Pygmalion Effect - Dr. Jane Braaten Overmoe Educational ...



Pygmalion Effect

Jane Overmoe

Organizational Leadership Change:  Reflective Decision Making Project

Dr. Mark Baas

May 2, 2005

The Pygmalion Effect at Watertown High School:  Treat the Teachers with Training!

Leaders transfer ownership for work to those who execute the work.

Leaders create the environment for ownership where each person wants to be responsible.

Leaders want to coach the development of personal capabilities.

Leaders learn fast themselves and encourage others also to learn quickly.

 

James A . Belasco and Ralph C. Stayer from

Flight of the Buffalo:  Soaring to Excellence, Learning to Let Employees Lead

Prologue:  After working in theater for thirty years and having been an actor or a director in 81 different shows, after teaching at just about every level from pre-K to higher education, and after raising a family with three children, to write about laptops is rather disconcerting, but the culture created from a lack of leadership and even worse yet, the lack of training for the work force has inspired me to discuss the situation at my present work place.  I did not want to write about the morale issues that confront a staff that was discarded, but I do want to clarify that these workers deserved training before the tool arrived at the high school.  And then once the laptop arrived, the ongoing training did not occur.  Foremost, I am a student of life.  I deliver the goods but I also have high expectations.  I do not like to be treated like I do not exist.  I have a voice.  I have a spark.  Houston, I have a problem.

A specific problem, program or situation occurred at the worksite that needs to change and by doing so, may incorporate systems thinking in the process.  By using the information presented in class and found in both textbooks and outside reading, here is a presentation of a diffusion of an innovation. Sections in this study include identification of the problem, system thinking strategies, process mapping diagram, team learning initiatives and diffusion of innovation practices.

George Bernard Shaw’s classic comedy fits into this scenario quite magnificently because of the way Professor Higgins treated Eliza Doolittle is similar to the way the leaders treated the workers in with the laptop initiative.  In Pygmalion, a play I have taught in British Literature and a musical version I was part of in Lerner and Lowe’s My Fair Lady, an understanding of how to change the reckless treatment is offered through the character and sidekick of Professor Higgins, a man named Colonel Pickering.  He saw the suffering of Eliza Doolittle and tried to lessen her strife.

Based on classical myth, Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion plays on the complex business of human relationships in a social world.  As with the laptop initiative at WHS, a self fulfilling prophecy was hexed from the onset by a system wide virus in week one.  Goals were set high, without input from teachers, without training.  In his article “Pygmalion in Management” J. Sterling Livingston proves that subordinates’ performance rises or falls to meet managers’ expectations. If managers’ expectations are high, productivity is likely to be excellent, while if their expectations are low, productivity is likely to be poor. Without proper training, what course was charted?  It was analogous to “Here, Fido, I have tossed you an invisible bone-now find it.”

1.      Identification of the problem.

 Lack of technology training repeated in year two of Laptop Initiative for the teachers at the high school continuing as a tossed crumb to the workers.   No training prior to the tool arriving and limited in-service time this year due to a No Child Left Behind reading trainer every month forced teachers to learn “on their own”, if they cared enough to do so.  Less than two hours of in-service training time has been given to teachers this year to devote to laptop usage and implementation for this entire school year 2004-05.  Believe it.  But I agree with Edward H. Spicer in Human Problems in Technological Change that “Changing people’s customs is an even more delicate responsibility than surgery”  (Rogers, 179 ).  The role of integrationist was intended to offer teachers what they asked for and many times, teachers were left with grave uncertainties about laptop usage.  Recently, I asked the retiring integrationist for his job description but he told me it did not exist.

2.       System thinking strategies. 

One goal of diffusion programs is to raise the level of Good in a system (Rogers, 471).  Taking a look into systems theory and how the integrationist position could enhance learning communities within the classrooms and school system at WHS.

¬      Wholeness.  When one thinks of the school as a whole, there is a huge amount of people involved.  But for this particular problem, the teaching staff is the concern.  By honoring the teachers and by giving the time to proceed with the learning how the laptop works and how the usage can be incorporated into the classroom is a necessary component.  If the teachers will learn it, the whole system will benefit. In the thunderstorm of uncertainty, teachers hold umbrellas to find the way, to safeguard attempts, and to shelter ideas for not just the students in front of them, but for tomorrow’s world of human beings.

