Leaving out the guesswork

Your manager may not put in the effort up front to articulate the expectations she/he has so that you're on the same page from the start. It may leave you guessing what successful completion might look like, and then frustrate you both when you think wrong.

To be fair, at a certain level of seniority, it becomes more reasonable for a manager to expect you to know what you're doing and work out the details by yourself. But even then, a good manager knows when to invest the time to get more aligned on those things.

There is a situation where your manager will assign you a project but not give enough instruction, hoping you will just figure it out. When the project is mostly completed, your manager may finally turn attention to the project and express disappointment because you did not do it in a way she exp...