Pygmalion Effect In Management Analysis

. Pygmalion in Management by J. Sterling Livingston.
The article “Pygmalion Effect in Management” authored by J. Sterling Livingston in 1969, argued that the perception a teacher or manager have about a student or subordinate will greatly impact on the performance expectation of such individual in any given task. He further inferred that the manner of treatment of relationship availed to individual, go a long in affecting performance. Livingston’s argument supports Christle’s (2012) article that the Pygmalion effect is said to take place when a leader is able to move and inspire an individual to a point where the Galatea effect occurs.. He outlines that the Galatea effect is an experience where people's sentiments about their ability and

Oberlander, assigned the best Insurance agents to the best managers, the average agents to average assistant managers and least performing agents to the least manager. The result was evident as those super agents performed excellently and the least agents had low performance. However, there was a different outcome for the average team as they did well above average in their performance as against the expected outcome. This was possible because the average manager refused to believe she was less capable than the super managers. Given the evidence from the above experiment, Christle’s theory supports Kohei (2007) study that Galatea effect is said to occur if individuals believe that they will succeed as in the case of the “Average Manager”, they are more likely to succeed (Kohei 2007, pp1). In addition, managers feel comfortable communicating low expectation even though in the experiment by Oberlander, there was no verbal communication, but the natural practice of assigning super agents to super manager and vice versa are

I once worked with a senior manager who as a result of my innovative thought process on task, kept making me leader of projects, but in his mind, he hoped for the best. However, I always believe in my capabilities and drive same conception to my team and at the end, we surpass his expectation and in a bit to deflate our ego, he tends to make comments that disregard our efforts. Also based on the study by (Eden, 1990; Sy, 2010) on leaders’ implicit followership theories (LIFTs), Leaders naturally develop expectations for their followers' performance, and these expectations may be influenced by the conceptions, or mental representations that leaders hold of followers in