Episode 164 - If the Expectations Are Unclear, Get the Answer

Confusion at work does not resolve itself. Unspoken expectations, poor meetings, unclear processes, and difficult leaders can leave engineers feeling powerless. In this episode, Steve and Jake explain how to stop accepting helplessness, ask better questions, and create the clarity you need to perform. Not theory, practical, tactical advice for engineers who want to move faster and take control of their careers.

Key Topics Covered:
• Why capable engineers still feel helpless in dysfunctional environments
• How unclear expectations quietly damage performance and confidence
• The career cost of waiting for someone else to create clarity
• Why asking questions is not weakness or confrontation
• How new employees can use curiosity to challenge broken norms
• Turning hostile or unproductive meetings toward clear outcomes
• The difference between blaming the system and improving it
• Why agendas and defined objectives change meeting quality
• How confusion interrupts learning and skill development
• The connection between clarity, execution, and career momentum

Actionable Steps:
• Ask, “What are the expectations here?” before starting unclear work
• Define what a successful outcome looks like
• Request an agenda before meetings that regularly go off track
• Ask what decision or result the meeting must produce
• Replace complaints with specific questions that move work forward
• Use your newness to surface assumptions others stopped questioning
• Identify one recurring source of confusion and address it directly
• Confirm priorities when multiple requests compete for your time
• Document expectations so everyone is working from the same standard
• Act before uncertainty becomes delay, frustration, or poor performance

Who This Episode Is For:
• Engineers working under vague or constantly changing expectations
• Early-career engineers afraid to ask basic questions
• Individual contributors frustrated by broken meetings and processes
• Engineers who feel stuck, overlooked, or powerless at work
• Emerging leaders who want to create clarity for others

Why It Matters:
Every day you remain confused is a day you are not fully executing, learning, or building trust. Clarity improves your energy because you stop wasting effort guessing. It improves visibility because your work produces stronger outcomes. It improves performance because you know what success requires. Your career moves faster when you stop accepting helplessness and start getting answers.

Where to Listen:
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Or wherever you get your podcasts

Share:
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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

And with my co-host and brother Jason, we are here to bring you guidance, fresh ideas, and the tools to help you become an impactful engineer.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Engineers don't fail because they lack technical skill. They fail because they never learn how to lead, communicate, and take ownership. This is the Impactful Engineer. We give you the blueprint for career excellence, not textbook answers. I'm Steve Maxie, a senior manager in product development, and I'm here with my brother Jake, owner and principal engineer at NLS Engineering. If you're done with a status quo and ready to take control of your career, then you're listening to the right show. Hello, Jacob. Hello. Hello. Salutations. All right. All right. How are you? I'm good, man. I'm good. You know, uh nice, nice uh week-long vacation, you know, hanging out with you in the in the fam.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Did you did did you ever anticipate seeing that many whales?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Dude, I was just about to say that.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

That was awesome.

unknown 1:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

There's like 30.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

I know. 30 home pack whales.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

That's not an exaggeration.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

No, I know. They were like just right up next to the boat, open their mouths and just hanging out, talking. Yeah, dude. That was so cool. Yeah. That was that was badass. And it was a good baseball game, too. So yeah, you know, watching the Sox, beat the Yankees. Anytime the Yankees lose, it's good.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

You told me this, but after the game, I was listening to a podcast and um Ed Milette was there at the same game. Yeah. Of course, in some sort of, you know, box, and and we'd never be able to walk up to him. But uh that was pretty cool. Yeah. In the same stadium. I think I think one of the guys from Shark Tank was there too. Robert Herdschaft or whatever the hell his name is. Okay. Uh he's a pretty cool dude. I just don't know how to say his name. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

I mean, it was a pretty big game, you know, uh the Red Sox playing the Yankees. That's uh kind of a big deal over there.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

So anyway, yeah. What do you guys think on you for being able to get me to step away from work just even a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Yeah, you know, cause some delays.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

And you know what money I can literally point at the math on my spreadsheet and say, look, for every hour that I am not doing this, this is what you're costing me.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

So so so my vacation cost me just as much as it costs you.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

I bet. There's something called paid vacations, though, I think, for you.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

