Pygmalion effect and application in management activities at the enterprise (part 2)

(Next part 1 )

Dreams cannot come true

Managers' expectations are required to undergo a realistic "test" before being used as a tool to increase productivity. In order for "self-made prophecies" to be made , they must be made up of something tougher than the power of positive thinking or too familiar self-confidence before subordinates - friendly in school This case is the concept that should probably be used for other situations. Employees will not be motivated to achieve the highest level of work results unless they see the boss's expectations as feasible and achievable. If encouraged to accomplish "utopian" goals, they will eventually give up their efforts to try and produce results that are lower than their capabilities. In fact, an electric appliance company has proved this. The company found that production actually decreased if the target was set too high, because simple workers would stop trying to achieve them. In other words, "using carrots to lure the donkey while the carrot is tied to the back of the donkey with the heavy cart behind" of many managers is not a measure. Good motivation.

The donkey is trying his best to pull the heavy cart to the carrot in front of it. He always tries to move forward with a clear goal of reaching out to carrots and having a good meal. But he never reached it because the nutty carrot tied it on its back and the heavy truck behind him. It always tries to reach the goal without returning to find the reason why the carrot is in such a high position. Nor does he care about where the car goes, this is the only good thing with carrots. Towards the end of the day, he ate the grass that he had given him to take strength, and continued to pursue the journey to reach a carrot the next morning!

A study conducted by David C. McClelland (Harvard University) and John W. Atkinson (University of Michigan) demonstrated that the relationship between motivation and expectations changes in a bell-shaped curve.

The level of motivation and effort increased until the expectation for success reached about 50%, then began to decline even though expectations for success continued to increase. No motive or behavior is stirred when the goal is said to be almost uncertain or almost impossible to achieve.

Moreover, just as Berlew and Hall have pointed out, if the subordinates do not meet the expectations of performance, but are close to their own aspirations, they will lower their goals and achievement standards. In itself, then, efficiency will also tend to decrease and negative attitudes towards that task or job will gradually become stronger. It is not surprising, therefore, that subordinates fail to meet managers' high expectations and unrealistic expectations will lead to a high level of job withdrawal or intentional or no ownership. I mean.

The secret of superiority

A few things that take place in the minds of excellent managers do not appear in the minds of managers who are inferior, or exactly ineffective. While excellent managers are steadfast in creating high expectations of productivity that employees can implement, weak leaders are not successful in gaining positive interactions. That is from the subordinate. So what makes the difference here?

The answer, in part, seems to be because excellent managers have a much greater confidence in their ability to develop the talent of their subordinates than other managers. Contrary to what has been assumed, high expectations of these talented people, basically, are based on what they think of themselves - about their own ability to choose and train. and motivate employees. What managers believe about them has implications that it is not easy to recognize what they believe in subordinates, which they expect for those who work under their management and how they treat those people. If they are confident in their ability to develop and encourage their subordinates to achieve a high level of achievement, they will have great expectations of their subordinates and will treat them with the belief that expectations that will be met. However, if they are skeptical about their ability to motivate their employees, they will expect less and will have behaviors that reflect the attitude of not believing in their subordinates.

What managers believe about them has implications that it is not easy to recognize what they believe in subordinates, which they expect for those who work under their management and how they treat those people.

In other words, the success of publicity and the confidence of excellent managers in their own abilities will make high expectations more reliable. As a result, their subordinates will accept them feasibly and try to achieve.

The importance of what a manager believes in their own motivational and training ability is illustrated by the "Sweeney's Miracle" story - a self-proclaimed prophecy. Real in education and management.

James Sweeney taught about psychiatry and business administration at Tulane University, and he was also responsible for the activities of the Center for Medicine - Medicine being born there. Sweeney believes he can teach a less educated person to become an excellent computer controller.

George John - once a hospital gatekeeper - eventually became the computer center custodian. Sweeney chose him because he proved his faith. In the mornings, Johnson did his daily work and in the evenings, Sweeney taught him about computers.

Johnson has learned a lot about computers. Then there was a person at the university who shared that to become a computer controller, a certain IQ score must be achieved. Johnson took the test and his IQ showed that he could not learn how to type a computer.

