Playing the Galatea & Pygmalion
Did you know you could play the Galatea & Pygmalion effects to your advantage? Here’s a slice of wisdom borrowed from classic org behavior & management to help you get better at managing expectations.
Its all too overwhelming…!
Over one of my recent articles I had referenced a VENN highlighting the difference between product management as a function in 2012 and 2023. The reason there are so many PMs who seem lost for direction post joining afresh is because they seem to go from what appears to be a place of absolute clarity (although not 100%) over their workflows to a place where they find themselves perched right behind the ship-wheel ☸ all of a sudden envisioning, spearheading, directing, collaborating & aligning teams, which quite naturally could get totally overwhelming and may also be the reason for impostor syndrome, burnouts and the “ok, I quit” over a worst case scenario.
The primary contributor to all of that is the way product roles demand one to hit it off and maintain a healthy relationship with all peers at all times using that as an essential tool to influence teams as well, which at a very basic level boils down to understanding the expectations and managing them all harmoniously.
And that for a fact isn’t easy meat in any sense of the word.
Managing Expectations
Often times a product manager is found unscrupulously jumping from one task / output / outcome / goal to another facilitating tons of stuff targeted at making numerous internal / external stakeholders’ life simpler either directly or indirectly by juggling their expectations and having to do it exceptionally well & consistently as everyone would look up to the role in all probability.
But, given a scenario, what’s tougher?
Managing one’s own expectations or having to put up / deal with the expectations someone else has from you?
When most of you would think the answer is the former & how that could look pretty straightforward, it may not be so in reality. Here’s why:
To be able do so would demand a subtle change internally over many dimensions depending on one’s own mental mold. Some of these are quantified and listed in the image here:
Spiritual – you ought to know & be able to attach an ultimate purpose so as to filter those random myriad of thoughts leading to expectations
Identity – being able to completely understand the role that you’re required to play & assign a scope or boundaries could bring focus to the expectations
Beliefs – you ought to see whether or not your beliefs align with the others who are a part of your teams / workflow & you ought to make fine adjustments to all those expectations in case there are gaps
Capability – when it’s only fair to work within the confines of your capabilities, understanding them well could prove to be priceless in drafting your expectations and across situations
Behavior – so much of it could look like it starts and ends with behavior when working with people and being empathetic towards everyone is just the first step towards curtailing expectations and also a smooth workflow
Moreover, if the issue seems to be deeply personal, one already has some understanding of the background / causations to work with & then introspection ought to lead to validating / invalidating them, quickly enabling one to get to those root cause quicker as opposed to digging through situations, wading one’s way to those emotions to decipher causations when dealing with the others.
Galatea & Pygmalion Effects
The Galatea and Pygmalion effects are important management theories stemming out of organizational behavior largely based on the power of expectations of both oneself and the others.
Take a close look at this classification here:
Starting off with the bottom left, if your own expectations are at abysmal lows and so are the other’s expectations as well when it comes to your case, it’s easy to point out that something could be terribly out of place and totally wrong. That’s why it’s the RED ZONE – nobody should wish to be here, ever
Then to the top left, where other’s expectations from someone happen to be really low yielding to poorer performances – that’s called GOLEM EFFECT which again isn’t much of a feasible / workable zone to be in if one happens to be the competitive type
And now to the two most important ones in our scope.
GALATEA EFFECT which is based on individual’s expectations about oneself, which is to say that one has a complete measure of one’s expectations and is totally self-aware of one’s capabilities as well which translates to great efforts, results and performances
PYGMALION EFFECT is based on the premise of the expectations the others have towards someone, which is to depict how some team members could be totally aware of the confidence their reporting manager or skip-level managers have on them and then use that as a directive to put in an effort
Please note how both of them essentially involve raising one’s bar of self-efficacy which then intern translates to an increase in the effort and reflects in one’s performance eventually.
But the subtle difference lies in the source of motivation.
Taking up something because one knows and trusts one’s own ability happens to be totally different from a belief that stems from the assessment of one’s ability by some person / an external source.
Adhering to either of these could lead to the same end results in many cases but since the underlying motivation could be very different, the ease and dedication over the whole workflow could make a lot of difference and also be a real hot topic of discussion
Application to Product Workflow
Both these theories do have great applications over the whole product workflow:
01) User Behavior
Pygmalion could be used to get users to believe and generate a need for a product or a given feature and then use that premise to create an urgency around it, given how most users may not really be aware of their own wants
Galatea could kick in a little after, when the users understand the impact entirely and build a desire for the product, making it through the all-important viability test & a strongly justified case for adoption
02) Marketing
Pygmalion could be used to draft marketing pitches that would standout and help foster those buying decisions, generate and improve the confidence people have in those products
Galatea could then kick in over the next steps when the users get absolutely convinced that they indeed want the product in their lives leading to conversion of sorts
03) Sales
Pygmalion could be used to help prospects by presenting what could be altogether a fresh perspective that helps them break that barrier and change their thinking convincing them to boost their confidence whilst clearing up few blockers like: benefits, long-term value, post-sales support et. al.
Galatea could then kick in over the next steps in helping them make that all-important decision and get on call and order the product or get online to add to cart and hit BUY
04) Internal Teams
Pygmalion is where it could usually start over a fresh / inexperienced team given their outputs / outcomes when they would need to lookup to someone who could provide them with all the necessary motivation and direction usually the role of a leader where they are found balancing autonomy, breaking down responsibilities, delegating & entrusting them totally
Galatea could be the aftermath of all of those events resulting in teams beginning to believe in themselves totally and enjoy the autonomy, prioritizing & mapping the workload to right causes which obviously leads to alignment and is a great result leaders always yearn for
Conclusion
The Pygmalion and the Galatea effects could be totally common and they are all psychologically linked, putting our subconscious minds at play. Allotting & spending some time over understanding the expectations of oneself and the others could augur really well for everyone given the permutations and combinations over situations that may arise.
And of course, the one thing that it could boil down to is the incentives that form a basis for those expectations.