pygmalion in management：皮格馬利翁管理.doc

Pygmalion in Management* By J. Sterling Livingston. Harvard Business Review, JulyAugust 1969, pp. 8189.In George Bernard Shaws Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle explains:You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how shes treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.Some managers always treat their subordinates in a way that leads to superior performance. But most managers, like professor Higgins, unintentionally treat their subordinates in a way that leads to lower performance than they are capable of achieving. The way managers treat their subordinates is subtly influenced by what they expect of them. If a managers expectations are high, productivity is likely to be excellent. If his expectations are low, productivity is likely to be poor. It is as though there were a law that caused a subordinates performance to rise or fall to meet his managers expectations.The powerful influence of one persons expectations on anothers behaviour has long been recognised by physicians and behavioural 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 a manager expects of his subordinates and the way he treats them largely determine their performance and career progress. A unique characteristic of superior managers is their ability to create high performance expectations that subordinates fulfil. 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.Impact on ProductivityOne of the most comprehensive illustrations of the effect of managerial expectations on productivity is recorded in studies of the organisational experiment undertaken in 1961 by Alfred Oberlander, manager of the Rockway District Office of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. See Jamesville Branch Office (A), MET003A, and Jamesville Branch Office (B), MET003B (Boston, Sterling Institute, 1969). He had observed that outstanding insurance agencies grew faster than average or poor agencies and that new insurance agents performed better in outstanding agencies than in average or poor agencies, regardless of their sales aptitude. He decided, therefore, to group his superior men in one unit to stimulate their performance and to provide a challenging environment in which to introduce new salesmen.Accordingly, Oberlander assigned his six best agents to work with his best assistant manager, an equal number of average producers to work with an average assistant manager, and the remaining low producers to work with the least able manager. He then asked the superior group to produce two thirds of the premium volume achieved by the entire agency the previous year. He described the results as follows:Shortly after this selection had been made the men in the agency began referring to this select group as a superstaff since, due to the fact that we were operating this group as a unit, their espirit de corps was very high. Their production efforts over the first 12 weeks far surpassed our most optimistic expectations - proving that groups of men of sound ability can be motivated beyond their apparently normal productive capacities when the problems created by the poor producer are eliminated from the operation.Thanks to this fine result, overall agency performance improved 40 percent and stayed at this figure.In the beginning of 1962 when, through expansion, we appointed another assistant manager and assigned him a staff, we again utilised this same concept, arranging the men once more according to their productive capacity.The assistant managers were assigned . according to their ability with the most capable assistant manager receiving the best group, thus playing strength to strength. Our agencys overall production again improved by about 2530 per cent, and so this staff arrangement was continued until the end of the year.Now in this year of 1963, we found upon analysis that there were so many men . with a potential of half a million dollars or more that only one staff remained of those men in the agency who were not considered to have any chance of reaching the halfmilliondollar mark. Jamesville Branch Office (B), p.2.Although the productivity of the superstaff improved dramatically, it should be pointed out that the productivity of men in the lowest unit, who were not considered to have any chance of reaching the halfmillion dollar mark, actually declined and that attrition among these men increased. The performance of the superior men rose to meet their managers expectations while that of the weaker men declined as predicted.Selffulfilling PropheciesHowever, the average unit proved to be an anomaly. Although the district manager expected only average performance from this group, its productivity increased significantly. This was because the assistant manager in charge of the group refused to believe that he was less capable than the manager of the superstaff or that the agents in the top group had any greater ability than the agents in his group. He insisted in discussions with his agents that every man in the middle group had greater potential than the men in the superstaff, lacking only their years of experience in selling insurance. He stimulated his agents to accept the challenge of outperforming the superstaff. As a result, in each year the middle group increased its productivity by a higher percentage than the superstaff did (although it never attained the dollar volume of the top group).It is of special interest that the selfimage of the manager of the average unit did not permit him to accept others treatment of him as an average manager, just as Eliza