Have you heard of “Pygmalion effect?" Pygmalion was a king in Greek mythology, and he fell in love with a statue of woman he caved. He was so fascinated with the sculpture that he prayed to the goodness to give her to life. The goodness granted his wish and the statue of Pygmalion came to life. This story might be fiction, but the heart of the story is that someone’s high expectation for other people results in high performance.
Pygmalion effect or Self-fulfilling prophecy was demonstrated by a famous experiment conducted by researchers at a school. In this research, students were randomly divided into two groups: ‘high potential’ and ‘normal’. The students in ‘high potential’ group achieved significant increase in both IQ and reading ability than did the students in normal group. Research has shown that the teacher’s high expectations for ‘high potential’ group led to high performance of this group. Teachers gave harder assignments, more feedback and more understanding of their achievements, which would bring higher performances in this group.
Similar research has carried out in a workplace. The finding of the research implies that higher level of achievement can be acquired by raising managers’ expectations of their subordinates. Managers should recognize that their subordinates have the potential to increase their performance. The managers also should set high performance goal and give his or her subordinates appropriate feedback. In addition, managers encourage and help their employees to master skills and tasks needed.
On the contrary, there is negative cycle, which is called “Golem effect”. This effect means lower leader expectations results in a lower performance. For example, an employee with high work skills and abilities makes a mistake by ill chance. His or her supervisor tends to wonder if the employee lacks skills, abilities, or motivation for work. The employee notices that he or she is losing trust. He or she may become more prudent or risk averse, and takes a negative stance toward new ideas or challenging jobs. Then, the manager will under-evaluate the employees’ abilities. In contrast, an employee may want to clean his or her tarnished image and tries difficult tasks which is beyond his or her abilities. This can lead to another failure, which may reinforce manager’s suspicions. In either case, self-fulfilling prophecy works in negative directions.
Managers should recognize that risk of “Golem effect (bad cycle)” and should enhance “Pygmalion effect (good cycle)”. Higher expectancies create better leadership and employees’ motivation, which leads to better job performance. And high job performance increases managers’ expectations.
Managers should focus on positive sides of their employees not on negative sides. I suppose good leaders have generous open spirits and optimistic view points. Moreover, good leaders play a key roll as mentors in the workplace.