As grandma said, what goes around, comes around.
If you don’t show respect, you won’t gain respect.
Author Hal Resnick, who writes and teaches about workforce issues, described “The Pygmalion Effect” in a recent newsletter.
He wrote that it is a well-researched phenomenon in management, as well as in sociology, education and other disciplines concerned with human behavior.
He writes that it was popularized through the Broadway show “My Fair Lady,” which was based on George Bernard Shaw’s original play, “Pygmalion.”
“In this show, Eliza Doolittle is transformed from a Cockney flower girl in a poor section of London to a true lady. One of the most famous lines is her comment that ‘the difference between a flower girl and lady is not in the way she acts, but in the way she is treated,’” he said.
Resnick, based in Ponte Vedra Beach, is president of Work Systems Associates Inc. He has spent 30 years in organizational development and training. Major clients included EverBank, Wachovia, The Haskell Co., Lockheed Martin and Shell Oil, among others.
He has seen a lot of the comings and goings of workplace behavior.
Personal motivation
Essentially, people base their behavior on their expectations of how they will be treated as a result of it.
“Expectations drive our decisions. If we expect a request to be rejected, we may choose not to make the request in the first place,” Resnick said.
For example:
• If we expect a hostile response from someone, we generally begin with a guarded or defensive approach.
• If we expect to be greeted in a friendly manner, we may begin with a smile.
• If we expect our job performance will result in recognition, rewards or career opportunities, we are motivated to achieve higher levels of performance.
• If we expect that no matter what we do the outcome will be the same, our actions are likely to be much more casual.
Managers like to think that they treat their employees equally, but Resnick said that’s rarely the case.
“We may apply organizational rules and policies equally, but we actually do not treat employees the same,” he said.
“We treat employees based on what we expect their reaction and behavior to be as a consequence of our interaction with them. We apply the Pygmalion effect unconsciously all the time,” he said.
Reactions
Resnick said that if managers have employees who have performed well, are enthusiastic and positive and who are willing and eager to take on additional assignments, they tend to treat those employees with:
• High expectations.
• Increased work and work opportunities.
• Positive feedback and reinforcement.
• Recognition and rewards.
When those high-performing workers fail to perform, managers take positive action.
“We try to understand the problem. We seek their input. We offer coaching and support. We try to help them be successful because we expect that they want to be successful and that they can be successful,” Resnick said.
Then what happens with employees who are not high-performance players, who have a history of marginal performance, have not displayed a strong work ethic and who make excuses or blame others or when goals are not met?
“This person may have been placed on a ‘performance improvement plan’ as a last step in a performance management process,” Resnick wrote.
Once an employee is “written up,” either in fact or in the manager’s mind:
• The manager tends to treat the worker with lower expectations, continually setting the bar lower and expecting the employee to fail no matter how low it is set.
• The manager either avoids the person as much as possible or makes conversations as short and directed as possible.
• When problems arise, the manager is much more likely to criticize than to coach.
• The manager provides minimal positive feedback, often fearing that a positive word will cause the employee to believe he or she has addressed the concern and the employee will slack off again.
• Recognition and rewards are withheld until the employee “really improves” over a sustained period of time
There is a consequence.
“The poor performing employee gets the message. He or she concludes that no matter what they do or how hard they try, he or she has been branded as ‘a loser,’” said Resnick.
“As a result, they effectively give up because they believe the outcome is pre-determined,” he said.
Changing the outcome
Co-workers might have seen a struggling associate transfer to another department — and thrive.
“There are situations in which an employee is transferred to another manager, resulting in a complete turnaround. The poor performer becomes the star performer,” Resnick said.
“Quite often the turnaround is the consequence of the new manager’s expectations,” he said.
“The new manager expects positive performance, praises good outcomes, and gets them,” he said.
The manager is using what Resnick calls “the positive influence of expectancy theory.”
It’s not difficult for managers to do, he said.
• First, set high, yet achievable, expectations. “Tell employees you believe they have the ability to achieve these expectations and that your job is to help them be successful,” he said.
• Second, “focus on recognizing and praising performance when you see it.”
Resnick said performance issues should not be ignored or avoided when they arise and must be addressed.
“But if it is addressed with the positive expectation that better performance can be achieved with support to help the employee achieve the defined goals, the likelihood of a positive result is much greater,” he said.
Resnick asks managers to ask themselves the question: “If you could choose between one manager whose style was dominated by skepticism, criticism and little or no recognition, or one who was enthusiastic, set high expectations of you, worked to help you achieve them and then recognized your success, which one would you choose? Which one would generate higher performance from you?”
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