¬      Interdependence.  When someone learns a new trick, it is up to the scuttlebutt or the rumor to engage into what is going on.  I find flexibility with the camaraderie in the ranks of secondary teachers, in any field.  I work in a segregated Language Arts department but delve into other departments for computer know-how.  The webbing exists, if the person has the time and energy to proceed.  Networking with others is a key ingredient to accomplishment.

¬      Hierarchy.  Sometimes in a hierarchy the trickle down effect occurs.  Here it is stagnant.  The leaders are not tech savvy except for a principal who went back from being a tech support person last year to dealing with humanity this year.  Leaders must lead eventually, or they leave. 

Leaders manage the dream.

Leaders embrace error.

Leaders encourage reflective backtalk.

Leaders encourage dissent.

Leaders possess the Nobel Factor:  optimism, faith and hope.

Leaders understand the Pygmalion effect in management.

Leaders have what I call the Gretzky factor.

Leaders see the long view.

Leaders understand stakeholder symmetry.

Leaders create strategic alliances and partnerships.

Leaders are visible.  Leaders understand the context in which people work.  A leader’s actions incarnate an organization’s beliefs and values.  Lavish communication is crucial.  (Bennis, 192).

 

¬      Self-regulation.  A key concern at the high school level.   How will results be measured?  Teachers do not take a proficiency test.  The district maintains spy ware to view that is using what programs and to what degree.

¬      Environmental interchange.  With the laptops, the interchange has changed.  Students are off doing the chores of assignments and in formatting.  A delightful experience for me as an educator because the instructional time frame is shortened and the facilitation factor is full throttle.

¬      Equilibrium.  Because of my background in theater, I sense a balance with the tool but a fraction occurring among teachers who are in the know and some who are not.  To establish equilibrium, should there be a test taken by teachers similar to the Praxis only with technological skills and a survey of what kind of usage has occurred.  We are surveyed at the high school by TIE in Rapid City.  Do we see the results?  No.  Does the school board?  Yes.  Is the truth relayed?  Maybe.  Maybe not.   

¬      Adaptability.  The thread of learning still occurs, albeit differently from the past.  A crash course for teaching staff on usage and implementation may have been helpful.

¬      Equifinality.  Within systems, there is always a story.  There is a beginning, a middle and an ending.  With a four year lease with the machine, we are half way there.  The last staff meeting a leader commented that laptops may be a fad.  Now what kind of digestion takes that remark, after all the work, after all the angst?

3.  Process mapping diagram   (Bennis, 119). 

 

|Conflicts |Resolutions |

|Blind trust vs. Suspicion |HOPE |

|Independence vs. Dependence |AUTONOMY |

|Initiative vs. Imitation |PURPOSE |

|Industry vs. Inferiority |COMPETENCE |

|Identity vs. Confusion |INTEGRITY |

|Intimacy vs. Isolation |EMPATHY |

|Generosity vs. Selfishness |MATURITY |

|Illusion vs. Delusion |WISDOM |

 

Bennis has an interesting chart that correlates to the Pymalion effect at the school, specially the element of purpose.  Perhaps it is my speech communication background, but if the purpose is not defined immediately with an initiative, does the project become just an imitation of what others schools have done?  Our school was modeled after a high school in Henricho, Virginia.  I read school board actions and web descriptions as we began our laptop revolution.  Henricho was honest about problem areas that we went through two years later.  A private school in Omaha that has very few at-risk learners presented an eight hour in-service to relay how they implemented the toll.  So what are we to learn from them?

Purpose is critical in a system, in any system.  Clearly defined.  Practical. Treatable.  Hence, the Pygmalion effect.  We are not a cookie cutter world.  The qualitatives versus the quantitatives can discuss all they want.  Treat the worker with dignity and training that is appropriate.  The flower girl becoming socialite Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion was mistreated for so long by social conditions and then Professor Higgins, it is a wonder she made it to the Ascot Gavotte.  But that treatment was part of her upbringing and she rebelled.  Her transformation took time and took patience, and tons of practice.

