Possibilities

I am afraid of spiders.
On a cognitive level, I know that they are harmless
little creatures. But if I see a spider web in my basement, I
am immediately on the alert for the dangerous intruder. And when
I spot one of them, I am overcome by fear. Because of this mild
phobia, the word "spider" catches my attention whenever
I see it in print. Such was the situation when, during the course
of unrelated research, I learned that if we have a fear of spiders,
we are more likely to notice them. This is exactly what happens
in my household. I am always the one who discovers the lone spider
in the basement, while others are oblivious to its peaceful existence.
If we are anxious about something, we are more
likely to notice what we perceive as a threat than those who are
relaxed. In other words, whatever we focus on, we see. This is
a powerful concept with significant implications for both our
personal and organizational lives. What we see is deeply influenced
by what we expect.
Over the years, many scholars have worked on
variations of this concept, such as The Rosenthal Effect, also
known as the Pygmalion Effect (a psychological finding where a leader's
high expectations of others causes high performance) and the obverse,
the Set Up To Fail Syndrome (where low expectations of others
causes low performance). While these concepts have to do with
expectations we have of others, the Galatea Effect (named after
the stone statue of the beautiful woman that the sculptor Pygmalion
brought to life) is about expectations individuals have of themselves
– it is, in effect, when high self-expectations become the catalyst
for greater personal achievements. When that happens, we become
our own positive self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is a significant factor in employee performance.
A good leader who sets out to help employees to believe in themselves,
in their ability to perform well, sets the stage for their possibility
to succeed. The confidence that results from employees' high personal
expectations in turn spurs them to higher achievement and productivity
– their performance rises to the level of their own expectations.
Perhaps the scholar who has done the most work
in this area is Stanford University's Dr Albert Bandura, who pioneered
the concept of self-efficacy . Self-efficacy is our belief
in our ability to perform effectively. Bandura's theory is that
individuals who have high self-efficacy expectations – that is,
who believe that they can achieve what they set out to do – are
healthier, more effective, and generally more successful than
those with low self-efficacy expectations.
High self-efficacy determines many of the choices
we make – the higher the self-efficacy, the more likely we are
to seek new challenges and persist in the face of adversity or
failure. High self-efficacy also influences the effort that we
put into achievements. One might say that we are what we think we are.
This old adage is now scientifically proven. From the extensive
brain research that is being conducted, we know that our brains
are not hard wired. We know that the brain is plastic, and has the
ability to reorganize itself every time we have new experiences.
According to Dr John Kounios, Drexel University Medical School
professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscientist, our neural
connections change even after a 20-minute conversation! This gives
new meaning to the positive impact that a conversation can have
with a coach or mentor when it focuses on high expectations that
we have of ourselves.
So, what are your thoughts about yourself, about
your as-yet untapped potential? On a scale of 1 to 10, how would
you rate your self-efficacy? What expectations do you have of
yourself? What do you want to attract in your professional and
personal life? What do you want to be known for in your leadership?
I have posed these questions to a dozen or so
highly successful professionals in the technical arena that I
have had the good fortune of interacting with recently. Without
fail, everyone mentioned high expectations about their future;
and the majority, being at a mid-life point, is looking for deeper
philosophical answers to the profound question: "What's next
for me?" in planning the future.

One of the individuals directed me to a book that had a particular
impact on him. The book's author is James O'Toole, (research
professor in the Center for Effective Organizations at the
University of Southern California and Mortimer J Adler Senior
Fellow of the Aspen Institute) and is entitled Creating the
Good Life: Applying Aristotle's Wisdom to Find Meaning and
Happiness . The book takes us through the author's own search
for a better life and explores, among other things, how do we
resolve tensions between family and work commitments, how do we
find meaning and fulfillment, and how do we create a good society
within our own companies, even if we only have one person
reporting to us: "If Aristotle is right that the good life depends
on developing one's human potential, then providing the conditions
in which employees can do so is a clear moral responsibility of
leaders of work organizations. . . [Leaders who] deny employees
the chance to develop their potential deny them the opportunity to
develop their humanity."
If you decide to buy this book, be prepared to do some serious
self-exploration on issues such as:

What does it mean to lead a good life?
To be happy, what should I be doing that I am not doing now? And what am I doing now that I should stop doing?
How can I create the opportunity to be happy for the people who work for me?
How should I begin to develop self-discipline, so that I can focus on what will make me happy in the long term?
What is personal excellence, and how do I achieve it?
How can I be a success in my specialized career, and, at the same time, a well-rounded person with a wide range of interests and knowledge?
To what extent does my personal happiness entail a relationship with the community of others?

To live one's life to its full potential, in
accordance to the Aristotelian precepts, requires emotional and
intellectual self-rigor. It also requires the ability to have
high expectations of oneself, expectations that one would succeed
at what might appear to be a lofty vision.
If the possibility of generating creative and
fulfilling experiences that fill our hearts and minds does not
seem real and feasible, then we need to question the underlying
assumptions that get us to see what we see, and dispute these
assumptions – acting as our own defense lawyer.
What are the higher steps you need to climb to unlock your full
potential? What are the "buts" that you need to eliminate from
your vocabulary in order to break through to new levels of
personal achievement? What mindsets might you need to change to
stay ahead of the curve? Charles M Schwab put it aptly: "None of
us is born with a stop-valve on his powers or with a set limit to
his capacities. There's no limit possible to the expansion of each
one of us." As for me, I need to stop seeing spiders as objects of
fear and stop to marvel, instead, at the wondrous creativity of
their intricate silk webs.
Copyright © 2007-2013 by Bruna Martinuzzi. All Rights Reserved.
This article is adapted from Bruna Martinuzzi’s book: The Leader as a Mensch: Become the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow. Bruna is an educator, author, speaker and founder of Clarion Enterprises Ltd , a company which specializes in emotional intelligence, leadership, Myers-Briggs and presentation skills training. Click
here for other articles by Bruna.