The Pygmalion Effect — Your Expectations Are Shaping Your Business

There is something quietly shaping your business right now…
and it’s not your pricing, your systems, or your team.

It’s what you expect.

Not what you say out loud.
What you actually believe.

In this episode, we unpack the 𝗣𝘆𝗴𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁… a powerful concept backed by decades of research that shows how people rise or fall to the level of expectation placed on them.

Using two powerful studies — one with rats and the other the well-known Rosenthal and Jacobson classroom study — Sharon shows how belief changes behaviour, and how behaviour shapes outcomes. She then brings it straight back to business: your team, your clients, and the story you may still be carrying about yourself.

And once you see it…
you can’t unsee it.

Because it’s showing up everywhere.
In your team.
In your clients.
And most importantly… in you.

𝗜𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝘄𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿:
• What the Pygmalion Effect is and how it works in real life
• The famous experiments that prove expectations shape outcomes
• How your behaviour subtly changes based on what you believe
• Why teams don’t step up when trust isn’t fully there
• How expectations impact pricing conversations and client behaviour
• The hidden ways you may be holding yourself back
• How you’re training people how to show up around you without realising it

𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀:
• People respond more to belief than instructions
• Expectations shape behaviour… and behaviour shapes results
• What you assume about others often becomes true
• You are not just reacting to your business… you are creating it

🎧 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁𝘀
https://www.sharonfrancisco.com/podcast

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Have a question for the podcast? Email hello@sharonfrancisco.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello and welcome back to the Sharon Francisco show. Today we are going to talk about the pygmalion effect. It's an expression that you may not have heard of before, but it might be playing out in your business right now, which is why I wanted to talk about it some more. I want to talk about this because it could be quietly shaping your business more than pricing, more than your systems or lack of your systems, and more than your team. And most people don't even realize it's happening. And once you see it, it might be tricky to unsee it. It's called the Pig Malian effect. Now, it sounds a little bit textbook. Stay with me because it's actually very real and very human, and it shows up everywhere in our life. At its core, it's quite simple. People tend to rise or fall to the level of expectations placed on them. Not just what you say out loud, but what you genuinely believe about them. And I want you to just sit with that for a second and think about it because we say the right things, don't we? We try to. We talk about, I trust my team. I want my clients to respond to my requests. I know I'm a capable business owner. But sometimes, underneath that, there's usually a quieter story that's running, that's actually running the show. And that's the one people respond to. Not what you're saying, what you're thinking and what you're feeling. Let me share an interesting experiment that may explain this a little bit better. And the experiment was done with rats. And I know it's random, but it's powerful. I shared on an earlier episode a story about a rat experiment. This is not the same rat experiment, it's a different one. So a group of students were given rats and asked to run them through a bunch of little mazes. Half of the students were told that these rats were specially bred to be really good at learning. They're really smart rats. And the other half were told that their rats were a little bit slow. They weren't as smart as what most rats are. They're a little bit slow with how they responded to things. Now, here's the thing: the rats were exactly the same. They weren't any different, none whatsoever. Same breeding, the same environment that they were brought up in, same everything. But the students didn't know that when they got their rats. They were told the differences of the group that had the rats that were smart and the groups that had the rats that weren't so smart. And what happened next is where it all gets really interesting. The students who believed that they had the smart rats, they handled them more gently, they were more patient with their rats, they paid more attention to their rats, and they gave them more chances because they knew they were the smart rats and they'd get it. They expected them to do well right from the beginning, and the rats actually did well. And they did do well. They performed better in the maze, not because they were the smarter rats, but because they were treated like they were the smarter rats. Now, let me bring the humans into this because this is where it gets a bit confronting. There was another study done by a guy by the name of Robert Reznathal. I put the correct spelling in the show notes. And he did this experiment with humans in the 1960s. He went to uh into school and told teachers that there were certain students in their class that had been identified as having really high potential to really exceed, and they're expected to have a big intellectual growth spurt that year. Again, this was not true. Those students were picked at random, but the teachers actually believed that it was true. They were told that this was actually true. And that belief changed everything in how those teachers showed up. They gave students more time to answer the questions, they encouraged them more. They even looked for the good in their work and they expected improvement. And by the end of the year, guess what? Those students actually performed better. Think about that. That is incredible. They didn't start out better, they became better because somebody believed they would. Holy cow, isn't that amazing? Now, here's what I want to bring back to you in this podcast, because this is not about rats or classrooms. This is about how you're leading your business. Because I see this a lot with business owners. You've got a team and you say you want them to step up or that you want them to carry more responsibility. But underneath that, you don't fully trust them. So what happens? You check everything. You jump in and fix things before they need fixing, or you don't give your team space to grow, or you don't delegate because you don't have that trust. And then you say, see, they can't do it, or I'll just do it myself. It's just as easier for me to do it myself. But they've been responding to your expectations the whole time. Or clients think about your clients. You go into a conversation already thinking, ah, they're just going to be push back on price if I try to up the price, or they're going to question me about my skills and oh, maybe I'll just keep my price low. Or they won't see my value. So you soften, you overexplain, you feel the silence, you discount before they've even said anything to you. And again, they respond to that. And the one that matters most is you. Because if there is a part of you that still believes I'm not quite ready yet, I'm not as good as the others, I need more time, you're going to unconsciously hold yourself back. You're going to hesitate, you'll second guess yourself, you'll play smaller, then you need to. Not because you can't do it, but because you don't fully expect that you can. It's a gut punch, right? And this is the bit that gets really interesting now. We are constantly training people how to show up around us, not through the instructions, not through policies, and not through expectations, through energy, that energy transfer, through what we believe is possible for them. And most of the time it's really subtle, it's not obvious. And in the long run, we pause before stepping in. It's your tone. It's in whether you give somebody the space to figure something out or you jump in too quickly. It's whether you assume capability or you assume limitation. So perhaps instead of asking, why aren't they stepping up, or why do my clients behave like this, or why do I keep getting these results? I want you to shift the question. What am I expecting here? Is the question we need to ask. Really. Not the nice answer, the honest one. What do I actually believe is going to happen? Because that belief is shaping your behavior. And your behavior is shaping their response. And this is the really cool bit because once you see it, you can't start, you can start using it. So once you start seeing it, you can start using this to your favor. You can start deciding, I'm going to expect more from my team now. Or not in a pressure way, but in a belief way. I'm going to expect more from my clients and I want them to value what I do more. I want respect for my time and I want them to say yes. I'm going to expect myself to handle bigger rooms, bigger conversations, and bigger opportunities. And then you align your behavior with handling bigger rooms, handling bigger conversations, and handling bigger opportunities. By bigger rooms, I mean being in bigger rooms and knowing that you actually belong there. And you might even belong on a stage in that bigger room. Remember, once you do make that decision, your behavior aligns with that. You give people the space to allow you to do that. You hold your ground and you speak with certainty. And people respond. And you know, that this is not fluffy. There's decades of research behind all of this. But more importantly, you can see it play out in real life. You see it play out in your business, you're going to see it play out in your conversations and in how people treat you. So I'm going to leave you with this one. Have a look around your business right now. Have a look at your team, have a look at your clients, have a look at the results in your business and ask yourself this one question. Is this reflecting what I truly expect? Because whether you realize it or not, you're already getting it. Hopefully, this has been helpful. If you've got any questions, please feel free to reach out. Until next time, talk to you soon. Bye.