Pygmalion Motivation: Motivating High Performance With High Expectations

The Pygmalion Effect explains how your expectations of other people can influence or motivate their performance. By setting and communicating high performance expectations, you can motivate better performance from the people that you lead and manage. The effect was originally studied in context of teachers' expectations of their students: Students who are expected to perform well usually do so. Those students of whom teachers have lower expectations will generally perform less well. However, this approach has clear application in the corporate world.