Goal Settings and Pygmalion Effect

                                                                                                                                                         The class started with the discussion on Goal settings  in view of the Tower building exercise performed in the previous class.  

              

How should be the Goals? We saw the traditional approach to this question as well as a very unique way as suggested by Prof. Mandi, where we attributed various other adjectives to the traditional word SMART.

Specific: It means that the goals should be clear, unambiguous. It should make a team to concentrate on the clearly defined objective and should help decide the action plan.

For example, before starting the tower building activity, the height of the cubes' tower was anticipated with a single number and not with a vague range.

'S' also stands for Significant, simple.

Measurable: It asks for a specific criterion to measure the progress towards achievement of the specified goal. It helps to track the performance of a team and provides feedback whether the team is moving towards the goal.

'M' also means Motivational, manageable, meaningful, mind-blowing!

Attainable: It demands that goals should be realistic and attainable. Un realistic targets wont help in long term. This may result in failure of an activity creating extra pressure on everybody.

For example, Once the first team built the tower, the next time the height of the tower was predicted to be higher but around that number, making the goal achievable.

'A' -> Appropriate, achievable, agreed, ambitious, acceptable

Relevant:  The goal must be challenging, yet realistic. Lowering the bar for a high jumper could not realistically increase motivation nor enhance performance. Similarly, setting a goal to build the tower of 30 blocks is not a realistic or attainable goal and would therefore not positively affect motivation or performance. 

'R' also means Results-oriented, resourced, resonant, realistic

Time Bound: It states that the goals should have definite time limit to achieve. It helps a team to focus their efforts on the completion of the goal. It makes a team proactive to deal with the day to day crisis arising in an organization, because the deadline is set.

The tower building activity performed in the class was not a time bound.

'T' ->  trackable, tangible, timely

  

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Pygmalion Effect and the Performance

The discussion of this concept started with the Pygmalion story from Greek mythology. It was the story of Pygmalion, the sculptor, who fell in love with the statue he had created.

It is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.

To understand how this cycle of expectations and performance complement each other we also discussed the Fibonacci series and how the chain reaction leads to a rapid increase in performance. 

At the end, we had a huge Fibonacci spiral covering entire blackboard and the concept was very well understood...    

Fibonacci Spiral