In this story from Greek mythology, according to Ovid, the sculptor Pygmalion fell in love with a statue he had carved while trying to reproduce the ideal woman. He had decided to live in celibacy because he did not agree with the libertine attitude of women.
He treated the statue as if it were “flesh and blood”, marrying her. However, his “loved wife” was just an inert, cold and lifeless being, which condemned Pygmalion to a deep sadness.
The Goddess Aphrodite felt sorry for the artist and granted him the wish to transform the statue into a woman, Pygmalion managed to make the statue transform into a real woman because he placed a high expectation on this cause.
Based on this story, two American psychologists, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, conducted a study in the 1960s that gave rise to what they called the Pygmalion Effect. The idea was to answer a simple question: does our expectation really influence reality?
To find out the answer, they did an experiment in which they divided a class of students from a school into two groups. Despite both having the same intellectual capacity, the teacher who would teach the class was informed that one group performed better than the other.
Then, with this information, the teacher proceeded to encourage (consciously and unconsciously) the students he believed to be “the best”. At the end of the semester, interestingly, these students actually had better grades than the other half.
As everyone's intellectual level was the same, it was natural for the grades to be similar. However, the teacher's belief that he was dealing with a group of higher intellectual capacity, generated an expectation that this group would perform better, which, consequently, manifested itself in conscious and unconscious attitudes of the teacher that caused a difference in the performance of the students. .
The conclusion of the experience is that “Creating expectations about someone can make those expectations become real”.
What does the Pygmalion Effect have to do with leadership in business?
So, within modern organizations, the Pygmalion Effect also affects team results. Those who have a negative label are much more likely to actually fail. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This behavior is very easy to observe in practice. If the leader does not believe in a collaborator, he will tend to give more negative feedback. Worse than that: they may have a tendency to interpret the actions of this subordinate as negative for the result and organization.
A simple example is in relation to asking for help: when an employee that the leader sees positively asks for help, he interprets it as a sign of respect or growth. On the other hand, if the view is negative, the request for help is interpreted as a lack of ability to do the task.
The leader has to be aware that he is influenced by the Pygmalion Effect, and that this causes a cognitive bias and influences the results of the teams: understanding that leadership is “influencing people to work enthusiastically in order to achieve common goals”. It is, therefore, a competence of the leader to ensure that he exerts the best influence on those he leads.
It's worth taking a few minutes to reflect on how you express your expectations as a leader with the team.