The Pygmalion Effect

A team is good as you and your team think they can.

This idea is known as the "self-fulfilling prophecy." When you think your team will perform well in some strange, magical way they do. And similarly, when you believe do not work well, do not.

There are not enough experimental data suggest that self-fulfilling prophecy is true. A novel experiment in 1911 involved a very clever horse called Hans. This horse had a reputation for being able to add, multiply, divide and reaching the answer with its hooves. The extraordinary thing was that he could do this without his coach to be present. It 's just need someone to ask questions.

Investigation has revealed that when the questioner knew the answer, he or she sent several very subtle body language clues to Hans, as the raising of an eyebrow or the dilation of the nostrils. Hans simply picked up on these cues and continued tapping until it arrives at the desired response. The questioner waiting for a response and Hans required.

Similarly, an experiment was carried out at a British school in implementation of a new intake of pupils. Earlier this year, the students were each assigned a value, ranging from "excellent prospects" to "unlikely to do well." These assessments have been completely arbitrary and did not reflect how well the students had previously made. However, these ratings were given to teachers. At the end of the year, investigators compared the performance of pupils' with the rating. Despite their real abilities, there was a surprisingly high correlation between performance and evaluation. It seems that people perform as we expect.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is also known as the Pygmalion effect. This comes from a tale from Ovid about Pygmalion, a sculptor and a prince of Cyprus, which has created an ivory statue of his ideal woman. The result, which he called Galatea was so beautiful that he immediately fell in love with it. He prayed to the goddess Aphrodite to breathe life to the statue and make her his. Pygmalion Aphrodite granted her wish, the statue came to life and the couple married and lived happily ever after.

The story was also the basis of George Bernard Shaw play "Pygmalion", later transformed into the musical "My Fair Lady." In Shaw's play, Professor Henry Higgins claims he can take a cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, and turn it into a duchess. But, as Eliza points out to a friend Pickering, Higgins', is not what he learns and does that determines whether it will become a duchess, but how she has treated.

"You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way to speak and so on), the difference between a woman and a flower girl is not how he behaves, but how you Treaty. I will always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins because he always treats me like a girl with flowers, and always will be, but I know I can be a woman because you always treat me like a lady, and always will be. "

The implications for managers and administrators Pygmalion effect is enormous. This means that the performance of your team depends less on them than it does on you. The benefits you get from people is neither more nor less than what you expect, which means that you must always expect the best. As Goethe said, "treat a man as he is and will remain as is. Treat a man as he can and must and will become as he can and should be."