you can do it…

if you want to receive the best from people and bring out the best in people, expect the best from them.

1 corinthians 13.7 (lb), if you love someone … you will always believe in him, always expect the best of him.

many times we don’t realize how as dads or moms we set our children up for either success or failure by our expectations of them. we do this as employers, as supervisors. your expectations have a profound influence on others because people tend to perform at the level they’re expected to perform.

you’ve heard this before. in 1968 there was a harvard psychologist named robert rosenthal. he published a study, which is now very famous called “the pygmalion in the classroom effect.” it studied the impact of teachers’ expectations on students in the classroom.

he did an experiment. he took a group of kindergartners through fifth grade students and gave them all a learning test. the next fall their new teachers were casually given the names of four, five, six high achievers. these people were given that title supposedly based on the test they’d had the previous year. the only problem was, what they didn’t know was that the test was rigged.

those children who had been labeled “high achievers” were simply chosen at random. there was no basis for that labeling. at the end of the year, the students were retested and the amazing results were the students whom the teachers thought had the most potential – they just thought they did – had actually outscored everybody else and had gained as many as 15 to 27 iq points in one year.

the teachers described these children that they thought were high achievers as happier, most curious, more affectionate than average and having a better chance of achieving later in life. but the only change during that year was the attitude of the teachers because they had been led to expect more of certain students the students came to expect more of themselves. the teachers communicated their positive expectations in terms of tone of voice, facial expression, even touch and posture. karl menninger concluded that attitudes are more important than facts.

what that says is if you want to build confident kids, confidence is more caught than it is taught. it’s how you believe in people, how you treat people. whatever you want people to be, treat them like you want them to become. if you are a supervisor you ought to learn that when you take pride in other people’s work, then they do too. every great leader knows the power of positive expectation. margaret my wife was awesome at this and those of you who have worked for her would say amen to that. i know you would.

just a thought from the front porch…