It is to your benefit to keep your interests that involve others taking part from being hindered by their inaction. Since you can’t control other people, it is vital to have the majority of the expectations for your interests placed on your own shoulders. It is not wise to take a risk on your interests by expecting others to assist in them a substantial amount.
Keep It Serious
If you do have expectations of others present in some of your current endeavors, make sure they are serious ones. Not being serious with others about the items they are to add to a project reflects poorly on your perceived desire to complete the project. A project is only as serious as the leader of it, since any lack of seriousness will be picked up by the other participators, and they will keep it in mind as an excuse for inaction at a later time. No one will be more serious about a project than the leader of it.
Example: Setting Up An Interview
An interview of another individual requires that they team up with you to answer the questions you send at them. If you are not serious with them about running the interview, they might postpone the date for it, answer half-heartedly, or decide to cancel. If those occur, it is quite difficult to then get it to come out good, because you then have to be highly diligent to make up for past lack of concern, and the other person may now be uninterested in continuing, as their interest may now be elsewhere.
Maintain Control
Only allow others to become involved with your interests when you are in complete control. Any other way is taking a large risk with that which matters a lot to you, but may not matter much to the person you were looking to work with.