The Pygmalion effect, in personnel management processes, occupies a preponderant place in the final results of any sector: productive, business, educational and family, since the prophecies, which tend to be fulfilled, inferred by a director towards his subordinates, reach destroying skills due to false expectations and redesigning the positive characteristics in the integral potential of officials that could even initiate their connection with a sense of belonging and commitment. This runs counter to the investment objectives given by senior management.
The Pygmalión effect, in processes of personnel direction, occupies a preponderant place in the final results of any sector: productive, enterprise, educative and familiar since the prophecies, that tend to be fulfilled, inferred by a director towards his subaltern to us, get to destroy abilities by false expectations and redesign the positive characteristics in the integral potential of civil servants who could inclusively initiate their entailment with property sense and commitment. This goes in contrarian with the objectives of the investment given by the high management.
A vision of Greek mythology:
“Pygmalion had long sought a wife whose beauty matched his idea of the perfect woman. At last he decided that he would not marry and would dedicate all his time and the love he felt within himself to the creation of the most beautiful statues.
Thus, he made the statue of a young woman, whom he called Galatea, so perfect and so beautiful that he fell madly in love with her. Then, through Aphrodite's intervention, she dreamed that the statue came to life.
Ovid says this about the myth in Book X of The Metamorphoses: «Pygmalion went to the statue and, when he touched it, it seemed to him that it was hot, that the ivory softened and that, leaving its hardness, it gave way to his fingers, like the wax of Mount Himeto it softens in the rays of the sun and lets itself be handled with the fingers, taking various figures and becoming more docile and soft with handling.
Upon seeing him, Pygmalion is filled with great joy mixed with fear, believing that he was deceiving himself. He touched the statue again, and made sure that it was a flexible body and that the veins gave their pulsations when explored with the fingers.
When he awoke in place of the statue, Aphrodite, who was moved by the fervor of the king, said to him, “You deserve happiness, a happiness that you yourself have captured. Here's a queen you've been looking for. Love her and defend her from evil ». In this way Galatea became a real woman "
Personally
The confidence that others have in us can give us wings to achieve the most difficult objectives. This is the basis of the Pygmalion effect, which psychology frames as a principle of action based on the expectations of others. Prophecies tend to come true when there is a strong desire that drives them.
It is an unfortunate reality that we place too much importance on how they see us and what they expect of us and make great efforts to gain the approval of those who allow us to manage our lives. We are being touched by the Pygmalion effect and we end up sailing in the stormy sea of what they think we are, what we want to be and what we really are.
Socially
In all social groups, cultural tradition assigns norms of behavior to which its members are expected to conform.
Generally implicit, these norms impose codes of conduct that are not easy to avoid, for example, that a woman must have delicate gestures or that if a person's family is wealthy, then that person must live in a luxurious house. What begins as an imitation by the children of what their parents do becomes their own way of being. It can be said then, that we are what others expect us to be.
The sociologist Merton, in 1948, applied this concept to the sociological field, an idea that could explain part of the current economic crisis. This author says that the fear of bank failure, initially without foundation, leads citizens to withdraw their deposits from said bank, thus effectively leading to bankruptcy.
It also applies this concept to social prejudices from the same perspective and the consumerism society grows and develops, due to social influence and pressure from the expected and persecuted status.
In the classroom
The Pygmalion effect from the perspective of the theory of self-realized prophecy, we understand as one of the factors that influence the motivation of students in the classroom.
Apparently it seems that it is a magical effect, but it is not, what happens is that teachers formulate expectations about the behavior in class of different students and they will treat them differently according to those expectations. It is possible that the students they consider to be more capable give more and greater stimuli, more time for their responses, etc. These students, when treated differently, respond differently, thus confirming the expectations of the teachers and providing the correct answers more frequently.
If this is done on a continuous basis over several months, they will achieve better school results and better test scores, that is, they fulfill the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Transmuting our perception of the “bad student”, to turn it into “good”, could generate a change of attitude of double benefit where the student and the institution win, but this is a subject of high pedagogy.