Doolittles image of herself as a lady did not permit her to accept others treatment of her as a flower girl. The assistant manager transmitted his own strong feelings of efficacy to his agents, created mutual expectancy of high performance, and greatly stimulated productivity.Comparable results occurred when a similar experiment was made at another office of the company. Further confirmation comes from a study of the early managerial success of 49 college graduates who were management level employees of an operating company of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. David E. Berlew and Douglas T. Hall of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined the career progress of these managers over a period of five years and discovered that their relative success, as measured by salary increase and the companys estimate of each mans performance and potential, depended largely on the companys expectations of them. Some Determinants of Early Managerial Success, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, Organisation Research Program 8164. (Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1964) pp. 1314.The influence of one persons expectations on anothers behaviour is by no means a business discovery. More than half a century ago, Albert Moll concluded from his clinical experience that subjects behaved as they believed they were expected to. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom (New York, Holt, Rinchart, and Winston, Inc., 1968), p.11. The phenomenon he observed, in which the prophecy causes its own fulfillment, has recently become a subject of considerable scientific interest. For example:In a series of scientific experiments, Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University has demonstrated that a teachers expectation for her pupils intellectual competence can come to serve as an educational selffulfilling prophecy. Rosenthal and Jacabson. Op. Cit. Preface p. vii.An experiment in a summer Headstart program for 60 preschoolers compared the performance of pupils under (a) teachers who had been led to expect relatively slow learning by their children, and (b) teachers who had been led to believe their children had excellent intellectual ability and learning capacity. Pupils of the second group of teachers learned much faster. Ibid., p. 38.Moreover, the healing professions have long recognised that a physicians or psychiatrists expectations can have a formidable influence on a patients physical or mental health. What takes place in the minds of the patients and the healers, particularly when they have congruent expectations, may determine the outcome. For instance, the havoc of a doctors pessimistic prognosis has often been observed. Again, it is well known that the efficacy of a new drug or a new treatment can be greatly influenced by the physicians expectations a result referred to by the medical profession as a placebo effect.Pattern of FailureWhen salesmen are treated by their managers as supersalesmen, as the superstaff was at Metropolitan Rockway District Office, they try to live up to that image and do what they know supersalesmen are expected to do. But when salesmen with poor productivity records are treated by their managers as not having any chance of success, as the low producers at Rockway were, this negative expectation also becomes a managerial self fulfilling prophecy.Unsuccessful salesmen have great difficulty maintaining their selfimage and selfesteem. In response to low managerial expectations, they typically attempt to prevent additional damage to their egos by avoiding situations that might lead to greater failure. They either reduce the number of sales calls they make or avoid trying to close sales when that might result in further painful rejection, or both. Low expectations and damaged egos lead them to behave in a manner that increases the probability of failure, thereby fulfilling their managers expectations. Let me illustrate:Not long ago I studied the effectiveness of branch bank managers at a West Coast bank with over 500 branches. The managers who had had their lending authority reduced because of high rates of loss became progressively less effective. To prevent further loss of authority, they turned to making only safe loans. This action resulted in losses of business to competing banks and a relative decline in both deposits and profits at their branches. Then, to reverse that decline in deposits and earnings, they often reached for loans and became almost irrational in their acceptance of questionable credit risks. Their actions were not so much a matter of poor judgement as an expression of their willingness to take desperate risks in the hope of being able to avoid further damage to their egos and to their careers.Thus, in response to the low expectations of their supervisors, who had reduced their lending authority, they behaved in a manner that led to larger credit losses. They appeared to do what they believed they were expected to do, and their supervisors expectations became selffulfilling prophecies.Power of ExpectationsManagers cannot avoid the depressing cycle of events that flow from low expectations merely by hiding their feelings from subordinates. If a manager believes a subordinate will perform poorly, it is virtually impossible for him to mask his expectations, because the message usually is communicated unintentionally, without conscious action on his part.Indeed, a manager often communicates most when he believes he is communicating least. For instance, when he says nothing, when he becomes cold