Do you consider yourself a Magician?
Would you like to increase your vocabulary by adding the word “awesome”?
Ok, stay with me… Kids are going back to school. If, as a parent, your kids get teachers who believe in self-fulfilling prophecies, you hit the jackpot. Teachers can quite often shape the behavior of individuals or whole classrooms of students. With this Teacher, kids are encouraged every day. With this Teacher, they are encouraged to develop new skills and to get better every day. They are treated with respect. Those students respond, most often, by rising to the Teacher’s expectations. Teachers can create self-fulfilling prophecies by what they do, or do not do.
Some Supervisors have a reputation for treating subordinates with respect. And, other Supervisors…well, they don’t. Some Supervisors treat subordinates in ways that result in mediocre or less productivity. And, other supervisors achieve exceptional productivity. From this point forward, it’s a matter of conscious choice…conscious choices.
Eliza Doolittle, in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, says “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 she’s treated…..because you always treat me as a lady and always will.”
So, some of the things Magicians do to create self-fulfilling prophecies include: saying Good Morning, asking for their input, giving positive reinforcement, being consistently consistent, giving signs of respect, and letting your subordinates know they are valued.
Go ahead. Try it.