise...

"I am very glad that the management recognize my work in this past year and decided to compensate me for it, but I look forward to the performance review to find out where I can improve."

"Can you give me some hint about why I didn't get the industry average of 10% according to US Labor and Statistics department?"

e.g. see this link for 2005 mean/median/raise averages for california. My salary was below mean and still below mean after raise. Even though the raise itself is about twice the average raise.

namely, why didn't I get more??