Jocko Underground: Pygmalion - High Expectations Lead to High Performance | Snitching and Tattling | Trying to Make Everybody Happy.

This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 61. Sitting here with Echo Charles. And the last one we talked about how your name or the name you give people, or the nickname you give people, or the name you give a team might impact the way that they act and what they do in their life. Similar thing here, the Pygmalion effect. This is a psychological phenomenon where high expectations of someone led to their improved performance. Conversely, low expectations lead to worse performance. This is from something called academy4sc.org it's an educational website. This is where I took this information, stole this information, stole these quotes from. But that's who it is. So I'm citing them, citing their reference so we can talk about the name. Pygmalion refers to a Greek myth about a talented sculptor. As the story goes, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his creations, an ivory statue of a woman. Thanks to some divine intervention, the statue came to life and he later married her. His expectations became his reality. So that's the key point there. Expectations become reality. The Pygmalion effect was first noted by psychologist Robert Rosenthal and elementary school principal Lenore Jacobson in a 1965 study called Pygmalion in the Classroom. Researchers told teachers that a select group of their elementary school students had high potential for exceeding their expected academic success based on an intelligence test. However, the results of the intelligence test were not disclosed to the teachers and the growth spurters, as they were called, were selected at random. Rosenthal and Jacobson predicted that teachers might subconsciously favor the students who were expected to overachieve, perhaps by paying closer attention to their work or offering more help when they struggled with an assignment. The study found that the randomly selected growth spurters did in fact perform better than other students despite there being no statistical difference difference in their intelligence scores. So there you go, straight up.

It's another indication of how, and this is something that's just been shocking me for the last few years, how pliable people's minds are. Just how people can be so easily influenced by what's happening around them. And in this case, the teachers are getting influenced by what they're told, who's smart, and the students are being influenced by them being told by the teachers. It's just a one big lie.

The Pygmalia effect is a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. Again, this is back to academy4sc.org a self fulfilling prophecy is when a person expects or predicts an outcome and subconsciously aligns their behaviors to meet that expected outcome, simply because they believe that it has to come true. The teachers in the Pygmalion in the classroom study believed that certain students would perform better and inadvertently willed this outcome into existence with their teaching strategies. The Pygmalion effect also works in the reverse direction. If teachers were told that a cohort of students would underperform, they likely would have subconsciously devoted less attention to these students, causing these students.

Achievement to decrease. Such a. And it seems real obvious, right? Doesn't it seem obvious? Especially with kids. But it's just across the board. And yet even though it's obvious, think about how. Think about how sometimes you're in a leadership position or you see someone a leadership position and you see how they're treating people and you know it's gonna have a negative effect. You just know it's gonna have a negative effect. And yet you still see that taking place.

So treating people in a way that. That you anticipate their good performance, having a positive attitude about something. How hard is that? Have you ever tricked yourself with like a positive attitude? Yes. They had something in Bud's basic SEAL training, they'd say false motivation is better than no motivation. And it was kind of a joke. And sometimes they'd be like, oh, I can tell this is false motivation. You're gonna break. Like they would say that kind of stuff. But you know what's true? False motivation is better than no motivation. 100% is.

Yeah.

And you could hear like one person would start acting fired up. Just acting. Literally.

Yeah.

And then that would kind of go through.

Yeah.

And I probably do that all the time.

Yeah.

You know, I don't really feel like doing this. But you know what? Watch this. Yeah, I want to do it.

That's what I was doing football when I was in Pop Warner football.

What would you do?

Just yell like so in. So I played for the Claw Rams.

Oh, hell yeah.

And the color Raiders salute two different ages. Right. Or age groups. So color Rams. They. Our coach had a policy that we would. When we do our grass drills and our yields. We drills. We had to yell just to. I guess it would get us fired up or whatever. When we went up to the next level, we didn't have to do that.

I mean, good for him. Since the dawn of war. Right. Has been a yell, a scream, like an assault. We're gonna attack. We're gonna go like so. Yeah.

I think that was a really good move because that's Peewee's is the younger guys. It's like 9 to 11. Yeah. Everything yell. You have to yell, otherwise you're not right. And then. And also he had us in uniform. Like, we all had to wear long white socks. It was like he had us in uniform more than the other teams, too. So I think that that was a good move.

This dude was squared away.

I think so. So, anyway, so we got trained into that. So I was. I was down to do it, and I saw, like, yeah, it does help you. It gives you energy to do, you know, like, when you're going through J, you're kind of tired, but if you have to yell, it, like, actually gives you energy. Some false energy. Better than no energy. So we went up to midgets. They didn't require all that. But every time that I never didn't feel like doing it or whatever, like, I just, like, do that. I'd, like, yell. Because some people would still yell like popcorn or. So whatever. You just yell. So when I would do that or. There's this one. It's basically like the football version of Sprawls, right?

Yeah.

But you hit your chest on the. On the ground and get back up and run. Yes, and then I'd hit the ground as hard. Like, hard. Like a hard impact, you know, which is kind of the same effect. Right. I just do that. But it was. It was just because I didn't feel like it. But when you did it, it would, like, kind of make you fired up and give you a lot of energy.

There you go.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that kind of energy, yes, for an individual, you can use that. But also as a leader, as a parent, as a mom or a dad.

Giving that kid, treating that kid, truly treating that kid like they're special in this certain way, which is, you know, everyone's like, oh, everyone's special now. No, we're not talking about that, but saying, hey, you could do awesome in this. There's. I've also. The little contrary to this is, have you ever heard that advice, which I've actually given before? You don't. I don't like, you do good. You're. You're. You're 10 years old. You do good in a jiu jitsu tournament. I don't say I shouldn't say, oh, Echo, you're so talented. What I should say is, hey, your hard work really paid off. You practiced hard, and it really came through. You're so focused. It's so that. There's a difference here. Right? So this is not to say, oh, Echo, you're so talented. You just have a natural gift for this, because then you're gonna try and ride that, or there's a possibility. And I rewarded that. I praised your talent.

Right.

Which is something you don't actually have any control over. You have control over how hard you work. So if I'm praising your hard work, I'm praising your focus. So that's something to be careful of here. You know, we're not saying just go out and false cheerlead your kids and be like, yeah, you stay talented and gifted. You're so special. We're not saying that. Say, hey, your hard work is going to pay off. Oh, the way that you push yourself, that's legit.

Yeah.

You ever done that with a little kid?

Yes.

Like, hey, the way you push yourself is. That's. That's what I'm talking about.

Yeah, it's very fun to watch that take effect, too.

Yeah, that's what we got to do. All right, well, so there you go. Let's. Let's set that up right in life, man. Set your team up right. Set your kids up right. Every little thing you say to them, that's the weird thing when you. When you go. When you explore this a little bit deeper. It's these little subtle things. It's little subtle things, like even the way.

So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.

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