It will happen as expected
When we hosted the first XConf at ThoughtWorks, one of the first few sessions we had was about Pygmalion effect. In short, the talk was about ‘if you expect a person to be really good at they do; eventually they will live up to expectations’.
It was a very profound thought that was planted in my head and I have been following that wherever I go. I have also been on the other side, many people had great expectations from me on certain roles which were new to me I ended up doing well even though I never knew I could do that.
I did some reflection on why ‘Pygmalion effect’ works.
- The moment you start expecting that someone will do their job very well, you end up providing whatever support in your capacity for them to excel. Ends up being a self fulfilling prophecy.
- It will show up subconsciously in actions and body language, the receiver will feel obliged to live up to the expectations and start punching above their weight.
I also used another one in conjunction with this, which I learnt from the book “Surely you joking Mr Feynman”. Richard Feynman who was a scientist tries getting drawing classes and observed that his drawing teacher was always communicating his feedback as feelings instead of telling him exactly what to do. His teacher’s point of view was, you can draw a picture any way you want so he was careful not to discourage any technique or method and just want his students to draw well. A tough job, below is his quote.
The drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.
What I tried was giving feedback in a manner that helped people overcome what was weighing them down. For example, a newbie in the team was visibly overwhelmed with the transition from college to work. When that person was struggling, all I said was “It is very impressive that how you are able to handle all the steep learning curve, workload and yet remain calm. I am sure you are learning really fast and it is only a matter of a few more weeks that you would have caught with ways of working”.
The above kind of feedback worked wonders, having strong expectations and conveying the feelings helps.
