Unleashing Potential: The Power of Pygmalion Effect and Leadership Influence

The ultimate function of prophecy is not to tell the future, but to make it. Enthusiasm and apathy, both are infectious. Excellent leaders have the ability to create high performance expectations that subordinates fulfill. Developing young people is a special challenge.

For more details, please find the attachment.

Thanks Peer.

To add more to this.

The idea is known as "self-fulfilling prophecy", which is based on a story by Ovid about Pygmalion, a sculptor and prince of Cyprus, who 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 begged the goddess Aphrodite to breathe life into the statue and make her his own. Aphrodite granted Pygmalion his wish, the statue came to life and the couple married and lived happily ever after.

There were a few successful experiments carried based on this, and the most famous is the on the students of a UK based school. In the study the pupil were rated arbitrarily (no relation to their past performance) ranging from excellent to poor in the beginning of the year. These ratings were then handed over to their teachers.

At the end of the year high co-relation was found between actual performance and rating. The reason was the teacher boosted the excellent rated pupil all the time to perform better also they trusted them to do better.

This concept was later used in a movie called "my fair lady", where professor Higgins transformed a flower girl to win the beauty contest. Though this was done to win a bet, but professor Higggins always showed trust in the flower girl to become the duchess.

The implication of the Pygmalion effect for leaders and managers is massive. It means that the performance of your team depends less on them than it does on you. The performance you get from people is no more or less than what you expect: which means you must always expect the best. As Goethe said, “Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.”

hi,

Thanks Peer n Joshi for the contribution.

I would like to add a few things furthr to it:

This idea is known as “the self-fulfilling prophecy”. When you believe the team will perform well, in some strange, magical way they do. And similarly, when you believe they won’t perform well, they don’t.

There is enough experimental data to suggest that the self-fulfilling prophecy is true. One unusual experiment in 1911 concerned a very clever horse called Hans. This horse had the reputation for being able to add, multiply, subtract, and divide by tapping out the answer with its hooves. The extraordinary thing was that it could do this without its trainer being present. It only needed someone to put the questions.

On investigation, it was found that when the questioner knew the answer, he or she transmitted various very subtle body language clues to Hans such as the raising of an eyebrow or the dilation of the nostrils. Hans simply picked up on these clues and continued tapping until he arrived at the required answer. The questioner expected a response and Hans obliged.

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.

Regards

HR_Pro

Hello,

The Pygmalion Effect is also well depicted in the movie "Munnabhai MBBS." A person is affected positively by a positive suggestion made to him by his senior/superior/peers. If you have confidence in the other person and expect him to do his job, the chances are probably he would do it. It is also called the "Teacher-Expectancy Effect" - situations in which students perform better than other students simply because they are expected to do so.

Regards,
Surbhi

Hi!

I was once told this story about the Pygmalion effect -

A boy named Johnny and his parents were to visit some relatives' place. As part of their preparations, the parents dressed up Johnny nicely and then advised him:

"Johnny, do not ask for cookies from the hosts. If offered, accept only one piece from the plate. DO NOT PUT YOUR HAND IN THE COOKIE JAR."

"Johnny, don't play with decorative items in the drawing room. DO NOT TOUCH THE FISH BOWL."

"Johnny, don't touch the piano at our host's house."

When they actually went to the relative's residence, the first thing Johnny did was to play around with the fishbowl, which eventually fell down and crashed. To divert his attention, the host asked, "Johnny, would you like to have some cookies?" Upon this, Johnny went to the dining table, opened the jar, and helped himself to a handful of cookies. With one hand full of cookies, he decided to let his parents and the hosts talk amongst themselves and went to the piano to play some music.

According to the narrator of this story, Johnny acted this way because his parents had made him aware that he could play with the fishbowl, put his hand in the cookie jar, and play the piano. He realized that it was possible for him to play the piano, have cookies, and play with the fishbowl. He did not care about the desirability of his actions; he only noticed the possibilities of the actions - "I can have the cookies, I can touch the fishbowl, I can go to the piano myself." He never bothered about the "should not" part of it.

Your views, please.

- Hiten