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February 25, 2007

TIP #54: Expectation Blindness

Traveling recently with stops in three cities in five days, I found myself trying not to awaken my husband as I got ready for an important meeting. But, I couldn't find the hairdryer. I looked everywhere ... in the bathroom, in the closet, in the dresser. No hairdryer.

Ready to call housekeeping to request one be brought to the room, my husband woke up and I asked him if he'd seen it. Groggily he walked into the bathroom, and pointed to the wall. There it was, on the wall.

Even though the wall is a traditional place for hotel hairdryers I wasn't looking for a hairdryer there. The last three hotels had free-standing hairdryers. So, expecting to find the hairdryer on a bathroom shelf, my expectation blindness caused me to look past the obvious.

We do that at work, too. We see what we expect to see, or not see. If we expect problems, we see problems. If we expect opportunities, it's funny how we find them.

If you want to be winning at working, look beyond your expectation blindness and you'll find a whole lot more than a wall-mounted hairdryer.

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Posted by Nan Russell at February 25, 2007 06:22 PM