In a classic psychology experiment, teachers were told that their students had taken an aptitude test from Harvard that would predict which students would be high achievers in coming years. The researchers did not put into place any special treatment or academic program for these students, they just told the teachers these children had been tested and found gifted.
What the teachers didn’t realize is that these tests were actually fake. The “gifted” students were chosen at random and when the researchers monitored the school children, they noticed interesting results:
The children researchers identified as gifted were held to higher expectations. Their teachers treated them with greater care and attentiveness, gave them better feedback and more challenging opportunities than the other students. And testing at the end of the year clearly indicated those students showed greater intellectual gains than their peers.
Supervisors at any level can take away two important lessons from this experiment. 1) Your expectations of others can become self-fulfilling. Each of us has subconscious biases towards people (both positive and negative) that we can work to mitigate by being conscious of them. 2) The way you communicate with and treat your employees makes a huge difference in their success.
Here are a few brief tips for sharing negative feedback on employee performance that will lead to a successful outcome and build success for the employee. Kim goes more in depth in the full article here.
As Director of Operations for Wiss & Company LLP, Kim is responsible for resource management, technology and culture keeping at the firm.