At work
If an employee receives the continuous acceptance of his boss, it is very possible that he exhibits a high performance in his functions and therefore his performance is higher, as well as effective.
If, on the contrary, their abilities are always questioned by the superior, the indifferent attitude and demotivation on the part of the subordinate increases, which unquestionably will lead to a decrease in the quantity and quality of their work.
In the business world, the Pygmalion Effect comes to mean that every boss has a formed image of his collaborators and treats them according to it; But the most important thing is that this image is perceived by the collaborator even if the boss does not communicate it.
In such a way that when it is positive, everything goes well, but when it is negative, the opposite occurs.
This topic is immersed in the modern theory of human talent management in the unfinished chapter of the Creation of Autological Processes, the subject of another article.
From Management
A manager is a people manager, this must be your most delicate consideration.
Management understood and exercised from the edge of the Leader, must achieve through people the results expected by the general management and the board of directors.
This is the consolidation of strategies and processes that lead to the creation of value and therefore the financial strengthening, the creation of wealth, the maintenance of employment and the permanent development of competitive capacity.
Its primary function is its self-training and the decisive strengthening in its ability to:
Self-criticism
Mutual respect
Capacity for analysis and synthesis
Comprehensive knowledge of the business skills at your disposal
Unbeatable knowledge of people (officials) and their motivations
Measure the consequences implicit in their decisions
Communication techniques
Behavior within the strictest transparency
Impeccable, relevant and assertive
Continuous improvement from its investigative capacity
Executives who decree the failure of their officials
Traders and researchers of the business administrative process already speak of: "The perverse administration of organizations".
"The bosses are guilty or complicit in the errors and lack of good results of their subordinates."
This was corroborated by a multi-year study of this behavior that was called: “condemned to fail syndrome”, where it is shown that managers make prophecies of their officials and those who have decided that they are bad, push them to comply his prophecy and they take pleasure in it in expressions such as: "I told him so", "I predicted it from the beginning", "nothing escapes my nose".
The subject was later touched on in the Management literature.
In 1967, the Harvard professor J. Sterling Livingstong, published in his Harvard Business Review, his famous article: Pygmalion in Management, considered a classic within the Administration texts, in which he highlights as the bad expectations that managers had about their Employees generally impacted negatively on how they responded to the guidelines.
Logically, the level of achievement of the expected results was affected, it became evident because the theory of self-fulfilling prophecies to which Merton referred, corroborating what has been called “the Pygmalion effect”.
Recall the work of the George Bernart Show - Pygmalion - where a sophisticated English teacher meets a poor, ill-spoken and unprofessional florist whose characteristics encourage him to make a bet with a friend and is to educate her until she becomes a society lady. As we know, after an intense journey, he succeeds and says to his friend: “As you see, the only difference that exists between a lady and a florist, apart from the things that anyone can see, (like dress and way of speaking) It is not in the way of behaving but in the way of being treated ”.
This is a clear message for managers and professors who can determine the quality of performance of their subordinates, from the treatment it gives them sincerely and proactively.
A person can be convinced of his inferiority by continual blows to his self-esteem.
Faced with a very frequent case such as that of an official labeled as problematic or not competent, his boss may have pointed him out as a candidate for permanent failure, since his pre-judgments make the way of reviewing his work, evaluating and treating it much more difficult, demanding and detailed compared to those of other subordinates who have achieved their best expectations.
Everyone responds according to the way they are treated, the official finally assumes rejection attitudes through active and aggressive or passive resistance and difficult to detect and diagnose.
In this order of ideas the cycle is repeated and the manager believes he is right because the worker, from his effort to demonstrate the opposite or show his frustration, continues to work to the detriment of his expected productivity.
Thus arises a kind of moral alchemy that appears when the same behavior is valued differently, depending on the person who exercises it.
Filters that prevent seeing good in good and promote exaggerating evil in bad. "In me I see firmly what in you I perceive as stubbornness and in your friends as stubbornness."
Many managers impose their own concept of person on the organizations in their charge, this derived from their diverse values, prejudices and interests and the way they prioritize them.
