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Check Your Attitude to Avoid The Pygmalion Effect

Guest post by: Dr. Rick Johnson

Article Overview: The wrong attitude can create a Self Fulfilling Prophecy. It's called the Pygmalion Effect. You must believe in yourself. You must believe in your own ability, the ability of your team. You must have the will to succeed even though times are tough. You must openly demonstrate the desire to succeed. Look inwardly at your own thoughts. Thoughts are powerful as they shape your attitude and your attitude shapes your beliefs which control your actions. Hard work is a direct expression of your beliefs.

Check Your Attitude to Avoid The Pygmalion Effect

The wrong attitude can create a Self Fulfilling Prophecy. It's called the Pygmalion Effect. You must believe in yourself. You must believe in your own ability, the ability of your team. You must have the will to succeed even though times are tough. You must openly demonstrate the desire to succeed. Look inwardly at your own thoughts. Thoughts are powerful as they shape your attitude and your attitude shapes your beliefs which control your actions. Hard work is a direct expression of your beliefs. Effective leaders fall back on the five basic principles of success.

1. Commitment with a passion --- Leaders must demonstrate a commitment for success that leaves no doubt in the minds of their employees.

2. Realization that "You don't have to have all the answers." Seeking input from employees and openly discussing ideas and strategies is the best way to demonstrate a confidence in the team you have and the employees that will execute your vision.

3. Empowerment and Delegation

Delegation is the handing of a task over to another person, usually a subordinate. It is the assignment of authority and responsibility to another person to carry out specific activities. Delegation, if properly done, is not abdication. The opposite of effective delegation is micromanagement, where a manager provides too much input, direction and review of 'delegated' work.

Empowerment refers to increasing the spiritual, political, social or economic strength of individuals. It often involves the empowered developing confidence in their own capabilities. It allows a subordinate to make decisions, i.e. it is a shift of decision-making authority from one organizational level to a lower one. In the sphere of management and organizational theory, "empowerment" often refers loosely to processes for giving subordinates (or workers generally) greater discretion and resources: distributing control in order to better serve both customers and the interests of the company.

4. Employees are the most precious asset --- This means you must walk the walk and invest in employee development and employee training even more during tough economic times. Employees are the profit and success creators of every organization.

5. Communicate intentionally and effectively following these ten tips.

• "Manage by Walking Around" - Get out and meet your people, talk to them, show an interest in them and in the job they are doing for you. This includes everyone from the forklift driver to your Vice President of sales. Everyone likes to know they are appreciated.

• Eliminate unproductive - unnecessary lengthy meetings. I know a

CEO that refuses to allow chairs in the conference room. All meetings are held standing up. I don't believe there is a company that exists that can't do a better job making their meetings more productive.

• Written communication should be precise and clear. Don't write like you are a journalist for USA Today. Avoid excessive and lengthy diatribes that become confusing.

• Create flexibility in your organization structure. Rigid organization charts that are too restrictive can get in the way of getting the job done. Job functions and descriptions must have clarity but don't make them so restrictive and detailed that cross functional interaction, support and cooperation is limited.

• Open your ears and your heart. Learn to listen more effectively. That means becoming disciplined at not interrupting. You might be amazed at what employees will tell you if you just listen. You might be amazed at what employees can do for you and the company if you just let them.

• Constructive feedback can be helpful. Don't criticize the messenger. Frank opinions can be helpful if we allow our ego to get out of the way. There is no such thing as constructive criticism. Never criticize.

• Put a filter between your brain and your lips. A passing comment that seems frivolous to you could devastate your entire staff and you may never hear about it. Think before you react spontaneously. Don't say what you think they want to hear and remember; even the simplest or dumbest complaint to you is serious to the one expressing it. Be sensitive to the environment, the values and the culture of the person or persons you are communicating with.

