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Pygmalion Management

I met a former colleague recently who had been fired from the job when we worked together. The circumstances leading to his leaving the company were shrouded in mystery. No one talked about it. We were told S is no longer with the company effective immediately. S was one of the best sales people on team and his exit was met with surprise. Its been a long time since the event, the cast of characters who precipitated his departure from the company have moved on to other jobs. 

L was our former manager and I found it amusing that S rated her as "adequately competent" and no major complaints. That is quite a bar to set for a people manager. The person only has to get a barely passing grade and that's completely okay. By any objective measure, L was quite a terrible manager and was let go not too long S departed. In his present job, the hierarchy is much worse and L's only expectations are that his manager will not impede his ability to do the job he is being paid to do. There is the concept of Pygmalion in management which centers around low expectations of managers from their subordinates. 

..most managers, like Professor Higgins, unintentionally treat their subordinates in a way that leads to lower performance than they are capable of achieving. The way managers treat their subordinates is subtly influenced by what they expect of them. If managers’ expectations are high, productivity is likely to be excellent. If their expectations are low, productivity is likely to be poor. It is as though there were a law that caused subordinates’ performance to rise or fall to meet managers’ expectations

The situation with S and all others like him ( and I would include myself in this category) is the low expectations of the subordinate from their managers. Following the Pygmalion analogy, that makes the manger's productivity and performance to become and forever remain sub-par. Which means their subordinates will fail to thrive and grow in their own roles. We do ourselves a great disservice by not expecting more from those who have chosen to be people managers - they need to deliver on the basic premise of that role. It is no surprise that S is seeking greener pastures despite enjoying the work he does. 


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