During a lazy summer’s afternoon, Billy sits on the aluminum bleachers at his friend Jeff’s baseball game, his phone resting loosely in his hands.
Sometimes he watches the game. Other times, he disappears into his phone. Neither holds his attention for long.
The game on his phone used to excite him. Now it feels predictable. He knows every move. Every outcome. Win or lose, nothing really changes.
Jeff taps his shoe with the bat, clearing his cleats, and steps back into the batter’s box.
Billy looks up as he hears a man shout from the bench, “Three balls, one strike. You can do it, Jeffrey.”
He lowers his phone and scans the scoreboard.
The bases are loaded. Two outs. Last inning. Jeff’s team is down by two runs. To win, everyone on base has to make it home.
Billy leans forward.
He feels the pressure before Jeff does. In the next few seconds, Jeff will either win or lose the game for two dozen families holding their breath in the stands.
The pitcher wipes his hands on his pants. Jeff wipes the sweat from his brow.
The pitch comes.
Jeff swings. CRACK!
The ball soars toward right field and slams into the chain-link fence, sticking for just a moment before dropping. Runners sprint. The right fielder grabs the ball and throws it in.
The ball moves fast—second base, then third.
Jeff slides.
He’s late.
Billy cringes. For a split second, it feels like everything has gone wrong.
Then the crowd erupts.
Billy realizes the runners have already crossed home plate. All three of them. The game is over. Jeff’s team has won.
Players rush the field. Teammates lift Jeff onto their shoulders. They carry him toward home plate as cheers echo across the diamond.
Billy watches, stunned.
His video game has never put him here—never asked anything of him. No one depends on him. No one’s joy or disappointment rests on what he does next.
This does.
When his mom picks him up after the game, Billy slips his phone into his pocket instead of turning it back on.
“Mom,” he says, “can you sign me up for baseball?”
She smiles. “That’s a change. What made you decide?”
Billy looks back at the field.
“In a video game, nothing changes,” he says. “But out there… on a team, everyone matters.”
It took time and distance for me to understand what I was really witnessing.
When I first noticed Mike walking toward me, I sensed something was off. His smile looked practiced, almost manufactured, as if confidence were being worn rather than felt. There was a tension in his eyes that didn’t match his enthusiasm. I remember thinking, whatever he was about to ask would carry consequences.
I was a co-leader of a Divorce Care recovery group at the time. Mike attended after a marriage that had gone rapidly south, largely due to unspoken expectations. He was doing the work—or at least appearing to.
“CJ, I’m getting married,” he said.
I paused. “To Sarah?” I asked. “From the group?”
He nodded. “We’ve been helping each other through the program. We talk every night. We eat dinner together. We’re in love.”
I reminded him that they had known each other for only seven weeks and that we encouraged people not to start new relationships for twelve months so they could fully recover. He listened—but didn’t slow down.
“We’ve been recovering together,” he said. “It’s working for us.”
Then he leaned in and asked if I would stand up for them at the wedding.
I was surprised. I cared about Mike and wanted the best for him. At the same time, I sensed he was trying to outrun his grief rather than heal from it.
I agreed—but with one condition. I told him that if, in six months, he realized the marriage was a mistake, he would come back to me and allow me to help him work toward reconciliation instead of divorce. He agreed without hesitation. He even said it was why I would make the perfect best man.
Six months later, Mike approached me again. He told me he was getting divorced.
I suggested we talk through reconciliation. He declined. He had already filed. He explained that if he divorced quickly, the marriage could be annulled—no child support, no alimony. The court date was set. He simply wanted me to know.
Then he walked away, adjusting his path toward a woman who had caught his eye. I turned and walked in the opposite direction.
At the time, I wasn’t angry. What stayed with me was something quieter—clarity.
Mike hadn’t forgotten our agreement. He had simply stopped honoring it once it no longer served him.
That realization lingered. And over time, I began to notice a pattern.
The Silent Contracts We Live By
As I reflected on that experience, I began seeing the same dynamic everywhere—at home, at work, in leadership, and in partnerships.
There are few things more exhausting than trying to live up to expectations you never agreed to. It isn’t just frustrating, it’s unfair. And it becomes even more painful when those expectations were never spoken, yet somehow we’re judged for failing to meet them.
