Day5: The Pygmalion Effect

The class started with passing on of a two-coloured straw cube and a small snail dummy.  The first question sir asked was: “ Can anyone explain what (a+b)² mean using this cube.  Few of us tried and succeeded, he then asked for (a+b)³ only a few could explain. The idea behind this was to explain how to use a simple cube to explain so many things and thus could be sold easily provided we know how to use it. The next was the snail dummy, he told us the story of Economic Times and how they expanded spirally. He talked of exponential growth and Fibonacci Series. Then he jumped on to performance of employers, he quoted a famous theory called Pygmalion effect. Let us discuss Pygmalion effect in brief here:

Pygmalion Effect:

In relation to management, Pygmalion Effect states that if Higher expectations are placed on people they are bound to perform well. But this happens with only a set of people i.e. a specific relationship eg. Mother-child, Teacher-student, captain-players, performer-audience.

Another example of the Pygmalion effect is in groups. If there are two groups, one group thought that their teacher was "good", the other group thought he was "not good". The teacher treated both groups the same, but the group with a positive expectations had better outcomes than the others; Simply because those with positive expectations made them perform better than other students.

The Pygmalion effect is also an important instrument in management theory. It makes managers be aware, that the success of their employees depends not only on qualification, personal qualities or working environment. Manager always has to believe in his people and expect them to achieve the best results. In such case the subordinates will always feel this trust and demonstrate their best skills and abilities in their work.

Using Pygmalion Effect to achieve higher goals:

As discussed in last blog,

Goal Set X Goal Achieved = True Potential

Now we can use Goal Achieved to positively affect the Goal set and vice versa, taking a day-to-day example that whenever we win a competition our expectations for the next event also increases that is goal achieved enhances our goal set, in the similar way our goal set also enhances our goal achieved provided we take the appropriate steps:

• Our Goal Set should always be greater than our last goal achieved
• Our Goal Set should also be greater than our set potential i.e. how much capable we consider ourselves to be
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• Our Goal Set should also be greater than the Historical Record of the goal, as it would motivate us to set a new record

Thus in this way if we raise our expectations our performance would definitely improve.

Here is a video demonstrating the same: