Douglas McGregor had two contrasting views of the world:
- Theory X: workers are lazy, have no interest in working and are only in it for the paycheck.
- Theory Y: workers are highly motivated and will push themselves to do rewarding work.
Those two world views are mutually exclusive, so they can’t both be right. If we had time to collect the data, we would find that, on average, workers would either behave one way or the other. They will be conscientious, hard workers, or they will be slackers. Which leads to the question, which is the correct theory?
The theory is about managers, not workers.
My question misses Dr McGregor’s point. He wasn’t talking about workers; he was talking about their managers. When you look at the debate like that, it is easy for Theory X and Theory Y managers to co-exist. Both theories can be correct.
If you believe your team are lazy, good for nothings.
Then as their manager, you will check their every move and hit them every time they step out of line. Of course, if you do that, the minute you turn your back, your employees with gossip, bitch, moan, surf the internet, and do as little work as they can get away with.
Theory X managers are right.
Slaps in the face have never motivated anybody to do anything but slap back
Charles S Jacobs
If you believe your employees will do the best they can…
Then you will give them opportunities, back them to the hilt, and praise them for their efforts. When you turn your back, your employees will move mountains to get the work done.
Theory Y managers, it seems, are also correct.
It is wonderful to have someone praise you, to be desired
Marilyn Monroe
Is There Any Data to Back the Theories?
It is easy to come up with theories for human behaviour. I’ve got lots of views, but they become so much stronger when there is data to back them up. In this case, there are plenty of academic studies and experiments. These have led to a well-documented phenomenon called the Pygmalion Effect. It is “the phenomenon whereby the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform”. The name comes from George Bernard Shaw’s play, where the Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, is trained to act like a duchess.
Many experiments have proven the existence of the Pygmalion Effect. Here are three that have been conducted on rats, children and soldiers.
Experiment 1. Rats
In the 1960s, a couple of scientists (Rosenthal and Frode) tried to breed clever rodents. To see if they had succeeded, they ran some experiments with two strains of rats and a series of mazes:
- The first strain was “maze bright”. Their parents and grandparents were good at navigating mazes.
- The second group was “maze dull”. Their ancestors were the couch potatoes of the rat world.
A group of students put the rats through their paces. The rats had to navigate successive mazes to find a food cache. The students timed the runs and compiled the results. The experiment was a resounding success. The “maze bright” rats were faster at negotiating the mazes. There was no statistical doubt that the clever rat was born.
There was an exciting twist to the experiment. Not only were the “maze bright” rats better at running through mazes, but their handlers also found them more pleasant and likeable. They were far easier to handle than the “maze dull” rats and more fun to pet and play with. This fact led to a whole set of theories. Was there a genetic linkage between brightness and pleasantness? If you breed intelligent rats, will they also be more likeable? Linked inheritance is a well-known phenomenon. Perhaps the behavioural genes are close together on the rat’s chromosomes.
The truth is that it was all a big con. There was no breeding programme. The rats were all standard lab rats allocated to the “maze bright” and “maze dull” groups at random. The only difference between them was what the experimenters told the student handlers. The difference in the performance had nothing to do with the rats. It had everything to do with their handlers. This is the “experimenter effect”, an excellent example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Proof that if you think a rat is clever, it will be clever.
Experiment 2. Children
In the late 60s, Rosenthal and Jacobsen pushed the Pygmalion Effect further. They tried applying what they had learnt about rats to children. They started to investigate underachievement among school children. Why do some children do better than others?
The theory that they tested was that it was all to do with intelligence. The experimenters hypothesised that a child’s I.Q. would predict how well a child would do. They ran intelligence tests on children in different classes to test their theory. Using this data, they identified the children who showed “dramatic potential growth”. To ensure they hadn’t missed anything, they sense checked the results with the teachers.
Eight months later, Rosenthal and Jacobsen returned to the school and re-ran the tests. Their predictions were correct. The children highlighted as having superior potential showed a marked increase in test scores. The “normal” children didn’t fare as well. They showed that success in school was all to do with I.Q.
Once again, there was a sting in the tail. The results were statistically valid, but Rosenthal and Jacobsen had played the same trick. The experimenters randomly allocated children to the “potential” and “normal” groups. The increase in performance had nothing to do with the children’s intellectual potential. It was, instead, dependent on the teacher’s beliefs about a child’s potential. If a teacher believed that a child was exceptional, then the child became exceptional. Another example of the Pygmalion Effect
What Rosenthal and Jacobsen did not try was to create a “sub-normal” group in the eyes of the teachers. They thought it would have been ethically irresponsible. I’ll leave it to your imagination what the implications would have been.
Experiment 3. Soldiers
Where Rosenthal and Jacobsen left off, two other psychologists — Eden and Shani — picked up.