This happens when we live under silent contracts.
One person operates from a mental checklist:
“I thought you’d handle that.”
“I assumed you knew the deadline mattered.”
“I expected more initiative.”
“I thought you cared.”
The other person operates from a different script:
“No one told me.”
“That was never discussed.”
“I would have done it differently if I’d known.”
“I didn’t realize that was the priority.”
Both people may be sincere. Both may be committed. But without shared expectations, commitment alone isn’t enough. Resentment begins quietly, long before anyone names it.
Efficiency and Effectiveness: Competing Desires
As my curiosity deepened, I noticed that many expectations are formed by one of two desires: efficiency or effectiveness.
Efficiency values speed, output, and momentum. Effectiveness values quality, care, and impact. Both matter. Both are necessary. Yet they pull in opposite directions.
When efficiency dominates, things move quickly. Boxes get checked. Progress looks good on paper. But nuance fades. Communication shortens. People begin to feel like tools rather than partners.
When effectiveness dominates, care increases. Empathy deepens. Quality improves. But time slips away. Deadlines drift. Momentum slows. Frustration builds—especially for those responsible for results.
Neither approach is wrong.
The problem arises when one person expects efficiency while another is pursuing effectiveness—and no one talks about it.
Without conversation, disappointment is almost inevitable.
Agreement Changes Everything
What became increasingly clear to me was this: balance doesn’t happen by accident. It has to be negotiated.
Healthy relationships, personal or professional, depend on three shared understandings:
What is expected
What a win looks like
What failure looks like
Without these, people can be fully committed and still completely misaligned.
In business, this shows up as missed deadlines, rework, and frustration that seems to come out of nowhere. In personal relationships, it shows up as emotional distance, recurring arguments, and the phrase, “You should just know.”
No one should have to decode expectations like a puzzle. Clear expectations aren’t controlling. They’re kind.
Expectations as Agreements, Not Demands
A year after Mike’s second divorce, he invited me to speak with his leadership team during a major business expansion. He believed the communication challenges he experienced personally might apply professionally.
In the room, as expectations were openly discussed and negotiated, the atmosphere shifted. Tension gave way to understanding. People realized that no one’s expectations were born from bad intentions—only from different pressures and priorities.
But when Mike stepped back in, his expectations stopped sounding like agreements and started sounding like conclusions. He wasn’t looking for alignment. He wanted endorsement.
That moment clarified something else for me: expectations stop working the moment they stop being shared. When expectations become demands, collaboration collapses.
Over time, I learned that Mike’s business didn’t survive the expansion. Decisions were made that no one felt ownership of. Trust eroded. The company failed. I also learned he divorced again, blaming circumstances and other people.
The pattern was hard to ignore.
The Simple Truth
Unspoken expectations don’t just damage relationships. They drain trust. They erode collaboration. They quietly undermine everything they touch.
People don’t usually leave marriages, teams, or companies because expectations were too clear. They leave because expectations were never agreed to—or worse, rewritten after the fact.
What I’ve learned, and continue to explore, is this: Clear expectations don’t limit people. They liberate them. They replace guessing with confidence, resentment with alignment, and frustration with forward movement.
The question I now ask myself, personally and professionally, is simple: Where am I expecting something that I’ve never actually agreed upon with the other person?
A conversation doesn’t guarantee agreement. But without one, we almost guarantee disappointment—Because it isn’t fair in business or in life to expect someone to live up to standards they never agreed to.
Collaboration is often spoken about as a goal, but rarely understood as a process—much less an enjoyable one.
Many teams assume collaboration happens when people agree, attend meetings, or divide up tasks. But agreement alone doesn’t move things forward, and activity without direction only creates motion, not progress.
True collaboration, the kind that produces meaningful results, requires something more intentional.
Director to Director: Learning Collaboration the Hard Way
Years ago, I took another directing class. I already had several TV shows and films under my belt. Still, I wanted to learn a few techniques from a director who had won numerous awards for directing shows on the legitimate stage. Her work was brilliant, and I knew some of her techniques would transfer.