This concept is reflected in each of their decisions and sets the tone for how the business rules of the game will be, which we can perceive in the quantity and quality of participation that is given in decisions to personnel immersed in the decision process that affect the productive group, in the type of results that are prioritized and rewarded through results-based incentive systems, with certain behaviors that are ignored and almost never punished.
"The boss hardly recognizes his participation in the negative attitudes of his subordinates." Unfortunately, the lack of awareness regarding their own participation in such unforeseen effects and the role that managers occupy in the way in which these events happen, ignoring and not fully assuming the implicit responsibility, which generally produces perverse consequences for the entire organizational team.
Self-fulfilling prophecy process
1. Idea of the person = Initial assessment of the capabilities of the other
2. Expectations that are formed of said person = Pre-judgments about their behavior.
3. Treatment given = Actions omissions = Ambiguous treatment - uncertainty
4. Perception response = Acceptance - Selective participation - Rejection = aggression - demand - passive resistance.
Unforeseen consequences begin with severe deficiencies in the process prior to a decision or in the criteria with which it is decided when certain relevant aspects that were not valued are ignored, due to repetition of acquired bad habits, non-confrontation of judgments and assumptions with reality.
Breaking the circle
Breaking the vicious circles as a consequence of prophecies that are fulfilled in themselves due to the perverse effect they cause, such as the permanent condemnation of the failure of the collaborators involved would generate, as Merton says: “Questioning or abandoning the initial assumption and making a new formulation of the situation".
Both socially and personally, overcoming prejudice leads to wrong decisions.
For Merton, "self-fulfilling prophecy transforms a fear into reality but works only in the absence of specific institutional controls."
It is necessary to reject the fatalistic idea of unchangeable human nature. Aggression against a person or group is part of the modifiable structure of society and organizations.
Faced with the high costs that arise from the syndrome of doomed to failure, there are great emotional costs paid by immersed subordinates, due to the obsession of managers who are obstinate to control rather than direct, more to tie than to build.
Then the manager should:
1. Investigate and acknowledge your possible responsibility for the low performance of your subordinates.
2. Openly express the problem with a sincere and committed interest in changing your acknowledged failings with humility.
3. Listen to their subordinates analyzing the facts and tests that allow identifying weak areas of productivity.
4. Make participatory decisions taking into account concepts and suggestions within the designed strategy.
5. Allow the active participation of the team in the integral development process according to the guidelines of p - H - V - A, defined.
6. Evaluate and give credit to suggestions and contributions from duly motivated staff with a high sense of belonging.
7. Maintain active and transparent, two-way communication at all times with the production and support team.
The best strategy will be prevention, which implies the design of controls applied to everyone equally, accompanying the process in an excellent performance.
Construction of autological processes
Depending on the professional monitoring of the bonding process, success in achieving mutual benefit: Organization - Officer, achieving successful results will be less costly and effective, that is:
1. Adequate selection of recruitment sources: a delicate and determining process in the exercise of identifying prospects with the expected profile.
2. Initial selection interview that allows adjusting the identified competencies to the required profile.
3. Transparent and clear contracting where rights and duties are clearly specified from the first legal contact, without a doubt or ambiguity.
4. Assertive induction, a stage of capital importance, since it is there that membership and commitment are built directly from the organizational source and individual characteristics of motivational interests are known.
5. Punctual training in specific skills of the performance area purpose of the link.
6. Corporate and individual motivation that seeks the execution of the production process at the lowest cost and effort with enthusiasm towards the result.
7. Control and accompaniment, synergistic exercise within the norm and institutional direction.
Managing the investment
The exercise of self-fulfilling prophecies, generated by clueless managers who have not been able to modify their retrograde arrogant and self-validating attitude of the gift of infallibility, destroys value and slowly but surely ends up with investments put in their direction.
The mere calculation of business demerit for these reasons should awaken the general management to eliminate this business cancer, unfortunately frequent, camouflaged in undisputed "reasons" such as:
"Before it was easier to link productive subordinates"
"People do not work without the yoke on their backs"
"If it were not for me, this would disappear"
"I have a clinical eye to identify the mediocre"
But you never look in the mirror or exercise the self-criticism.
