When I was 8 year’s old, my family moved from Montgomery, AL to a suburb of Seattle, WA. It was a particularly exciting move as my parents told my sisters and I that we would be living on an island – Mercer Island to be exact. At this point in my life, the only island that I was familiar with was Gilligan’s Island which was tropical and lush and everyone (the Professor, Marianne and all the rest) lived in thatched huts. How COOL is that?!

Cutting to the chase, Mercer Island is an island in the middle of Lake Washington in the Greater Seattle area. It is FAR from a tropical paradise – more of a rainy gray Northwest suburbia. It’s a fine place. But, not at all what I expected. In hind sight, I feel for my parents and the blue faced tantrum that they had to endure.

I use this story as an example of the power of a word or phrase to set expectations with your audience. If you are trying to move your team forward, you need to start from their base level of understanding and craft your message to help them appropriately visualize where you are headed. With shared understanding and expectations, you can move faster and more efficiently.