However, Sweeney is not convinced. He threatened to leave the center unless Johnson was allowed to learn computer programming and control. Sweeney prevailed and he remained in the center. Now, Johnson has become the supervisor of the main engine room and is responsible for training new employees in programming and controlling computers.

Sweeny's expectations are based on his belief in his ability to teach others, not on Johnson's academic credentials. What managers believe in their ability to train and promote their subordinates is clearly the foundation for high and feasible expectations to be built.

The early years were decisive

Management's expectations have a strong impact, especially for young people. Because the subordinates, over time, will mature and accumulate experience, their self-image gradually becomes more rigid and they begin to see themselves as what that past achievements reflect. Their own aspirations and superiors' expectations are increasingly controlled by their "reality" of past work productivity. For these employees and managers, it's hard to create highly interactive expectations with each other unless employees have had an impressive work process.

It is a coincidence that this pattern is similar to the pattern in schools. Rosenthal's experiments with self-fulfilling prophecies prove that teachers' expectations for impacting children's intellectual growth are more effective for young children. In lower grades, especially in grades 1 and 2, the effect from teacher expectations becomes even more intense. For upper-level classes, teachers' predictions seem to have little effect on the intellectual growth of students, even though they affect each person's motivation and attitude toward learning.

While the reduced impact on teachers' expectations is not fully explained, it is reasonable to conclude that younger children are much easier to protect.

The key to improving future performance

The early years in a company or an organization - when young people can be strongly influenced by managerial expectations - are the key to determining productivity and career progress in future.

In research done at AT&T, Berlew and Hall concluded that the correlation between how much a company expects a first-year employee and how much that employee can contribute in the next 5 years "so attractive that it can't be ignored".

They then studied the history of the achievements of 18 university bachelors working at some of AT & T's other computer control companies as interns of management. Once again, they realized that both expectation and performance in the first year were closely related to the success achieved in the next period.

Berlew and Hall concluded: "In the first year, a very important thing will appear. Meeting the company's high, decisive expectations at this stage will bring about an awareness of The positive attitudes and high standards of work, as a result, these first attitudes and standards will lead and promote great achievement and success in the following years. a newly promoted employee who manages to overcome the challenge of a highly demanding task, will then be assigned a job with a higher level of challenge and his contribution will increase When meeting the growing expectations of the company to me, the key here is to consider the first year as the learning period. It is decisive - the only time a trainee is willing to develop or change towards achieving company expectations ".

The boss has the greatest influence

The first manager, for a new employee, is likely to be the most influential person in their career. If the person is not willing or able to develop the skills that the employee needs to work effectively, he or she will set lower work standards than they can achieve, self-awareness. about yourself is also weakened and begins to form negative attitudes towards work, employers and - almost certainly - both with their own careers. Because the opportunities for success in this career for these new employees will decrease rapidly, if there are higher expectations and hope to find better opportunities, they will jump jobs. Conversely, if the first manager helps them maximize their potential, they will build the foundation for a successful career in the near future (at the company itself).

The most successful branch managers in West Coast are those who have worked for a long time and are aged between 40 and 50 years old. They also explained that in order to gain knowledge, experience and know how to assess, provide a perspective to handle credit risks properly as well as issues related to customers and employees, A person (in a management position) needs to spend a considerable amount of time to achieve such a level.

However, the bank has a branch manager - currently only about 27 years old - has made it into the top 10% of managers in terms of efficiency (including bank profit growth, up Chief of capital mobilization, score in administrative management inspections and objective assessments by superiors). The young employee became a branch manager at the age of 25 and for the next 2 years, he not only improved the branch's performance fundamentally but also helped another subordinate achieve the same performance. - from where only an assistant becomes the director of another branch.

This assistant has an average college degree. Luckily, for 4 years at the bank, he has been working directly with two branch directors - people with impressive achievements. The first boss - who is acknowledged to have "superhuman" skills in developing young employees - does not believe it will take a few years to accumulate the knowledge and skills necessary to become a Excellent bank staff. It was this that motivated him to do his best. After 2 years, he became an assistant to another branch manager - who is also considered a talented "human training specialist". Therefore, when he was promoted to be the head of a branch, he was very confident to apply their management model and soon achieved impressive achievements in the work, and also continued training. another employee, helping them to have a good career like me.