• Don't build a kingdom on the backs of your employees. If economic times dictate cutbacks, layoffs and expense control. Start at the top. Share the pain. Look at corporate overhead, perks and fringe benefits of management and the executive staff. Consider a pay cut at the executive level.

• Keep your hand on the pulse of your business environment. Make sure you are well informed on the external and the internal environment of your business. Network with industry colleagues. Benchmark friendly competitors or businesses outside your region. Stay close to the communication channel of your vendors.

• Make sure you have a definitive focus on employee training and development. This must always carry a priority. Make sure your orientation program for new employees is continuously updated. The first sixty days is critical to retention.

Related Articles
  The Pygmalion Effect
  People Live Up or Down to a Leader's Expectations
  Attitude
  The Powers of a Positive Attitude
  Leaders Have Great Expectations
  Protect Your Attitude
  How is the Attitude – Have you Amazed those around you yet?
  Who’s really to blame when your employees fail to perform?
  LEADERSHIP IS NOT MARKETING FEELINGS BUT DEMONSTRATING ATTITUDE
  ATTITUDE CAN DETERMINE YOUR SUCESS AS A MANAGER
  Do you have Attitude?
  BOOK REVIEW: The Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People to Fail (By Jean-François Manzoni & Jean-Louis Barsoux, Harvard Business School Press, 2002, ISSBN #0-87584-949-0)
  How can you find the best of the best in sales?
  Changing Your Site's Url Structure. How To Avoid Your Site Being Penalized
  The Entrepreneur's Attitude is his/her Route to Success
  Everything Starts with Attitude
  Check Yourself for Outstanding Customer Service in Three Easy Steps
  All ya need is Attitude and Ownership to have selling success
  Positive Thinking is the Fuel that Propels Marketing Success
  Handling Challenges Productively

Article Tags: attitude, expression, leadership, management, pygmalion effect, self fulfilling prophecy



Related Forum Posts
Re: THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IS ALL IN YOUR HEAD...RIGHT NOW!!! - Yes, you are right Mal. Attitude plays a big role in it. Robert
Re: Search Engine Friendly Web Development - I would like to add some more things in search engine friendly web development. 1. PPC campaign 2. Viral marketing 3. Social Media Marketing Avoid flash in website and other use CSS files to shows the content style.
Re: What to do at the first roadblock? - Upon first discouragement, dig in and see if things are as they seem. Sometimes, even though there are several products out there that appear comparable, they are no match. Maybe they do don't a good job of what they are intended for, or maybe there are several glitches in their system, or perhaps their customer service just plain stinks. Decide how you can "one up" all of these things and decide that you are going to create a better product that more people would want. Attitude is 95% of the battle. If you feel defeated before you've done any research on any of the other products, you're doing yourself a huge disservice. Give yourself a chance and see if you can be the BEST in every way. This will get you far no matter what the venture.
Re: Stay positive! - Great theme My favorite book the ageless "Power of Positive Thinking" and I do not read many of these Motivational Books, Attitude is everything - a positive one is ore likely to bring positive results According to my Pisces horoscope - I am told that by my birth I am to be moody. We all have those bad days, but even though moody by nature, I tried to keep those days down to 4 or 5 a year - not bad for a Pisces Hang with the positives, lose the negatives
Re: Who hates cold calling? - About 15 years ago I worked for this sales company that used to sell anything from Kitchen Knives to Dry Cell Torches. The owner was a very motivating guy and he would ask us to get to the office by 7.00AM and we could sing and dance for an hour before we went to sell the products in the streets, stopping anyone and telling them our products were on discount. We used to sell snow to Eskimos, why were we able to do that? because of PMA (Positive Mental Attitude). The key to cold calling is like beauty, in eyes of the beholder. If you have no PMA, you cannot sell. Remember the law of average that states that if you went to a dance and every girl or guy you approached for a dance decline your proposal. What do you do? Do you stop? If you have a PMA, you continue until you get one person who agree to dance with you despite how ugly you look, that is is PMA and that is the power of cold calling.


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