Rebecca was so brave and such a great sport with this parrot doing this crazy dance on her head by the beach.
(Narrated and videoed by Andy Blumenthal)
PARROT Does Amazing Impromptu DANCE
How To Give Employee Feedback
Never Thought I'd Be Up There
See Yourself In The Future
Big and Small--Who's Who?
I always love on the court television show Judge Hatchett, when she tells people: "I expect great things from you!"
The Pygmalion Effect says that when we have high expectations of performance for people, they perform better.
In other words, how you see others is how they perform.
While behavior is driven by a host of motivational factors (recognition, rewards, and so on), behavior and ultimately performance is impacted by genetic and environmental factors—“nature and nurture”—and the nurture aspect includes people’s expectations of us.
Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, people live up or down to expectations.
For example, studies by Rosenthal and Jacobson showed that if teachers expected enhanced performance from selected children, those children performed better.
When people have high or low expectations for others, they treat them differently—consciously or unconsciously—they tip off what they believe the others are capable of and will ultimately deliver. In the video, The Pygmalion Effect: Managing the power of Expectation, these show up in the following ways:
In business, expect great things from people and set them to succeed by providing the following to meet those expectations:
Additionally, treat others in the style that is consistent with the way that they see themselves, so that there is underlying alignment between the workplace (i.e. how we treat the employee) and who the employee fundamentally is.
Normally people think that setting high expectations means creating a situation where the individual’s high performance will take extra effort – both on their part and on the part of the manager.
However, this is not necessarily the case at all. All we have to do is align organizational expectations with the inherent knowledge, skills, and abilities of the employee, and their individual aspirations for development.
The point is we need to play to people’s strengths and help them work on their weaknesses. This, along with ongoing encouragement, can make our goals a reality, and enable the organization to set the bar meaningfully high for each and every one of us.
Raising the Bar By Aligning Expectations and Personality
As a kid, I remember being encouraged by my role models, who taught me to “reach for the stars”. They said things like: don’t be afraid to think big, work hard, put your best foot forward, and so on.
And I learned that in American society, it is a fundamental tenet that if you work hard, you can achieve your dreams. This is “the American dream.”
Sometimes as adults we feel that our dreams don’t matter. We work hard, but our hard work doesn’t guarantee success. We see that many factors determine success, including: talent, whether technical or leadership; a willingness to take risks; personal connections and networking, and sometimes even “just plain dumb luck.”
Nevertheless, our ability to envision success ultimately does affect our achievements. As Sheila Murray Bethel puts it in the national bestseller, Making A Difference: “Big thinking always precedes big achievement.”
It all goes back to: Think big, try hard, put yourself out there, and you can achieve great things.
Wired Magazine (December 2009), in an article titled, “Hiding In Plain Sight,” states that “Today’s tech giants all have one thing in common: They tried to change the world.” For example, look at the mission of the following organizations:
· Google—“to organize the world’s information.”
· Microsoft—“a computer on every desk and in every home.”
· Facebook—“the social graph of the planet.”
· eBay—“to create an entirely new global marketplace.”
Of course, while we know that there are real life constraints and that not every child who wants to President can be and not every company that wants to be Microsoft will be, it is still thought—imagination, big thinking and vision—that creates the foundation for greatness.
We should not only teach our children to dream big, but allow ourselves to do so as well.
It Pays To Think Big
The Bigger Picture is Beautiful