You know, no, because it it it cost me a lot of money to go there. Yeah, I tellied it up and it was actually uh um it was me just paying you back. Yeah, you know, sort of. Really? Yeah. In my small way. Yeah, it's all good. Well, anyway. What do you yeah, what do you got for today? What kind of topic can we bestow on our audience?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

What topic can I confuse the hell out of people with because I haven't quite gained the skill of getting it out of my brain in a way that would mean something to anybody. And I know it's through stories and analogies and and all that good stuff, but uh, you know, I'm not quite there yet. I haven't done the the Toastmasters circuit yet, I guess. Or the 500 podcast episodes required before you're actually good. Right. Or, you know, spending 10 hours a week just thinking and writing about this one topic. Which uh when I start doing that, you're probably gonna hear the difference. Um but for now you're just gonna have to try and play along and uh and figure out what the hell I'm trying to throw down. That's why we like just the conversation style, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:47

It's we're just having a conversation and you're just hearing.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

You can ask me questions and be like, Jake, what the hell are you even trying to say, bro? I just nod my head and smile.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Oh, sure, dude. Oh yeah, that sounds great, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Yeah. All right. Well, like, so today, this one is is kind of one of those where it might be a development. It might take me a little bit here, and you might have to ask some questions. All right. But I just I've I've seen so much of this just like what I have distilled down to helplessness. Like people love, like to me, when I look, when I look around and the years I spent working with other people, it's like they love to just give away their power and just be helpless. And I was just thinking the other day, I'm just like, fuck helplessness. I don't know how else to say it. Like, just I I shall I shall not be helpless anymore on anything ever, right? And it's blame is something we talked about a few episodes ago, perhaps, and where you're giving away your power because you're just blaming something, right? Um you are complaining, so you're not like blaming a person or something, but you're just complaining about what's happening, right? Ah, we're just so busy and there's no time for this. And and well, if if you would well, that's back to blaming, right? If you would just allow more time, or if you didn't send these things my way, then maybe I could do these things. I just my message today is there is a like very logical step-by-step way in your career of eliminating this helplessness that you might feel, which I used to feel early in my career, and before I could identify it as the feeling of helplessness, just frustration and like, why the hell are we doing things this way? Um, you're not helpless, and you can take the steps to better your environment and the people you work with and the processes and all that, so that you can stop feeling so helpless. So that's kind of setting the stage. So I'll give you an example because I hear that examples are good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

I I'll need one.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Yeah. As as will everyone else, no. Working at a company, okay, seemed like no matter what we did, meetings, project meetings, would always end the same way. Okay. And they would end with the project lead or the principal of the firm just laying into everybody around the entire table, okay, about why the project wasn't where it should be. Or why did you put this symbol over here when it should be over here? Or who thought it was a great idea to do this, right? So we're dealing with somebody who is used to putting people down to make themselves either feel better or whatever. I'm not here to talk about the psychology of it, but it's like that's what would happen. They would just shit on people. And then the meeting would be over. And it's like and I and I felt like, what can I do like to make this better other than quit? You know? What can I do to make these meetings go more productively to where I'm not walking away, having not been able to get a word in edgewise and just feeling like shit? Right? So I was helpless. So I'm like, what do I do? I can't do anything about this. So therefore, I'm just gonna like l allow it to happen. So, but what can you do? So, like, I would encourage people to, if you're feeling that way, I mean, the example I gave is pretty extreme, but it was real. It was actually real. So, and and by the way, it doesn't have to be that extreme for you to start doing these things um for the betterment of your career, even if you think, quote unquote, that the job you're in is pretty good, you can always identify th, you know, things to improve in this arena. So, but like there were you know, an easy one. There was no agenda to any of the meetings ever. So just simply requesting that there be an agenda was one way to improve the situation and become less, you know, helpless. That was an easy one, right? One of the other one is what is the core objective? What do we want to walk away from this meeting having accomplished? Right? And this is all s this is all simple stuff, but most like no one around me ever asked these questions. And so when I showed up and I got through with the first meeting, I was like, is this how all of these meetings go? This this seems like the opposite of what should be happening. Like and I to me it was just like whoa.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