To validate the evidence of the core role of the first boss for an employee, move on to sales, because productivity in this industry is easier to measure than most aspects of management. other. Here are a few surveys that have been done.

In a career study involving 100 insurance agents, working under the supervision of a high-quality agent manager or with a less capable person, Life Insurance Agency Management Association (Life insurance agent management association) has found that those who have an average score of the sales competence test under the supervision of managers with good performance are likely to 5 times more work than working with poorly performing managers . At the same time, those with the highest rating when working with excellent superiors are said to be twice as successful as under the supervision of their superiors.

In 1960, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company determined that the differences in productivity of new agent employees with equal sales test scores could be determined only by the differences in the ability of managers at the offices they work for. Dealers whose high productivity correlates with the number of assessment points in the test are always the same, will be employed at offices with achievements belonging to the top 3 of the company. In contrast, those with low productivity and low rating are typically assigned to inefficient departments. After analyzing all the factors that explain these changes, the company concluded that the differences in the effectiveness of new agent employees, basically, are due to the differences in " predictions about the direction and training of sales " of managers in that area.

A study that I have done on the performance of sales staff in the automotive field at a Ford dealer in New Endland shows that high-quality salespeople are gathered to work together. at some main agents. For example, 10 of those 15 people work at the most successful agents. However, the other 4 people, before that, were only assigned to work at agents but never achieved impressive sales. The conclusion of managers' motivational and training skills at such prominent agents seems to be a little suspicious.

The wise choice

While business success seems to depend a lot on fate, this is more than luck when a new employee is working with a senior manager.Successful managers don't choose their subordinates randomly or by tossing coins. They are very careful and only choose people they "know" will make good things. Like the Metropolitan Rockaway area executive who once insisted: "Every employee who starts working with us or will become first-rate insurance salespeople or won't be able to participate in any Team ".

When pressed to give an explanation of how they "know" whether a person will succeed or not, senior managers often end up with a few things like: "The power is invisible but I recognize them when I look at them ". They find it very difficult to give a detailed answer because the selection process is intuitive and based on intelligence interpersonal intelligence - which is not easy to describe. . It seems that they can identify the subordinates they can work with - the people they see can be "compatible" and have appropriate behaviors for them. In case, if the choice is wrong, these excellent managers will gradually ignore that employee based on evaluations of ability to train and motivate people. Meanwhile, weak managers choose their subordinates faster and give up them more easily, saying that inadequacy is the fault of their subordinates, not them.

Develop young employees

After reviewing the study of the regional director's company, RW Walters, Jr. - the director of the college staff recruiting department at AT&T pointed out that "the company's first expectations for productivity (with real responsibility) will create continued expectations and behavior. follow " and he is sure that " the first boss of a new employee must be the best in the organization ". Unfortunately, most companies do the opposite.

Rarely do new graduates work with middle or senior managers. Often, they will be under the supervision of junior managers - tend to be the least effective and inefficient people in that organization. Although there are some exceptions, in general, these lowest-level managers or "once-professionals" who are judged to be incompetent to receive high levels of responsibility or are young people be transformed from "executable" to "managed". They lack the necessary knowledge and skills to detect and exploit the potential of subordinates. As a result, many new students start their careers at a company and fall into terrible situations. Because they know that their abilities are not used or not developed, of course, they will soon have negative thoughts about work, employers and the work itself.

Most of the best managers are still unable to find a "remedy" for this problem and a further challenge is the handling of underdevelopment, ineffective management and not fully exploiting the capabilities of employees as well as young managers.

The dream of breaking up and moving people

The problem of governance in corporations is the rising trend of job severance among "new" and professional managers. Personnel fluctuations among experienced employees 1 to 5 years after graduation, currently, are almost twice as high as 10 years ago and 5 times higher than two decades ago. 3 out of 5 companies surveyed by Fortune in the fall of 1968 showed a higher severity of young managers and senior management staff 5 years ago. While the business environment is more demanding and the lack of skilled employees to promote job jumping among industries, I am convinced that the basic causes of job severance High level is due to underdevelopment and not fully exploiting the capacity of the labor force.

