The Little Book of Leadership Development

[9]Use the Pygmalion Effect

HERE’S A PRETTY COOL CONCEPT known as the Pygmalion Effect. If you haven’t heard of it specifically, you probably have witnessed it in action. Leadership scholar Bernard Bass suggested that

In its most general form, the Pygmalion Effect is a performance-stimulating effect. People who are led to expect that they will do well will be better than those who expect to do poorly or do not have any expectations about how well or poorly they will do. People tend to try to confirm rather than disconfirm positive beliefs that others have about them.¹¹

If this is the case, then you should be thinking about how you communicate verbally and nonverbally with your team. A number of studies have confirmed this phenomenon. If nothing ...