“Critical to coming out of the dying process and beginning to create something new for our organizations and ourselves is purpose.  This is the core ingredient.  It has to do with an inner sense of potential and truth, which often challenges the prevailing cultural norms and beliefs.  Individuals don’t have to create.  E is born with it.  It’s our most natural, positive way of being in the world.  When this is tapped and nurtured, things begin to happen.  Without purpose, we stay dead in the water of the current way of doing things” (Lulic, 69).

4. Team learning.

There is something remarkable about teachers teaching teachers.  I am veteran staff member who dares to show my ignorance to get a task accomplished.  That fearlessness has gotten me to points where I can also share what I have learned.  Passion or recklessness?  Or some of both?  These are ingredients of team learning initiatives that some of the staff brought together, for the sake of sanity, and oh yes, for the sake of our constituents…the students (who for the most part knew more than we did anyway)

For the betterment of the group, certain individuals were appointed leadership roles to smooth the transition.  On the other hand, several mavericks took it upon themselves to work out how the tool could be implemented in particular classroom scenarios.

Broad education:  For most teachers, our backgrounds are based with required course work and some of the same strain of regulated bachelor degree foundations.

Boundless curiosity.  If a person has this element, the sky is the limit.  But remember, you are on your own.

Boundless enthusiasm.  Our pep rally chairperson and retiring cheerleader sends emails to us that tell us he loves us.  Does that show leadership?  Or what?

Belief in people and teamwork.  There is no failure in trusting people, only the wrong people.

Willingness to take risks.  That is where the laptop shines.  We took it.  We paid for it.  “Discovering your intelligence is one thing, applying them is another.  We need to be able to recognize and identify problems and opportunities.  We need to be able to organize ourselves and other people to do something about them, and we need to be able to sit back and reflect to what has happened in order that we can do it all better the next time around.  It is the cycle of discovery at work”  (Handy, 206-7).

Devotion to long-term growth rather than short term profit.  There are certain levels which will benefit.  Did one year make a difference?  To the first class of users, they said yes.

Commitment to excellence.  “Justice may be the most important quality in the eyes of followers; unjust leaders paralyze their followers”  (Dupree, 130).  Instead of harboring resentment and experiencing paralysis, most staff took the tool and just went with it, allowing failure to make us stronger.

Readiness.  We were not ready.  We simply were not.  From Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces:  “We have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path,  And where we had though to find an abomination, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had though to be alone; we shall be with all the world” (Block, 218).

Vision.  That is where the buffalo died.  We needed a goose.  Richard Beutow former Quality Director and Sr. VP at Motorola said “We never envisioned that well-empowered people at the lowest, entry level positions, properly trained within their skill levels, could move heaven and earth.”  Teachers in this initiative were made to fell at the lowest level imaginable.  But some mustered the storm and the upsurgence in their tailored made lesson plans to change the way lessons are exchange

5.  Diffusion of innovation practices 

 “… a society without respect for its leaders is a society ready to disintegrate” (Handy, 177). 

DECISION:  Weekly training sessions:  Sign up with 50,000 a year paid integrationist who works every block during the school day plus before and after.  He/She needs to track every educator with individualized work plans to integrate the technology so that the paycheck he/she earns is worthwhile. I asked him this morning to email me his job description.  He said a description did not exist.  Easy answer and this was after he came to my door asking me if I would demonstrate for the TIE evaluation next week the following topic:  How I incorporate research using the laptop.

Redefining/restructuring  The innovation is modified and re-invented to fit the organization and organizational structures are altered.  I believe the individualized plan could work.  A list of goals at the onset of summer should be described and the implementation plan directed.

Clarifying    The relationship between the organization and the innovation is defined more clearly.  In an age of uncertainty, clear communication from the leader to the integrationist to the worker is a necessary element.  With mass emails, mass confusion stirs the kettle and very little is accomplished.  When we deal with students, the work is individualized, especially with research projects, poetry books, novel projects and other assignments.

Routinizing  The innovation becomes an ongoing element in the organization’s activities, and loses it identity.