And yeah, instead of like Yeah, I think in situations like that is you especially when you're new, it it's tough to um have a an auth an authority voice, right, in those kinds of meetings. Um and so you can you can't really add your input, but I think you um you're in a unique position as a new person, especially, to be able to innocently ask questions. And so you can ask the question, be like, hey, you know, what is the goal here? Um, you know, what what objective do we need to meet for this to be solved? Right? Yeah, you can ask questions that are very straight to the point and to help guide the conversation to um a more productive uh meeting. And so I highly encourage people to to um leverage their newness at a at a company to just ask questions to help guide those more difficult type meetings, especially when you're like brand new and you're in there and you're just like uh I don't know why this guy's yelling at everyone or or you know trying to you know speak his mind, but maybe I can just ask questions and try to get to the root of it so we can help solve the problem for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yeah, absolutely. And that's just one example in in the realm of this helplessness that I'm talking about. So that's like more of a there's like a real problem. There's like a kind of a systemic problem going on at that at that workplace. Um But I mean so if you're in that position, you you you get to just ask those questions plainly. There should there's not a there's not uh an unreasonableness to your requesting these things. It so and that's in lieu of like fighting, right? You shouldn't be doing this. Uh we're not gonna tolerate this. Um like that kind of just doesn't that's not gonna go anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Sure feels good, but it's you can just say, like, you know, okay, uh, what should we do? What is the most ideal outcome for you know this this issue, right? I mean you you can always turn those things around. Um because if you don't know, then you're like, hey, I I want to be successful, so let's figure out what to do, not worry about what not to do.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

And I and I guess the the point on that particular story is that I've tried both. I've tried the hey, fuck you. I've tried that. That doesn't work, right? Weird. Uh not in so many words, but you know, that mentality. There's only three words. You shall not. Yeah. I guess that was very clear and concise, wasn't it? I'm just uh yeah, I'm just saying like that would be met with more animosity and just like you'd get nowhere. Um so ask those pragmatic logical questions. Um let's go another way. Let's go like just in this theme of of not being helpless. Um well there go ahead, you're about to say something.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Yeah, just before you start there, um I I think when you when you feel helpless, it's usually because you just don't know what the the status quo is or what you know the SOPs are, etc. Um, and I think to you just have a lot of blind spots, right? So the best way to get rid of those blind spots is to ask questions. I mean, I I think that's the base skill that that you can leverage here to not feel helpless. It's just find out the information, ask the questions, you know, and it's okay to ask questions.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

That's right. That's where I was actually going next. It's like perfect. No, it's really good. Like, this is not a um confrontational kind of like treatment feeling of helplessness. This is like I'm in a situation where there are expectations that have not been spoken, or I have been given direction, but figuring out how to get to the outcome is just something that it's like, how the hell do I do it?

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Like, and and and and should I just struggle through this and like try to figure it out and not knowing how to how to get there? Or is there a problem with the SOPs and the systems and processes and stuff like that? So there's like a helpless helplessness that you can land in um from a from a work performance standpoint too within the company. So that's where your advice comes in.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

It's like and I think the if you don't know what the questions are to ask to solve your problem here, um, like you you said it uh already, but the best initial question is like, hey, what are the expectations here? And that's it. Like it's very it's a broad question, but it's enough to to it's acute enough to get to the result that you're looking for, right? Because you already know, like you and the person you're asking already know what the situation is, and so you're like, hey, what's the expectations here? And they'll automatically be okay, to be successful, this is what we expect, and that's it. Like just say that one question and you'll be halfway there, if not all the way there.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Yep. And I guess the importance of this, because we'll just this is gonna be a short episode. I just wanted to inspire like someone today that to take action on it because there's a much bigger long-term picture to this. Like for each day that goes by that you're confused or don't have clarity or feel helpless or whatever, you're actively not compounding your skill growth, your ability to get the job done, your learning. Once you step into the next arena, once you've mastered what's in front of you and you're to the next thing. That's pr that's your progress, right? That's compounding skills every day. And eat for each second that passes that you don't have this clarity because you felt like you couldn't ask for it or you couldn't help yourself or the situation, you're just fallen like really far behind. You know, you're disadvantaging yourself, like in a huge way. So I wanted to bring that to someone's attention. And if that if the way I put it doesn't land, just think about what you can be doing to pull the future towards you by clearing out confusion and not accepting that you can't change it or get that clarity from someone. Okay. So so if you feel that, if you feel those symptoms, you get to just go figure it out and with authority, and you get to ask what are the expectations?