and uncommunicative, it usually is a sign that he is displeased by a subordinate or believes he is hopeless. The silent treatment communicates negative feelings even more effectively, at times, than a tonguelashing does. What seems to be critical in the communication of expectations is not what the boss says, so much as the way he behaves. Indifferent and noncommittal treatment, more often than not, is the kind of treatment that communicates low expectations and leads to poor performance.Common IllusionsManagers are more effective in communicating low expectations to their subordinates than in communicating high expectations to them, even though most managers believe exactly the opposite. It usually is astonishingly difficult for them to recognise the clarity with which they transmit negative feelings to subordinates. To illustrate again: The Rockway district manager vigorously denied that he had communicated low expectations to the men in the poorest group who, he believed, did not have any chance of becoming high producers. Yet the message was clearly received by those men. A typical case was that of an agent who resigned from the low unit. When the district manager told the agent that he was sorry he was leaving, the agent replied, No, youre not, youre glad. Although the District Manager previously had said nothing to the man, he had unintentionally communicated his low expectations to his agents through his indifferent manner. Subsequently, the men who were assigned to the lowest unit interpreted the assignment as equivalent to a request for their resignation.One of the companys agency managers established superior, average, and low units, even though he was convinced that he had no superior or outstanding subordinates. All my assistant managers and agents are either average or incompetent, he explained to the Rockway district manager. Although he tried to duplicate the Rockway results, his low opinions of his men were communicated not so subtly to them. As a result, the experiment failed.Positive feelings, on the other hand, often do not come through clearly enough. For example:Another insurance agency manager copied the organisational changes made at the Rockway District Office, grouping the salesmen he rated highly with the best manager, the average salesmen with an average manager, and so on. However, improvement did not result from the move. The Rockway district manager therefore investigated the situation. He discovered that the assistant manager in charge of the highperformance unit was unaware that his manager considered him to be best. In fact, he and the other agents doubted that the agency manager really believed there was any difference in their abilities. This agency manager was a stolid, phlegmatic, unemotional man who treated his men in a rather pedestrian way. Since high expectations had not been communicated to the men, they did not understand the reason for the new organisation and could not see any point in it. Clearly, the way a manager treats his subordinates, not the way he organises them, is the key to high expectations and high productivity.Impossible DreamsManagerial expectations must pass the test of reality before they can be translated into performance. To become selffulfilling prophecies, expectations must be made of sterner stuff than the power of positive thinking or generalised confidence in ones fellow men helpful as these concepts may be for some other purposes. Subordinates will not be motivated to reach high levels of productivity unless they consider the bosss high expectations realistic and achievable. If they are encouraged to strive for unattainable goals, they eventually give up trying and settle for results that are lower than they are capable of achieving. The experience of a large electrical manufacturing company demonstrates this: the company discovered that production actually declined if production quotas were set too high, because the workers simply stopped trying to meet them. In other words, the practice of dangling the carrot just beyond the donkeys reach, endorsed by many managers, is not a good motivational device.Scientific research by David C. McClelland of Harvard University and John W Atkinson of the University of Michigan See John W. Atkinson, Motivational Determinants of RiskTaking Behaviour, Psychological Review, Vol. 64, No.6, 1957, p. 365. has demonstrated that the relationship of motivation to expectancy varies in the form of a bell shaped curve.The degree of motivation and effort rises until the expectancy of success reaches 50%, then begins to fall even though the expectancy of success continues to increase. No motivation or response is aroused when the goal is perceived as being either virtually certain or virtually impossible to attain.Moreover as Berlew and Hall have pointed out, if a subordinate fails to meet performance expectations that are close to his own level of aspirations, he will lower his personal performance goals and standards, his . performance will tend to drop off, and he will develop negative attitudes toward the task, activity or job. David E. Berlew and Douglas T. Hall, The Socialisation of Managers : Effects of Expectations on Performance, Administrative Science Quarterly. September 1966, p. 208. It is therefore not surprising that failure of subordinates to meet the unrealistically high expectations of their managers leads to high rates of attrition; such attrition may be voluntary or involuntary.Secret of SuperioritySomething takes place in the minds of superior managers that does not occur in the minds of those