In my last Tip, I described mindsets. Carol S. Dweck sheds light on mindsets in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success, Random House, 2006. Here I want to describe how mindsets create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The fixed mindset believes that leadership and other talent is based partly on innate traits. Either you have what it takes or you don’t.

Leaders with the fixed mindset tend to transmit their expectations to their direct reports seeing halos around the heads of those perceived as having what it takes and a cloud around the heads of the rest. They concentrate on developing talent in the already talented. They sometimes overlook growth in those deemed less naturally talented and fail to nurture the growth.

Leaders with the growth mindset believe that most people are more flexible and can grow into being good managers and leaders. They transmit this belief and tend to get a greater number of direct reports improving their talents. Leaders with a growth mindset encourage employees to grow, learn and feel confident which leads to greater success.

Thus the leader’s expectations tend to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you expect a person to grow and improve, they tend to do it. If you expect a person to stay the same because they are limited by their innate level of talent, they tend not to grow as much.

Leaders tend to transmit signals about their beliefs and expectations. The direct reports who receive the positive signals respond with more belief in themselves and more effort and vice-versa.

Self-fulfilling prophecy was pictured in the play and movie, “My Fair Lady.” In England, a professor bets with a friend that he can take a woman street vendor and teach her manners and speech to the point that he can pass her off as a lady. She agrees to the experiment, and he teaches her. She is often discouraged, but he continually reassures her that she can do it. She accepts his view of her and continues to learn rapidly. His positive expectations of her draw her forward like a magnet. Finally, she is able to pass herself off as a lady at a ball and the professor wins his bet.

Scholars have studied self-fulfilling prophecy in experiments that repeatedly show that a leader can influence direct reports either way by his/her negative or positive expectations. I myself have witnessed this too.

In two hospitals I have been in charge of all disciplinary procedures. If a manager wanted to discipline an employee with time off without pay or a dismissal, the manager had to get my permission. I would also hear the employee’s side of the story. Often I would hear the manager running down the employee in front of me. I knew that the employee would probably not correct his/her behavior. And most of the time, my fear would be substantiated by an employee’s downward spiral and finally a dismissal which the manager was wanting all the time.

On the other hand, sometimes the manager said to the employee something like, “I know you have much talent and will do well here. You just have to straighten out this one behavior, which I know you can do.” I then would expect the employee to grow and improve, and usually they did.

In either case, the manager’s expectations created a self-fulfilling prophecy. What are your expectations for your direct reports and associates?