Before our first class, knowing my background, she suggested that there was nothing she could teach me that I didn’t already know. I assured her that I’d be happy if I learned one technique that could improve my skill set. She agreed to teach me under the condition that she could ask me questions about film and television so she could learn from me as well.
After the first month of classes, she suggested I learn to collaborate better with my actors and crew. While she enjoyed watching the outcome of my directing, she suggested I could have more fun and dive a bit deeper into the script through a balanced view of collaboration.
Her suggested form of collaboration follows a simple, but demanding pattern. Progress happens when people align, act, and achieve—in that order.
ALIGN: Collaboration Begins With Shared Direction
Sharing elements of direction was hard at first. As a director, the vision started with me, and most of the time, my direction was the only direction provided. However, my instructor suggested that, while I have a complete understanding of the entire show, the actors know their characters’ subtleties better.
The costume designer, while she quickly picked up my vision, was the one who sculpted the final wardrobe. The same concept applies to the property master, the set designer, and all other department heads. Each one had to pass direction on to their teams, but first had to capture my approval.
When I realized that the department heads could all share some form of direction, I was able to work smarter, not harder. Their direction just needed to align with mine.
Alignment is the most overlooked and most critical step in collaboration.
To align means ensuring everyone is oriented toward the same outcome before action begins. It’s not about unanimous agreement or identical thinking. It’s about shared understanding.
I gave it a try. At first, each person had interpreted my vision a bit differently. Some were focused on the heart of the character transformation. Others prioritized the show’s visual quality. A few were motivated by what made them look good, even if their ideas didn’t fit the show.
Without alignment, a predictable pattern emerges: activity fragments, energy scatters, and frustration grows quietly.
Alignment requires slowing down long enough to ask:
What are we actually trying to achieve?
Why does this matter?
What does success look like together?
Once we named these answers out loud, something shifted. The tension in the room eased, not because conflict disappeared, but because clarity arrived.
Alignment doesn’t eliminate differences. It gives them a common direction. At that point, everyone felt heard and understood. When I had to turn down some ideas due to focus or vision, everyone aligned their ideas because we had become a cohesive team, and no one wanted to break the show.
ACT: Collaboration Comes Alive Through Ownership
Action is where collaboration becomes real—or reveals itself as theoretical.
Once alignment is established, movement must follow. But collaborative action isn’t about assigning tasks and hoping for the best. It’s about shared ownership and visible contribution.
Once the production team aligned on the outcome, we stopped debating ideas and started committing to actions. Roles became clearer. Deadlines became meaningful. Accountability became mutual instead of managerial.
Action requires trust. It asks people to step forward, not wait to be told. It also requires restraint—knowing when to act independently and when to coordinate.
Collaboration stalls when people wait for permission. It accelerates when people take responsibility within shared clarity.
The careful blending of these ideas creates a better show than any single person’s vision. In this case, mine.
ACHIEVE: Collaboration Is Measured by Results, Not Effort
Achievement is the natural byproduct of aligned action—but it’s often misunderstood.
Many teams celebrate effort. Fewer take the time to evaluate outcomes.
Achievement doesn’t mean perfection. It means progress that can be named, measured, and learned from. It gives collaboration credibility.
When our team finally delivered the initiative, it wasn’t flawless—but it was real. And because we reflected together afterward, the achievement became more than a result; it became a shared reference point for future collaboration.
The live audiences made it clear that something special had emerged from our production. Not because I was a great director, but because I learned how to collaborate and draw the best out of each person on my team.
Achievement reinforces trust. It proves that working together was worth the investment. It also feels good. Everyone in the cast and crew told me they would work with me again, anytime I needed them. Our joint achievement came from the trust we had instilled in each other.
Collaboration Requires Intention
Collaboration is not a personality trait or a meeting format. It’s a discipline.
When collaboration fails, it’s rarely because people didn’t care enough. More often, it’s because they skipped a step—acting before aligning, or celebrating effort without achieving clarity.
Strong collaboration asks us to slow down early, step up fully, and reflect honestly.
Take a moment to consider the spaces where you collaborate—at work, in leadership, or within your community.
Are you aligned on what truly matters?
Are you acting with shared ownership?
Are you achieving outcomes you can learn from together?
Progress doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when we choose to align, act, and achieve—intentionally, patiently, and together.
CJ's Corner 