Do you, as a top manager, stand in the way of the strategy being realized?

The Pygmalion effect or Rosenthal effect describes the psychological phenomenon that the greater the belief and positive expectations one has of a person, the better they function — the opposite is also true! One's expectations simply become a self-fulfilling prophecy in relation to the place that each individual ends up in. It's a self-reinforcing mechanism that's pretty wild -- if you believe in and acknowledge the phenomenon.

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The concept of the Pygmalion effect originated in Greek mythology where Pygmalion could bring his sculptures to life by the power of thought. Rosenthal conducted a series of psychological experiments in the 1960s that showed that one can influence the behavior and performance of both animals and humans through expectations of them. Rosenthal, for example, gave his students rats divided into two teams. One team was told that their rats were particularly nimble and the other that theirs were some particularly lethargic rats. After this, the two teams had to complete some maze learning experiments with their rats. And indeed, the “nimble” rats performed far better than the “lethargic” rats. In the training with the rats, it was also found that the students on the team with the “nimble” rats had been more supportive, friendly and appreciative of the rats than the students who had the “lethargic” rats.

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Rats in a laboratory are one thing, but these experiments have been replicated many times, for example, with school students where it turns out time and time again that the awareness of teachers that you have some “nimble” students in itself leads to a better result in the students, since as a teacher you show a different behavior, a positive response, increased attention and support just by the idea that the raw material you are working with is particularly good.

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The Pygmalion effect has also been proven plenty of times in organizational contexts — in manufacturing companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc. An expectation that the employees you have are good and nimble creates better results in itself — even if the employees are not necessarily particularly nimble.

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How big do you really believe that your employees and managers are the ones who can deliver the goods and ensure that you leave the imprint you set on the world for? How smart, innovative and powerful are they in your eyes? Your faith in and trust in your employees and managers should radiate from you as a top manager, because it is so obvious that this is a significant factor in how much they believe in themselves. And you can't do without the fact that your employees believe in themselves and that they are willing to put their ideas and thoughts into practice.

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In all the organizations that I work in as a consultant — public and private — there is huge potential in this regard. It often seems that the top leaders are not at all aware of, aware of, or acknowledge the dynamics of the pygmalion effect. I meet a lot of top managers who sit around and are upset about those who they pay in expensive judgments for -- the employees and middle managers. They are not sufficiently innovative, agile, committed, actionable, competent, etc., etc. But turn the whole thing around and say to yourself, “if that's what you give me, then that's what I'm going to work with.” In all organizations, it should be the case that as long as you are on the payroll, yes, then you are part of the team — 100% and then you have the right to receive full support, support and positive expectations exactly in relation to who you are and what you can and then it is your responsibility as a top manager to work with the best possible raw material. So you already have the best of the best employees and managers. Talk them up instead of talking them down. Drop the stomach-churning approach, get out on the floor and give your organization a huge boost of positive expectations. You have to radiate all the way through that you see the potential in them better than they do — and tell them that.

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For example, start by talking about how incredibly innovative, agile, committed, effective and competent your employees and middle managers are. And come up with concrete examples of it from their everyday lives and tell them how important it is for your users, citizens, customers that they do exactly what they do. And if you say (as someone does) that you don't have any examples of that — well, that's another chapter in the book you need to look up — because then you have to set up a new team or find yourself a new team.

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This is about the fact that people's behavior is influenced by the expectations expressed by the environment and it takes incredibly little for the rings of negative expectations to spread throughout the organization and that spiral is very difficult to stop again — and you simply cannot afford for that to happen.

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Now give the employees and managers that you pay in expensive judgments for some real responsibility in terms of the main direction you need to take as a company and have high and positive expectations that they also check into the project that you get energized by and turn on. Do not create control mechanisms for the entire organization because the 3% that do not comply will affect the 97 percent who are basically on the journey and want to do a good job.

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In George Bernard Shaw's film Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle says:

“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's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins because she 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.”

People live up to expectations or down to expectations. So consider whether you are actually standing in the way of realizing the strategy that you so desperately see implemented through the expectations and confidence you show. Imagine if you could transform your organization by changing your own perception of what your employees and middle managers are capable of doing and having the courage to tell them.