The Principle of Least Surprise
Why Leaders Hate Being Surprised (and How to Avoid It)
As a leader, few things are more frustrating than being blindsided. You come back from vacation, expecting your team to have moved from Point A to Point B, only to find them at 龜. It’s befuddling, exhausting, and downright disappointing.
This is where the Principle of Least Surprise comes in. It’s a simple but powerful idea: as a leader, we generally don't like being surprised by our team’s progress, decisions, or challenges. Conversely, our team(s) shouldn’t be surprised by our expectations, priorities, or feedback.
But this principle isn’t just about managing our teams—it’s also about managing up and managing down. And, crucially, it’s about how you handle yourself when you’re surprised. Here’s why this principle matters—and how to put it into practice at every level.
Why Surprises Are Painful in Leadership
Surprises trigger the startle reflex—a primal reaction that pulls focus, drains energy, and erodes trust. For leaders, surprises often mean:
Missed Expectations: The team isn’t where you thought they’d be.
Frustration: You’re left wondering, "Why didn’t anyone tell me?"
Lost Time: You have to backtrack, realign, and course-correct: "Just got back from vacation, I have a week of email to catch up on, oh and now we're 3 weeks off target."
But surprises aren’t just bad for leaders—they’re bad for teams, too. When leaders are surprised, it often means the team wasn’t transparent, didn’t communicate effectively, or didn’t understand the priorities. And when teams are surprised by leadership decisions, it can lead to confusion, frustration, and disengagement. Since leaders are accountable for their teams, this all rolls up to us.
How to Avoid Surprises: Practical Tips
1. Managing Down: Leading Your Team
Regular Updates and Check-Ins: Don’t go weeks without checking in. Regular updates—whether through stand-ups, one-on-ones, or status reports—keep everyone aligned.
Clear Communication: Keep your language accurate, direct, and clear. Repeat yourself as your team can easily get lost in the weeds.
Clear Communication: Make sure your team knows what’s most important and why. Involve them in prioritization to give them ownership.
Handling Significant Events: If a key team member resigns or a project goes off-track, address it head-on. Provide context, explain the why, and give your team space to ask questions.
Be Consistent: Deliver on your promises. If you're matching 6% on the 401(k), do it. If you're vacation policy is "unlimited" make it so. Sometimes this means you need to wait to give potentially good news. Rushing out "good news" that isn't fully baked is a bad move.
Pay Attention to the Small Things: If you don't pay attention you can miss valuable signals. This is a recipe for getting blindsided. It often happens due to lack of trust in oneself. But, as the leader, we're accountable and own the outcomes so you need to figure it out.
2. Managing Up: Leading Your Boss
Clear Communication: Keep your language accurate, direct, and clear. My rule of thumb is that short, clear, and accurate updates correlate highly with success. And, as a boss, few things are more frustrating that updates that are just incorrect.
Heard it or Got it? Good bosses listen and ensure you're heard, but not all do. Good bosses, with context, can get what you're saying, but not all do. Make sure your boss heard you and understood you. Because, if they heard you and got it but downplay what you're telling them, maybe there's something you don't know.
Proactive Updates: Don’t wait for your boss to ask for a status report. Keep them informed about progress, challenges, and risks.
Anticipate Questions: Put yourself in your boss’s shoes. What information will they need? What decisions will they have to make? Provide that context upfront.
Flag Risks Early: If something isn’t going as planned, don’t hide it. Be honest about the situation and propose solutions. There's a great quote, "Bad news is good news. Good news is no news. No news is bad news."
Look for Solutions: A nice follow-on to "Boss, here's a problem you didn't expect" is "...and, boss, here's the solution" and even better is, "... and it's taken care of."
3. Managing Across: Leading Peers and Stakeholders
Be Honest: Your peers are usually (hopefully) experienced and can handle bad news. Sugarcoating it only delays the truth from being know and exacerbating the issue. This can be difficult, though, because bad news that affects them, affects them, and you cannot control that.
Share Progress: Your peers depend on the output of your team. Make sure they know where your team is at. Let them know about delays. If Sales and Marketing are about to roll out a $500k campaign and train employees based on your engineering estimates, they get really disappointed pushing that back. The earlier you let folks know you're off target, the better.
Share Context: Help others understand the why behind your decisions. This builds trust and reduces misunderstandings. Tech gets complicated pretty quickly. Explaining tradeoffs to your peers is helpful.
Follow Up: After sharing information, check in to see how it landed. You’d be surprised how differently people can interpret the same message.