This problem can be clearly seen in the graduates of colleges and universities working in the sale position. The severance rate is very high. While on average, a company loses about 50% of young employees within 3 to 5 years, the rate of resignation in the first year also accounts for about 40% of the newly graduated students doing sales at a common company.

This quitting situation, in my opinion, basically comes from the failure of grassroots managers in training new rookies what they need to know to become great people. effective sales.

As we can see, young people who start their careers under the supervision of high-capacity sales managers are more likely, eventually, to receive low-productivity evaluations. When rejected by customers and managed as a person with little potential for success, it is obvious that they will face a lot of difficulties in maintaining self-esteem. Not long after that, they no longer felt satisfied at work and to avoid situations that hurt their self-esteem, they would leave the company to find more suitable jobs. . In addition, due to reports of public job discontinuities and disillusionment of people engaged in "fall" sales on the campus, the students preparing to graduate are also increasingly reluctant to choose. work in this field.

Managing inefficient junior salespeople starts with a series of events and ends with career-avoiding college and university students. At a narrower level, this pattern is also reflected in many other businesses as evidenced by an increasing trend of new graduates pursuing "more meaningful" jobs such as teaching or greed. join government organizations.

There is a serious " generation gap" between employers and subordinates that is another cause of this crisis. Many managers are dissatisfied with the use of scholarly, abstract language and limited rationalization typical of recent graduates. A manager once complained to me, "Oh my God, you need more vocabulary to talk to these kids." Many leaders who do not have special qualifications are often angry, perhaps because they feel threatened by smart young people who possess a large amount of knowledge learned through books that they cannot understand.

For whatever reason, the generation gap in corporations is gnawing on managers' expectations for new graduates. For example, an investigation of the management's attitude at one of the largest US companies revealed that 54% of managers at the grassroots level and second-line managers believe " new recruits are not as good as they were 5 years ago ". Because what managers expect of subordinates has an impact on the way they treat employees, it is not difficult to understand when new employees often develop negative attitudes towards work and employers. . Rõ ràng, kỳ vọng thấp của các nhà quản lý và thái độ khắc nghiệt không phải là nền tảng cho quản trị hiệu quả đối với những nhân viên mới đi làm lần đầu.

Công ty không xây dựng được đội ngũ quản lý hiệu quả đủ nhanh để áp ứng được nhu cầu này. Kết quả, nhiều doanh nghiệp gặp khó trong việc tối ưu hóa tài nguyên giá trị nhất của họ - những nhân viên trẻ đầy tài năng. Họ phải chấp nhận chi phí nặng nề phát sinh do tình trạng thôi việc xảy ra và "đóng góp" cho thái độ tiêu cực của người trẻ về công việc.

Đối với những giám đốc điều hành thuộc top đầu mà quan tâm tới năng suất làm việc của tổ chức và sự nghiệp của các nhân viên trẻ thì thử thách rất rõ ràng: tăng tốc độ phát triển của những nhà quản lý mà sẽ đối xử với cấp dưới theo cách tạo ra năng suất cao và sự thỏa mãn trong công việc. Nhiều nhà quản lý không chỉ không định hình được các kỳ vọng và năng suất làm việc của cấp dưới mà còn tạo ra tác động xấu tới thái độ của họ đối với nghề nghiệp và chính bản thân họ. Nếu nhà quản lý thiếu kỹ năng, họ sẽ để lại "những vết sẹo lớn" đối với những người trẻ, tạo ra "vết cắt sâu" trong lòng tự tôn của họ và bóp méo hình ảnh của chính họ. Tuy nhiên, nếu có kỹ năng và có kỳ vọng cao, sự tự tin của cấp dưới sẽ tăng lên, khả năng của họ cũng sẽ được phát triển và năng suất theo đó cũng được thúc đẩy. Trong hầu hết mọi trường hợp, điều mà chúng ta không hề nhận ra đó chính là quản lý đều dựa trên hiệu ứng Pygmalion mà thôi.