A good example (as I'm a golfer) is when I tell myself upon seeing a water hazard "I hope I don't end up in the water!". Sure enough, guess where my ball lands...
As a project manager or team member, self-fulfilling prophecies happen when we are concerned about a negative risk and our unconsciously dwelling on it can result in the risk being realized. Sometimes that is just bad luck, but other times it might be that we are behaving in a manner which causes that reality to occur.
Kiron
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2 replies by Luis Branco and Rami Kaibni
Dec 21, 2019 3:36 PM
Luis Branco
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Dear Kiron
Thank you for participating in this reflection and for your opinion.
It seemed to me that self-fulfilling prophecy in both situations is negative :-)
(Correct me if you are mistaken)
Which one do you use with your teams?
Dec 21, 2019 6:38 PM
Rami Kaibni
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Interesting, I honestly just learned something new today. I never knew what it exactly means, spot on Kiron.
Self-fulfilling prophecy could be linked back to earlier discussions on mindset and attitude. That is if you go into a project fully aware of all the known risks but with a mindset of murphy's law of what can go wrong will go wrong then you avoid the pitfall of dropping into a loop of a self-fulfilling prophecy. However if do not meet problems head on and try to avoid them as if they do not exist and somehow will magically "go away" then you will reach a self-fulfilled prophecy of project failure.
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1 reply by Luis Branco
Dec 21, 2019 3:37 PM
Luis Branco
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Dear Daire Thank you for participating in this reflection and for your opinion.
It seemed to me that self-fulfilling prophecy in both situations is negative :-) (Correct me if you are mistaken)
Which one do you use with your teams?
Saving Changes...
Drew CraigSr. Agile & Product Coach| VanguardPhiladelphia, Pa, United States
Dear Andrew
Thank you for participating in this reflection and for your question.
The two topics are aligned
In the previous topic, (in the title) I tried to relate the Pygmalion effect to project management, but couldn't make that change.
I think this topic has not been sufficiently debated.
About everything:
- The concept and its origin
- Studies supporting the concept
- Above all the impact we can have on projects and project teams if we apply this concept
These were the only reasons that led me to create a new topic.
Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
In Greek mythology
"Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory.
Pygmalion declared that he was "not interested in women"but then found his statue was so beautiful and realistic that he fell in love with it.
In time, Venus's festival day came, and Pygmalion made offerings at the altar of Aphrodite.
There, too scared to admit his desire, he quietly wished for a bride who would be "the living likeness of my ivory girl."
When he returned home, he kissed his ivory statue, and found that its lips felt warm.
He kissed it again, and found that the ivory had lost its hardness. Venus had granted Pygmalion's wish." Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
My Fair Lady Shows the Power of Expectations
"Last week I finally saw the famous musical My Fair Lady based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion
I’ve wanted to see the show for years as a result of reading and talking about “The Pygmalion Effect” in my work. This powerful leadership force was first publicized in J. Sterling Livingston’s classic 1969 Harvard Business Review article entitled “Pygmalion in Management.” He researched and wrote the article while a professor at Harvard Business School. Here’s part of his conclusion:
The powerful influence of one person’s expectations on another’s behavior has long been recognized by physicians and behavioral scientists and, more recently, by teachers. But heretofore the importance of managerial expectations for individual and group performance has not been widely understood. I have documented this phenomenon in a number of case studies prepared during the past decade for major industrial concerns. These cases and other evidence available from scientific research now reveal:
What managers expect of subordinates and the way they treat them largely determine their performance and career progress. A unique characteristic of superior managers is the ability to create high performance expectations that subordinates fulfill. Less effective managers fail to develop similar expectations, and as a consequence, the productivity of their subordinates suffers. Subordinates, more often than not, appear to do what they believe they are expected to do.”
Whether as a teacher, coach, or manager, you clearly can’t raise performance with low expectations.
Daniel Goleman’s more recent research on Emotional Intelligence leads to the same findings: “expecting the best from people can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Saving Changes...
So Pygmalion had a statue with soft lips, and that is a wish granted? At least he was easy to please.
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1 reply by Luis Branco
Dec 21, 2019 3:43 PM
Luis Branco
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Dear Sante
Do you find it easy to turn a statue into a person? :-)
Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Rosenthal's Experiment and the Pygmalion Effect
Rosenthal’s most famous study was conducted with Lenore Jacobson in 1963 at an elementary school just south of San Francisco, California (Spiegel, 2012).
The conclusions demonstrated by the study greatly illustrate the Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, which is the phenomenon that explains better performances by people when greater expectations are put on them (Bruns et al., 2000). Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Self-fulfilling Prophecy of Star Wars
The plot of the 2005 movie Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was based around a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The main character, Anakin Skywalker, has a premonitory dream about the death of his wife Padmé Amidala.
He searches for a way to save her, and in desperation, allies himself with the evil Sith. However, it is Anakin’s turn to evil that ends up killing Padmé. Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Dec 20, 2019 3:05 PM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
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A good example (as I'm a golfer) is when I tell myself upon seeing a water hazard "I hope I don't end up in the water!". Sure enough, guess where my ball lands...
As a project manager or team member, self-fulfilling prophecies happen when we are concerned about a negative risk and our unconsciously dwelling on it can result in the risk being realized. Sometimes that is just bad luck, but other times it might be that we are behaving in a manner which causes that reality to occur.
Kiron
Dear Kiron
Thank you for participating in this reflection and for your opinion.
It seemed to me that self-fulfilling prophecy in both situations is negative :-)
(Correct me if you are mistaken)
Which one do you use with your teams? Saving Changes...
