Management

Journal Entry #2

Self-Fulfilling prophecy in organizational behavior

In Self-fulfilling prophecy there are two types the Pygmalion effect and the Galatea effect both of which are drawn from the Greek mythology.  Pygmalion Effect is drawn from a Greek sculptor Pygmalion and it asserts that if one has high expectations for another person it result to high performance for that person. On the other hand the Galatea effect states that if a person has high expectations for himself or herself it leads to high performance (Kreitner and Kinicki, 2012). This paper gives an illustration of Pygmalion effect through a story demonstrating the use of the concept.

            As a new student in a new school I decided to join a team since I did not have many friends and I was looking to make some friends from the team. I was good but I was not at the level of my colleagues since they had been training hard for the championships. I tried out and I was selected for the team to represent our school because I had just enrolled. I did not feature in the first three games but when three of our players were injured the coach put me in the squad as a substitute. The first game I entered for the final minutes and although I made no calamitous mistakes I did not add any meaningful aspect to the game. On our fifth game however, our captain had suffered an injury as we were warming and I was the only option to fill up his shoes from the bench. The captain was awesome and the best player in the team but the team and the coach had so much belief in me and it was time for me to prove to them and the opponents how good I was. I played fantastically well and was given the most valuable player award as our team progressed. It was the team’s belief in me that spurred me to produce a great performance even though I lacked the experience.