Pygmalion: High and Low Expectations are Contagious
In George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle explains: “You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves but how she she’s treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins because he always treats me as a flower girl and always will: but I know I can be a lady to you because you always treat me as a lady and always will.”
The influence of one person’s expectations on another’s behavior is by no means a new discovery. The powerful influence of “self fulfillment” theory has long been recognized by teachers, physicians, and behavioral scientists.
In Education
In a classic experiment, Rosenthal a Harvard Sociologist, worked with elementary school children from 18 classrooms. He randomly chose 20% of the children from each room and told the teachers they were “intellectual bloomers.” He explained that these children could be expected to show remarkable gains during the year. The result? The experimental children showed significantly greater gains in their IQ’s than did the other students. The “intellectual bloomers” really did bloom!
When teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do; when teachers do not have such expectations, performance and growth may be influenced in less positive ways.
Healing Professions
In the healing professions, it has long been recognized that a physician’s, psychiatrist’s or psychologist’s expectations can have a formidable influence on a patient’s physical or mental health. When both healer and patient have congruent expectations, the outcome is likely to be influenced by their beliefs. The pessimistic prognosis can be observed and the efficacy of a new treatment can be greatly influenced by the physicians’ expectations.
In Business
What managers expect of their subordinates and the way they treat them largely determines their performance and career progress. Subordinates, more often than not, appear to do what they believe they are expected to do. A unique characteristic of superior managers is the ability to create high performance expectations that subordinates fulfill. Less effective managers fail to develop similar expectations, and as a consequence, the productivity of their subordinates suffers. The managers’ expectations are contagious.
If the manager believes subordinates will perform poorly, it is literally impossible for them to mask this expectation, even though most managers don’t believe this is true. The “low-expectation” manager tends to express beliefs in subtle differences in interaction through both verbal and non-verbal communication.
When, early in their career, individuals are exposed to managers with high and achievable expectations, they are more likely to model that behavior when they move into positions of influence. They are more likely to have learned the basics that lead to greater productivity and career satisfaction. Thus, the first bosses of new college hires should be the best in the organization.
The challenge is to speed the development of managers who will treat subordinates in ways that lead to high performance and career satisfaction.
The Pygmalion Effect
If managers are unskilled, they leave scars on the careers of young people, cut deeply into their self-esteem, and distort their image of themselves as human beings. But, if they are skillful and have high expectations, subordinates’ self-confidence will grow, their capabilities will develop, and their productivity will be high. More often than one realizes, the manager is Pygmalion. J. Sterling Livingston, Harvard Business Review
If, as a manager your beliefs and expectations are contagious, what messages are you telegraphing to your subordinates….fulfillment, satisfaction, and high productivity or the opposite?