The Power of High Expectations

Various psychological studies show expectations significantly influence performance.?

At heart, next level leadership’s about owning your power to bring forth greatness from wherever you sit. To own this power, know it. Let’s examine a potent yet often unknown aspect of it: your expectations of others.?

People perform, to a confounding degree, as we expect. Unknown power is no less potent. Unexamined low expectations may be harming as much as unestablished high expectations have an untapped potential to help. By expecting the best, you can become a next level leader in every area of your life, from your workplace to your community to your kitchen.

Last weekend we had a houseguest. I'd heard she was inconsiderate. So I expected her to be. Sunday morning, I came down to the kitchen like a witch casting a “disappear” spell. I’d will her away. Eyes down, I A-lined for the coffee grinder, clenching my jaw as the beans screeched. Then I remembered a story I’d just read in Isabel Wilkerson’s stunning book, “Caste," on race in the United States.

The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, third grade teacher Jane Elliot went to an extreme length to teach her all white class the nature of prejudice. She divided the class by eye color. She said the blue-eyed children were better than the brown-eyed. The second half of the day, the opposite. The results were immediate and intense. In both cases, performance plummeted for students of the lower caste. A decade later, Elliot told Oprah, “If you do that for a lifetime, what do you suppose that does to them?”. Expectations influence performance. This psychological truism’s been named “The Rosenthal Effect” or the “Pygmalion Effect.”?

Back to Sunday morning, I caught myself before the French press was ready. Expecting the worst, I was encouraging the worst, by being... the worst. Instead, I could behave as my best host and encourage her best guest. I could lead.?

Choose to expect—beyond reason—the best. Two things are true: People will surprise you and people will disappoint you. Let greatness be the expectation, poor performance the surprise. Not the other way around. Whether people exceed the highest hopes or wildly disappoint, you’ll still be showing up to do your most essential job: using your power to bring forth greatness.

Bring light to your biases and drop them. Just as widespread stereotypes create unconscious biases in a macroculture, so too can subtle suggestions create biases in microcultures. The suggestion that my houseguest was rude was enough to turn me into a bad witch on an otherwise peaceful Sunday morning. My inner good witch shone her light just in time. I looked up and offered her a cup.?

This work is simple and it requires the vigilance to...?

• drop our biases
• open to be positively surprised
• engage with curiosity!?
• ask questions that call forth strengths, positivity, and vision
• reflect back these things when we hear them

It requires owning every aspect of your power. Our houseguest was lovely.?

Women leaders: A note on witchcraft

Historically, the term “witch” has been used to justify femicide. Today, it’s used to stoke fear and hatred of women. To reclaim the term, we can define “witch” as a woman who knows her power and uses it intentionally. Our influence is real and potent. As we women reclaim our power, we must ask ourselves, as Glinda asks Dorothea in The Wizard of Oz, will we be “a good witch or a bad witch?”

To create a high expectation culture, visit Next Level Leadership @ www.the-next-level.com

Women leaders, join us MLK weekend for Wintering, a retreat to rediscover the lost art of restoration, in the Hudson Valley. Learn about it: www.the-next-level.com/retreat

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