Learning to be the lead goose.  I am not writing to defame our integrationist.  He is a SD teacher of the year, in his last year of teaching and he cooks up a storm, literally.  He cooked and baked and fed the staff, for two long years.   When I asked him what he recalled both good and bad, he was reticent.  Why give fodder to me?  He mentioned in two years as integrationist, the worst lightning strike was the virus the entire system got the first week of use.  Then he said the positive lightning strikes included the web pages designed and the non-users becoming tech saavy.  “Great coaching is artful, compassionate and incisive” (The Dance of Change, 106).

Buffalo or Geese?  It does not matter.  Both types of leaders have strengths, and both display weaknesses.  In the Pygmalion scenario, many of us flew solo and became mini leaders of sorts.  We were not a heard that followed a single, strong leader because frankly, leadership was mute.  The initiative began as a top down military old buffalo model but because of time and lack of training quickly became interdependent, which suited me just fine.  Geese are deceptively strong and powerful.  Deception is not always fun at the workplace.  As a group our formation looked like a buffalo at the beginning with order then crisis within the first week with the virus…It was shutdown, back to the Xerox.  The herd often ignored then over reacted to threats because of the lack of training.  So many teachers were realistic; too few visionary for the reason of time.

Epilogue:

            “…it’s a great time to be a stand-up comedian. Anyone who can be sardonic, cynical and funny finds a willing audience everywhere in the world” (Schwartz, 189),  Look at Laura Bush at the recent press dinner and how she became a shining legacy with quips about Chippendales and Desperate Housewives when the real message is what?  That we have a president who has to have his wife make the jokes because he is unable?  Or as a country, we cannot listen anymore?  Because the turmoil we face, the treatment we will incur in the future isn’t a joke?  Great political strategy by Rove et al,  but long lasting?  Or has the President lost his worldly willing audience?

Eliza Doolittle to Colonel Pickering George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion:

“…the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but the way she’s treated.  I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.”

            I refused to be the cynic through the initiative.  “One verbal cynical in a room of fifty can set the tone and carry the day.  The power of the cynics’ position is two-fold:  first, there is truth in what they say and second, they speak for each us” (Block, 222).  I remain an educator, full of life’s quests and life’s dilemmas. 

“To serve.  To be safe.  To know what freedom feels like.  These issues are what community, work and organizations exist to answer.  The problem lies is that the institutions we have inherited no longer deliver choice, service or security” (Block, 235).  I just witnessed a web page in front of me that was questionable for sophomore English.  The student argues that it is part of his desk top and I said looking at the scantily clad voluptuous females on his screen was not appropriate for my class.  He argued.  I told him to either find some other site to look at or close his screen and take a walk to In School suspension.  He stayed in the classroom, reading  the school newspaper.  For just a split second, I wondered about the newspaper’s contents.  I will never stop wondering.

It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.

Satchel Paige

 

 

References

Belasco, J., & Stayer, R. (1993). Flight of the buffalo.  New York: Warner Books.

Bennis, W. (1989). On becoming a leader. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc..

Block, P. (1993). Stewardship: choosing service over self-interest.  San   Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

DePree, M. (1992). Leadership jazz.  New York: Dell Publishing.

Eden, D. (1990). Pygmalion in Management. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath

Handy, C. (1996). Beyond certainty.  Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Heathfield, S. (2005). Management secrets: the two most important management secrets:  the pygmalion and galatea effects.  Retrieved April 20, 2005, from

 

Littlejohn, S.W. (1983). Theories of human communication (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Lulic, M.A. (1994).  Who we could be at work. Minneapolis, MN:  Blue Edge Publishing.

Rogers, E. (2003). Diffusions of innovations. 5th Edition New York: Free Press.

Rosenthal, R.and Jacobson, L.(1992). Pygmalion in the Classroom: teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual development. New York: Irvington Publishers.

Schwartz, P. (1991). The art of the long view.  New York: Currency Doubleday.

Self-fulfilling prophecy of pygmalion. Retrieved April 15, 2005, from  

Senge, P.M. (1999). The dance of change.  New York: Currency Doubleday.

Senge, P.M., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R.B., and Smith, B.J. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook :strategies and tools for building a learning organization. New York: Currency Doubleday.

Shaw, G.B. (1913). Pygmalion.  New York:  Dover Publications, Inc.

Zubke, B. (2005).  Personal interview.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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