A lesson I believe every manager, coach, director “should” know and even more important “should” do.
The mother of Edison shows the best motivational strategy for bringing out the best of her son. Bringing him from an awkward kid to one of the biggest geniuses of this time. A lesson that is so simple that I believe that every manager could implement this to makes his/her team flourish.
It is about labeling, about believing in the potential someone. Creating a belief system in someone, creating self worth and self-esteem.
When we walk through a garden we can see the flowers, the beautiful brushes, the tress and everything that has developed to greatness and in spring we could also see the seeds that those flowers, this brushes and trees are spreading around.
When we observe the current world of soccer we see that the rich teams buy the beautiful flowers that other teams have.
So those teams are pushed into a system of nurturing the seeds and let them develop into the flowers.
This is exactly what Edison mother did, she believed in the beauty her son had in him, she saw that when that he could develop in something amazing.
She looked at the seed and she believed that with the right nurturing, challenging and coaching it would become a beautiful flower just has where has come from.
What she did? She labeled him as a genius, to smart to be open a normal school and starting do home teaching to bring out the best of him.
Although the school did the opposite!
We are used ato label our products or services and our company, most of the time done by marketing departments and they called that branding :-).
Strangely enough when we look at current society, still in to many companies we label also our employees, colleagues, clients, or teams with only one difference we label some of them negative.
Did you ever see a company brand his product/service or company as bad, unmotivated, not performing, looser, nert, egoistic, etc……?
By labeling we create extremely strong supporting beliefs or limiting belief. As you can see in the video about Thomas Edison.
A strong belief creates a placebo effect and that means that our subconscious mind start following the belief. This can be so strong that it can change our DNA, the replication of our body cells and how our brain functions. So many times it is already researched that we can think ourselves sick and can think ourselves happy and healthy.
And when we think accordingly to the belief we can move mountains or be scared from a mouse.
So I wonder what kind of employees would you like to have, those who can move mountains and think themselves happy and healthy to the others?
Where are you in this story, this STARTS with YOU, how you label them and how you treat them according to your labeling.
Research also shows that we tend to think and treat people in the way we perceive them. If we think someone is good in something we mark this/her he performance in that area better than when we think someone is not good at it.
Just imagine even in quantum theory this is now a law. In modern quantum theory, it has been determined that independent observers (those who have no effect upon that which is observed) do not exist. That which is sought, and the act of seeking itself, have an influence upon what is found. In physics, the validity of this principle was clearly demonstrated by the wave-particle duality of electrons. It was not known if electrons were waves or particles. In an experiment to detect waves, electrons behaved like waves. In another experiment to detect particles, electrons behaved like particles. So which are they? These experiments demonstrated that electrons appear to be what the experimenter is looking for and measuring!
In another experiment, researchers were presented with two groups of rats. They were told that one group was bred for increased intelligence and that the other group was rather stupid. The researchers were asked to test each group of rats to see how much faster the intelligent rats learned to run through a labyrinth. As expected, the intelligent rats did indeed learn significantly faster to run through the maze. Then came the surprise: All the rats from both groups were genetically from the same stock.
The only difference was the expectations of the researchers!
In a similar experiment only now done on humans ;-), school teachers were told that certain students were especially intelligent. And although the students were of only average intelligence, they did excel in their courses when their teachers expected them to excel. These surprising results, which are in perfect agreement with quantum theory, cast doubt upon the accuracy of much of the scientific research performed throughout history. These examples imply that in this universe of ours, there is a tendency to find what you are looking for!”
To conclude: when you like to label, label positive :-)
When you like to learn more about this, or overcoming limiting beliefs and create flourishing employees and teams go and take a deep dive in personal leadership, the transformational ReMaster Yourself Workshop - a personal leadership journey - is dedicated to this.
I wish you a happy, beautiful positive labelling day,
Christoffel Sneijders
Clinical hypnotherapist
Professor at the IE business school Madrid