I have had the pleasure of being a cohort member of the National Child Development Study which is a longitudinal study extending back over 50 years. Throughout my life I have completed various questionnaires and being medically examined in order to trace the ingredients of what goes to produce people of my age. The Study's data has been used by researchers countless times and from around the globe. Most recently, Radio 4 did a series of short programmes featuring cohort members where they compared their predictions aged 10 with how their lives have actually turned out. (You can go to the programmes here.) I listened to these broadcasts and not only are they a delightful example of social history, one particular conclusion appeared to emerge.
There seems to be a link between how successful a person is and how successful they expected (or were expected) to be. Put simply, if a person's parents expected them to do well in life, people often rose up to meet that expectation and did reasonably well. The converse was also true, to a limited extent. Clearly life 'success', however that is measured, is down to a myriad of factors to do with social class, educational achievement, race, gender etc etc. But the importance of expectation, self belief and the confidence in oneself which go hand in hand is there, it seems to me.
This got me wondering about what leaders can do to support and nurture expectation and conversely what they can (and do) do that erodes confidence and an expectation of success.
The other week, I was running a leadership development programme and we got to talking about how leaders can help build cultures of continuous improvement through praising and expecting the best of people. One manager said that he had not thanked any of his staff of late since none of them had done anything extraordinary that, in his view, deserved a thank you. Another manager suggested that he might not be looking hard enough whilst another wondered why none of his staff were doing anything extraordinary... It was a good debate.
So my questions in this blog post are:
- How much success do you expect from your staff?
- How do you let them know what you expect of them?
- When do you thank your staff, what do they have to do to get your thanks?
- What are you doing that shows you expect high performance from your team?
Hi Jon,Great insight, I can see how this applies within well managed transformations as the ethos and personal motivations of all involved should become increasingly self motivating.Equally I've seen the outcomes from some 'NEETs' where they were pursuaded to go on another benefit, rather than staying as a job seeker. They accept their new role as unable to get a job, never to aspire to greatness again!Thats the Job Centre staff hitting targets! One less statistic to achieve!
ReplyDeleteAgreed Dave - let's do away with all targets that reduce or damage ambition - which some would contend are all targets!
ReplyDeleteAs Dave says, an interesting observation, but PLEASE let's not start the 'targets' debate again!
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting view, and I think it goes much deeper than setting targets, as Jon Harvey says in his blog. Leaders set the culture.We ran an in-house course last week for a small company, where we were able to have open and frank debate. The managers pointed out to the owner how his attitude in the morning set the scene for the day. His lack of praise and low expectations of people demotivated them. He had been totally unaware of his power as a leader.As Goethe said "Treat people as they are and they remain that. Treat them as though they were what they can be, and we help them become what they are capable of becoming". Praise and encouragement cost nothing and yet have a major influence on people's performance. The role of a leader is to inspire, and I would suggest inspiration comes from praise and feeling valued. It shows you have taken the time to notice and that people are more than a human resource.
ReplyDeleteJon, it must be fascinating to be part of such an important study. This is sometimes called the Pygmalion Effect and it was something that Deming thought was very important, quoting George Bernard Shaw: "Treat me like a little flower-girl: I'll be a little flower girl; treat me like a lady: I'll be a lady".One of the things I like about doing interventions is that it provides the opportunity to give staff at all levels an opportunity to do something quite out of the ordinary, which provides the chance for them to shine. I am often struck by the disconnect between senior managers and their staff in Local Government and an intervention also gives them some 'face time' with their staff. The difficulty is to sustain this after the intial intervention as, sadly, some managers have a tendency to revert to their former behaviours.As a former manager myself, this all seems like the core of management behaviour, but for many, it is seen as something of an optional extra. Something you do on a 'back to the floor day' once a year. For me the biggest mangement myth is that they should be 'more strategic'. In practice, this means they don't get out of thier office. Quite what they are doing in there, being strategic, is something of a mystery.RegardsPaul
ReplyDeleteJon – a great post. The Longitudinal Study sounds fascinating. Presumably there’s no connection between your success and the random (?) selection of you as a participant when you were a child!You say:There seems to be a link between how successful a person is and how successful they expected (or were expected) to be…But the importance of expectation, self belief and the confidence in oneself which go hand in hand is there, it seems to me.Oh yes, absolutely. I’m surprised no-one has mentioned NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) in their responses – crudely put, perhaps, the power of positive thinking. What the brain receives happens. I’m old enough to remember when Muhamed Ali used to shout “I am the greatest”. How we Brits laughed at him. But of course he did become the greatest heavy weight boxer of his time. In later years (before his medical problems) I remember he was asked why he did that and he replied “I was creating my own future history”. If he’d gone around mumbling “Oh, God, I’m useless, I’ll never get anywhere” that’s exactly where he’d have got.Transferring that to the work situation, if managers (I couldn’t call them leaders if they do this) go around moaning “What a bunch of *****” about their staff that’s what they’ll get – a bunch of *****. If they think their people are amazing and reinforce that at every opportunity, that’s what they’ll be – amazing.It always stuns me that the managers you describe (“…he had not thanked any of his staff of late since none of them had done anything extraordinary”) have working for them people who in their private lives: take on the responsibility of bringing up children purchase an asset (a house) worth well into six figures look after aged relatives give time and money to charity devote themselves to the most unexpected and challenging interests and hobbies.Done nothing extraordinary?
ReplyDeleteThanks for all your comments.I should add that my Father - who was also my Headteacher when I was 7 - had to complete a questionnaire about me a the time. He was asked (among other questions) "how does this child respond to admonishment?" The answer he circled was "mutters under his breath"!!I have not changed much!
ReplyDeleteJonOne of the things that I have learnt through coaching is that we can set ourselves free from the past, if we choose too. People often carry the belief from something a parent has said and it continues to haunt their lives and become a self fulfilling prophesy. The expectations we put on our selves and our team may well be influenced by those beliefs.This is not an admonishment, so please don't mutter under your breath!!!
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