Eden and Shani persuaded the government to run a test. They wanted to see if the Pygmalion Effect also existed in the military. Three times a year, the Israeli Army ran a combat command course. Every 15 weeks, one hundred trainee soldiers were allocated to one of four instructors. Then, they received 16 hours of instructor/trainee contact every day for four months.
As an experiment, before a group of trainees started the course, Eden and Shani gave them a series of psychometric tests. They also looked at the ratings from the trainee’s previous commanders. With this information, they predicted the trainee’s potential.
- High potential — scores suggested they would do well as combat commanders
- Regular potential — scores met the course requirements but did not exceed them
- Unknown potential — scores were not statistically grounded (the Army doesn’t guess)
The experimenters shared the trainee’s potential with their instructors before the course began. The instructors didn’t know that Eden and Shani randomly allocated the trainee’s ratings. It had nothing to do with their potential. The experimenters undertook the exercise to manipulate the instructor’s expectations of the trainees.
At the end of the course, the Army evaluated the soldier’s performance. They used a set of objective tests that measured speed, accuracy, and learning. The design of the tests removed any biases that the instructors may have developed. The results looked like this:
The trainees that instructors thought had the most potential did best. The Pygmalion Effect was alive and well in the Army. If an instructor believed someone would do well, they did.
Eden and Shani added an extra layer of sophistication to their research. They asked the trainees to rate their instructors. The score reflected leadership ability and the likelihood that trainees would recommend the course. Here are the instructor’s results:
They found that the high potential soldiers rated their leaders most highly. Yet the low potential soldiers ranked the same instructors poorly. These were precisely the same leaders. They had the same soldiers on the same course. Why would their leadership style vary so much from person to person? The theory is that it is all about expectations. As managers, we change our behaviour depending on our expectations of those who work for us.
How Does Our Behaviour Change?
Why would a rat, child, or soldier do well just because you think they will do well? Is it a kind of magic? Robert Rosenthal carried out studies in the classroom that explain how belief drives reality. It is all down to four simple things that most of us do without thinking:
Emotion
If a teacher thinks a child is clever, the teacher behaves more warmly toward the child. He gives the child more eye contact. He laughs at the child’s jokes and shows the child more encouragement. He makes the child feel happy in the classroom.
Feedback
As the (cringe-worthy) phrase goes, “feedback is the breakfast of champions”. If a child is to learn, it needs to know when it has got things right and got them wrong. If a teacher thinks a child is clever, then he will give the child more and varied feedback.
Inputs
Children who teachers expect to succeed are given different assignments. The challenges are more complex, and the child gets extra homework to complete. Maybe this shows the child that he is well thought of. Perhaps it gives the child no choice but to learn more. Either way, it seems to work.
Outputs
An output is the chance to show what you have learnt. Answering a question is an output, finishing a project is an output, and reading out loud in class is an output. Teachers give the children they think will do well the opportunity to answer questions.
It is a virtuous cycle. It is easy to understand how some children thrive in school. They get better and better and achieve more and more.
But the spiral works both ways. It is just as easy to see how other children plod through school. They never achieve anything and drop out. Although few teachers would condemn a child to failure, it is simple to understand how it happens.
What Has This Got to Do with Your Business?
There is a lot of similarity between teachers, army instructors and managers:
- They all try to improve performance
- They all control the working environment
- They all give feedback
- They all hand out assignments
- They all have their favourites
The vicious and virtuous spirals work the same way in the workplace as they do anywhere else.
If our employees’ perceptions become a reality, then the implication is clear. The way to improve our performance as managers is simple. Increase our expectations of those who work for us. We should believe that all our employees will be successful. That will give them — and us — the best chance of turning perception into reality.
The Punch Line
Current Human Resources best practice is to “rank and stack” our employees. Then publicly label half of them as “meeting” or “below” expectations. If the Pygmalion Effect exists, what does our mechanical way of managing people do for them?
Does “performance management” do anything to improve performance?
Homework
This week the homework is simple. Tell your friends about the Pygmalion Effect. Print this article off and leave it on your H.R. director’s desk. If you are feeling ballsy, post a copy on your company website.
The one thing that destroys organisational performance is “performance management”—the more people who realise that, the better.
Related posts:
- Performance appraisals, you wouldn’t do it at home: The Pygmalion effect in the domestic environment.
- Performance management best practice: Research from the corporate leadership council.
- The stick is mightier than the carrot: The statistical reason why a good bawling out works.
More information:
- Change your mindset, change the game: Alia Crum’s TEDx talk on the effect of mindset.
- Use the Pygmalion Effect to Create a High Performing Team: Tips from the awesome culture blog.
Further reading:
This Harvard Business Review article from 1969 is regarded as a classic J. Sterling Livingston shows how the expectations of one person go on to shape the behaviour of another. He uses case studies and research to show how important a manager’s expectations are for individual and group performance.
To quote one reviewer, “Extremely eye-opening Now I understand what work environments to walk away from“.
Post Script
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