The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

‘Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right'

                                                                                                                -Henry Ford

The Pygmalion Effect helps you think about how your expectations of other people can influence or motivate their performance. It argues that by setting and communicating high performance expectations, you can motivate better performance from the people you lead and manage.

The effect was originally studied in context of teachers' expectations of their students: Students who are expected to perform well usually do so. Those students of whom teachers have lower expectations will generally perform less well. However, this approach has clear application in the corporate world.

This effect is named after George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion", which is the basis of the film and stage musical "My Fair Lady". Shaw summarizes the effect by character Professor Higgins' observation that:

"...the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated."

We touch the lives of others in ways we often never know. People sometimes come into our personal world for fleeting moments and can leave us forever changed. We have more power to create or to destroy than we can imagine. We can leave things or individuals better or worse than we found them. A look, a word, a gesture has tremendous impact and frequently we blither along through our existence unaware of the mighty power that our communication wields.

Here is a real life example:

During my school days until high school I was an average student. I never studied hard enough to come first or even in top five since this was not expected from me by my teachers, I was always expected to be the shy kid who is an average ranker. However, in class eight my Hindi teacher Panth Miss understood that I am shy because of my low self-confidence and encouraged me a lot to study more. She used to praise me in front of the entire class to boost my confidence and boost it did, making me an all-rounder. The image I had of myself and that others had of me after this had a drastic change. She is one woman whom I look up to till date.

The Pygmalion effect is also used by Dr. Mandi to encourage us to write more blogs.

The corollary of the Pygmalion effect is the Golem effect, in which low expectations lead to a decrease in performance. The Pygmalion effect and the Golem effect are forms of self-fulfilling prophecy, and, in this respect, people will internalize their positive labels, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly. Within sociology, the effect is often cited with regard to education and social class.

Understanding the Theory

As a manager or supervisor, our aim is to get the best performance from the people who work for us. If we have high expectations of a member of our team, this can reinforce our efforts. On the other hand, if we convey lower expectations of an individual, this can undermine our efforts to improve his or her performance.

Without knowing it, we may show low expectations by delegating less challenging and interesting work. We may pay less attention to team members' performance and give them less support and praise. In return, the team member may feel undervalued and untrusted, and his or her confidence may be undermined. And so our lower expectations, albeit unconsciously communicated, can demotivate the team member, creating the exact opposite effect of the performance improvement that you want.

                                                     Aim High

More than this, the effect of low expectations can create a vicious circle – we expect less, we get less, we lower your expectations and further demotivate, and so on.

                                               

The good news is that the opposite is also true. By setting and communicating higher expectations, we can motivate team members and create a virtuous circle leading to continuously improving performance.

Using the Theory

So what should we do to harness the Pygmalion effect?

Things you can do are for example:

• Encourage your employees to set innovative goals

• Praise creative efforts, even if they weren't successful

• Stress the importance of the sharing of ideas among colleagues

• Be creative yourself – serve as a role model

• ‘Stand up’ for your employees innovative efforts

• Take pride in your employee’s achievements

• Publicly recognize innovative work

• Reward creativity properly

An important caveat to note is that you should always back up your Pygmalion inspired expectations, otherwise they may backfire. If you just expect employees to be creative without at the same time backing them with resources (for example time and materials), they will disbelieve your good intentions.

The end result of Pygmalion effect in organizations is: