EN Sometimes we turn our employees into monsters

Today I am referring to the Pygmalion effect.

According to the legend, Pygmalion, the king of Crete, had fallen in love with the beautiful goddess Aphrodite. Knowing that he could not have her, he built a statue that reproduced the features of the goddess and placed it in his bed, to sleep with it every evening.

Pygmalion asked the goddess Aphrodite to give life to the statue as only in this way could he could actually come to love it. The goddess, moved by compassion, granted the sovereign's wish; the statue transformed into a woman and was given the name of Galatea.

The Irish playwright GB Shaw was inspired by the myth of Pygmalion, author of the famous comedy Pygmalion of 1913; the work tells the story of a professor who teaches, both from a cultural and a good manners point of view, a young commoner.

The " pygmalion effect " or " self-fulfilling prophecy " it's that psychological phenomenon according to which a person, under the influence of a profound suggestion, adjusts his behavior to the opinion (positive or negative) of a superior.

Robert Rosenthal, a psychologist, and his team who run an experiment in a primary school, asked the children to take an intelligence test. After the test, some children were randomly selected and the teachers were made to believe that they had an above average intelligence. The suggestion was such that, when Rosenthal went to the same elementary school again the following year, he found that, in fact, the performance of the selected children had greatly improved, and this only because the teachers had positively influenced them with their attitude, unaware that it was all related to suggestion. The Pygmalion effect can also be activated in relations between employees and employers or in all those cases in which social relationships develop.

When we are treated as fools, we too will tend to believe it over time.

I have not been exempted from this treatment, I have had serious doubts about my skills and professionalism, I have been lucky to have been surrounded by people who have always reminded me of the opposite. I was lucky, we are not all lucky, and who is lucky will not always be.

Recognizing that you are making certain mistakes, or recognizing that you have been influenced, is a difficult job, possible only through an introspection driven by a strong sense of evolution, of wanting to progress and develop.

Let me know your opinion, leave a comment or contact me in private here , or on Twitter , or on Insta , or a simple email , in short, where you like, but do not be scrupulous to share what you think or ask a few questions!

- ML