The Pygmalion Effect: How It Drives Employees Performance

The expectations you have of employees, and expectations they have of their own actions, are important to how these employees perform their jobs. Your expectations are known as the Pygmalion effect, while the employees' expectations are known as the Galatea effect.

The influence of both of these effects should not be overlooked when trying to encourage employees to work to their full potential. You can apply these basic principles to your performance expectations at work, along with improvement expectations of performance on the job.

The Pygmalion effect also called the power of expectations can be summarized through the following considerations:

• Each supervisor has his own expectations of the employees under his control.

• Supervisors explain their expectations in a variety of ways. These ways could include both unconscious and conscious ways of communication.

• Employees gain understanding of their supervisor's expectations in unconscious and conscious ways.

• Employees perform their task according to what they perceive their supervisor's expectations to be.

J. Sterling explained the Pygmalion effect in the Harvard Business Review in the September/October 1988 edition as meaning the way supervisors treat their employees is partially influenced by the expectations they have of these employees. This is a translation of his actual quote, but captures the essence of it. The name of his article in this edition was Pygmalion in Management.

This Pygmalion effect empowers the employees and helps them realize their full potential in response to their supervisor's expectations and the knowledge they have the capability to succeed. However, this effect also can have a negative effect if the manager communicates the opposite message to his employees.

This communication often is subtle. The manager does not praise an employee's fine performance, but praises the other workers for just one example of this. Another example is that the supervisor communicates less with one employee than with another one.

Livingston also explained that if the supervisor is not skilled, he winds ups scarring the work experience of young women and men, and distorts or lowers their self-esteem as people. However, with the right skills and high expectations of these employees, he can help them build their self-confidence, develop their capabilities and increase their productivity. He realizes the supervisor is Pygmalion.

Do you realize how much employee performance can improve when your managers communicate positive thinking about employees to employees? When a manager firmly believes all of his employees are capable of contributing to the company in a positive manner, and communicates this effectively throughout his employees he will affect the performance of the employees in a positive way.

In addition, there are additional positive benefits from this effect of the manager. When this manager has positive expectations for the employees, he helps those employees improve their own self-images and consequently their own self-esteem. Employees will know they will succeed so they will contribute fully to increase their performance because of their personal expectations of themselves. Now, let's examine the Galatea effect to understand all this further.

The Galatea effect is just as important as the Pygmalion effect for compelling an employee to work up to his fullest potential. The supervisor who encourages his employees to have confidence in their own abilities and efficacy has learned the most important improvement tool performance there is.

You may have heard about a "self-fulfilling prophecy" before and wondered what this means. These words in reference to the Galatea effect mean an employee's feeling of his own capabilities and expectations of how he performs greatly influences his own performance at work. When he believes he can succeed, he increases his chances for succeeding. Therefore, a manager should take any action possible to increase the feelings of self-esteem in his employees to increase their performance.

I do not mean to make this concept seem so simple. After all, there are other things that play into how effectively an employee performs at work such as his life experiences, his family situation, his relationships with coworkers, and his level of education, along with your company's culture. However, positive leadership as described earlier is a top factor in encouraging ideal performance by employees no matter what their allotted work tasks are.

Check out the following ways to encourage employees to have powerful, positive self-expectations for their personal performances:

• Allow the employees to have chances to have increasingly difficult assignments. Make sure they succeed at one before proceeding to a new one.

• Let employees work on successful plans and projects to improve their skill continuously on the job.

• Give each employee one-on-one training. This training needs to accentuate improvement of the employee's skills rather than pointing out his weaknesses.

• If the employee shows an interest in learning more in a certain area of the company, provide him the opportunity to expand his skills in this area.

• Assign an experienced, successful employee to be a mentor to help other employees with their development.

• Conduct interactions frequently with your employees in a positive manner. Continually communicate your confidence in your employees' ability to perform their duties. Always keep your feedback developmental and positive in nature whenever possible.

• Make sure any of the other pertinent supervisory personnel also is sending encouraging messages to the employees. The way in which you speak about employees to other will shape their opinions in a powerful way.

• Show your genuine commitment for the employees' ongoing development and success at all times.

Channel the employees' own self-expectations to guarantee successful, productive, powerful and ever-improving work performance.

Gregg Swanson is a human potential and peak performance coach and owns Warrior Mind Coach. He specializes in the development of mental strength and focus to achieve the flow state for maximum performance. You grab his complementary mini eBook, “Why is Change So Hard” by going HERE.