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Discussion on: Pygmalion effect and three core principles of self-determination and organizations’ citizen behavior

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Angel Paudel

The Pygmalion effect is a type of self-fulfilling prophecy where a leader’s expectation from his/her subordinates will result in either actions or inactions. This will have an impact on the performance of the employee. When the leader lowers the requirement or expectations from his/her subordinates, the team will reduce the workflow at the similar scale, they start to slack and result in poor performance (Bromley, 2014). It also reduces the determination of the employees. But on the other hand, if the leader raises the expectations from his/her subordinates, the team who trusts their leader will make things happen anyhow through their action while also influencing their self-determination and work performance (Loftus, 1995). That will also increase self-efficacy of the employee resulting in them having higher level of motivation resulting in them working harder to achieve the results and meet expectations.

Let’s take an example of a leader in sales manager working in a financial institution. The leader is provided the freedom to have ten people for his sales team by the company which the leader did so by hand-picking all the ten people who he believed to be highly qualified, have good product knowledge and have natural salesmanship capability. The leader makes them aware of them being the best sales team while also providing positive feedback and encouragement to each one of them. That all actions from the leader makes the team believe that they’re the best and made them work harder than any other team to meet the goals set and to even exceed it. The expectations that the leader had on the team and the actions taken en route made the team believe that they can do it and did as well.

Self-determination is one of the most crucial theory of motivation which expresses both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in an organization. According to the self-determination theory, there are three core principles of self-determination and organization’s citizen behavior in the organizational context, namely – competency, relatedness and autonomy (Kouzes & Posner, 2012).

  • Competency mostly deals with the motivation that comes within an individual for the idea of a person to have an influence in the important outcomes within the workplace. Self-development, developing others are some of the competency that an individual can have within oneself and thus can demonstrate the same skill in the workplace. Having the competency required for the job makes an individual have self-belief and the ability to accomplish what’s expected.
  • Relatedness relates to more of the social side in the workplace. The desire or the ability to link with different units, groups or team within the organization can be considered to be relatedness in the workplace.
  • Autonomy defines the freedom of making choice while enhancing the self-determination and using one’s own will. An example of this can be when a person gets involved in organization of an event for bio-diversity day on top of his/her normal routine. That’s not what the person is supposed to do but chooses to do for oneself.

Self-loafing points to the concept of people slacking or putting less effort on a certain task if they’re working as a part of a group instead of working alone. The whole objective of a team is to get people with different skillsets together to accomplish certain task but there’s also a tendency where some of the member of the group don’t contribute as they should to accomplish the group goal (Szymanski & Harkins, 1987). But if they were working alone, they could have done a lot more than what they contributed to the group. Self-loafing can be addressed by following few techniques:

  • Maintain a small size group with no more than eight members in the group with around four being the ideal. Group with larger than eight member will run a greater risk of having a social loafing but with just four to eight member in the team, everyone has to contribute to get the task accomplished and calls them for action.
  • Have a contract in place for the team from the start by listing the expectations and what individual role will be. The team can work between themselves to choose the role/responsibility they are comfortable with. This enhances motivation while also adding ownership among each member of the team towards team’s goal.
  • Maintain harmonious relationship with all the member of the team. If all the member knows each other properly, they’re more likely to be respectful and take an initiative to share the responsibility among themselves in the group.
  • Set goals which are measurable and also clear. With challenging objectives, the team may want to give their best to achieve the goals and as they’re well measureable and clear, it makes all the member in the team productive and motivated to achieve the goals.

References

Bromley, M. (2014). The Pygmalion Effect. Seced , 2014 (33), 9-9.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2012). The Leadership Challange : How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Loftus, P. (1995). The Pygmalion effect. Industrial And Commercial Training , 27 (4), 17-20.

Szymanski, K., & Harkins, S. (1987). Social loafing and self-evaluation with a social standard. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology , 53 (5), 891-897.