Football & Burgers!

When I teach Organization Behavior, I always dwell at some length over the Pygmalion Effect. I know I’ve talked about it earlier, but, the theory so fascinates me because it can make such a difference to a person and their lives.

When ‘Big’ Mike, in the Blind Side, asks if he can decide whether he can either choose to flip burgers or play college football, his mother (adopted) reluctantly says, yes he can. However Michael knows that she would be disappointed if he chooses to flip burgers! The theory tells us, what every one of us can be, only if……………………………only if the bar was set high enough for us. High enough to interest us to go for the goal.

Many years ago, as a young navigator, I had a deck hand, who had joined us after quitting the warships. The sailor was well informed, well read & smart. He was very good at his work and was fun to talk to. Sadly he was designated to assist the cook and ended up peeling potatoes & cleaning fish on a routine basis. As the years went by, I would see the sailor on and off and the deterioration was tragic. He had turned cynical and unfit and worse become a full blown alcoholic, beyond redemption. What if, he had had a superior officer, who could have helped him grow? An officer who would have set him peaks to scale and shown him the right path. An officer who would have asked him to stretch himself.

When youngsters leave college and get to industry, it is very important, that they get good and decent bosses. I think it is fundamentally more important than brand names and pay packages. People perform better when they are expected to perform better. It is important for mangers to understand that and realize that prophecies play themselves out, sooner than later.

An experiment was carried out at a British school into the performance of a new intake of pupils. At the start of the year, the pupils were each given a rating, ranging from “excellent prospect” to “unlikely to do well”. These were totally arbitrary ratings and did not reflect how well the pupils had previously performed. Nevertheless, these ratings were given to the teachers. At the end of the year, the experimenters compared the pupils’ performance with the ratings. Despite their real abilities, there was an astonishingly high correlation between performance and ratings. It seems that people perform as well as we expect them to.

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.”

Food for thought & Big Mike did not flip burgers because his mama expected him to do better! She expected better!