How to Handle Yourself When You’re Surprised
Even with the best communication and planning, surprises can still happen. When they do, how you respond matters. Here’s how to handle yourself with emotional maturity and grace:
1. Pause and Breathe
When you’re surprised, your first instinct might be to react—quickly and emotionally. Instead, take a moment to pause and breathe. This gives you time to process the situation and respond thoughtfully, rather than impulsively. Your team is watching how you respond. Be steady.
2. Assume Positive Intent
As I wrote in my article on the Assumption of Positive Intent, your teammates (or boss, or peers) aren’t usually trying to let you down. They’re likely doing their best with the information and resources they have. Start by assuming they had positive intent, and ask yourself: "What might they have been trying to achieve?"
Over and over, I've seen very well intentioned engineers make the wrong call. They usually did this in response to mixed messaging or lack of experience. I can usually work with that: I'll take an engaged, proactive engineer over a misaligned or disaffected engineer any day.
3. Get Curious, Not Judgy
Instead of jumping to conclusions or assigning blame, get curious. Ask questions like:
"Help me understand how we got here."
"What challenges did you face along the way?"
"What can we learn from this?"
This approach not only defuses tension but also helps you uncover the root cause of the surprise. It also gives you insight to their decision making process when you're not around.
4. Reflect on Your Role
Emotional maturity means taking responsibility for your part in the situation. Ask yourself:
"Could I have communicated more clearly?"
"Did I provide enough context or support?"
"What can I do differently next time?"
This reflection helps you grow as a leader and prevents similar surprises in the future. This is also a hallmark of metacognition, something I'll be writing about soon.
5. Focus on Solutions, Not Blame
Once you’ve understood the situation, shift your focus to solutions. Work with your team (or boss, or peers) to realign and move forward. This collaborative approach reinforces trust and shows that you’re all on the same team.
Counter Examples: How the Principle of Least Surprise Is Often Misused
While the Principle of Least Surprise is a powerful tool, it can be misused—by both bosses and direct reports. Here’s a sampling of what you can expect:
From Bosses: Emotional Manipulation
"I’m [INSERT-HEIGHTENED-EMOTION]" Technique: Some leaders repeatedly mis-deploy phrases like "I’m shocked that XYZ isn’t done!" or "I’m surprised this isn’t better!" to spur action. While this can be effective in the short term, it’s often a form of emotional manipulation. By repeatedly bringing up their heightened emotional state, they hope you’ll adopt a reciprocal emotional state and work harder to avoid disappointing them. I worked at one place where anything less than overdelivery was met with dramatic emotional manipulation. The leaders deployed this daily. Little did they know behind their backs, people thought this ridiculous and unhelpful. In the end, it dulled everyone's ability to care, like in the Boy Who Cried Wolf. In fact one of my direct reports would hear these outbursts and literally have to go off camera so he wouldn't be seen laughing at the guy who just went all "silverback" on the team.
STTs (Suddenly Timed Tantrums): One of my bosses called these "strategic meltdowns." When he felt frustrated or thought people needed pushing, he’d just lose it. We thought it was childish; he thought it was strategic. Spoiler: It wasn’t. Over time, this erodes trust and creates a culture of fear or dismissal.
Inconsistency: I've also had a boss who made it his goal to be inconsistent. You never knew how he was going to respond. This created a strong sense of surprise, but again, was abuse that dulled the relationship and his ability to persuade.
From Direct Reports: Immature Tactics
- Catching You Off Guard: Immature team members sometimes try to surprise you, especially when they quit. They want to see your reaction—to make you feel how important they are now that they’re leaving. Often, they want you to know it’s your fault. By springing their resignation on you, they’re asserting control. They want you to scramble, to beg them to stay, or to feel the weight of their absence. It’s a power move, plain and simple.
How to Respond to Misuse
...don’t let their emotional state dictate yours. Their emotions are not yours.
Stay Calm: Whether it’s a boss’s tantrum or a direct report’s resignation, don’t let their emotional state dictate yours. Their emotions are not yours. Stay calm, composed, and professional. I can't stress this one enough. Here, let me put that in some fancy quotes or something.
Don’t Take the Bait: If someone is trying to manipulate you, don’t give them the reaction they’re looking for. Respond with curiosity and empathy, not frustration or defensiveness.
Address the Behavior: If a boss or team member consistently misuses surprise, address it directly. For example:
The Bigger Picture: Building Trust and Alignment
At its core, the Principle of Least Surprise is about trust and alignment. It’s about creating a culture where:
Leaders aren’t blindsided by their teams.
Teams aren’t blindsided by their leaders.
Everyone is working toward the same goals, with clarity and purpose.
When you get this right, surprises become rare—and when they do happen, they’re opportunities for growth, not sources of frustration.
So, the next time you feel that startle reflex kicking in, ask yourself: "How can I communicate better to avoid this next time?" Because in leadership, as in life, the best surprises are the ones you see coming.