Hello and welcome to the Pibytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Eldebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Py Bytes podcast. This is Bob Baldebos. And again, a mindset episode, the third out of the three parter with Alejandro Beresenio. And in this last one, we talk about the Pygmalion effect. He explains what it is and how it can improve your career as well as the productivity of a team setting. So without further ado, enjoy this episode with Alejandro Bresenho. Welcome back to the Pie Bytes podcast. This is Bob Baldebos. I'm here with, again, Alejandro Briseno. Welcome back. Hello there. Glad to see you, Bob. You're a regular now, apparently. Apparently, I've been already in two episodes. Well, there's the third one out of three, because we promised to do a three parter. I think we also announced the topic already, and we're sticking with that pygmalion effect. Exactly. Of course, all in the context of mindset. Julian will be jealous, of course. But, yeah, let's kick it off. What is the Pygmalion effect, and how can it impact our lives and goals? Well, I like to say that I'm going to read this part because I like definition that I found of the Pygmalion effect. Well, it's a psychological phenomenon in which a person's expectations and belief about another individual can influence that individual's performance and development, meaning that sometimes when you are pushing people forward, that person might reach their full potential to do something. Imagine that you're in a competition, like, I don't know, a basketball competition, and your son is there, or your daughter, whatever. And you said to your son, you're gonna do it. You're gonna be the champion. That person is gonna feel through your voice, through your nonverbal language, that he's gonna be capable of doing it. But you know what happened? If someone starts telling to your son or daughter, you're not going to do it, you're going to make it, everyone is going to be laughing at you. You know what's going to happen is that that person might be influenced by the things you said to that person. Right? So they're not going to reach their full potential. So the pygmalion effect is the way it's a psychological phenomenon is the way you can actually uplift people in seconds just by the words you say to this person. Sometimes it might work in some context. When does it work? For example, when you have a boss, when you have a manager, when you have a leader. Why? Because this is a person of responsibility. And of course, it can have an impact in your life. Why? Because you're in your work and you think you're doing everything great, and suddenly your leader goes to you and say, oh, I didn't like the way you did this. And you're like, oh. You start feeling like you're not good at it. So I'm not saying this is something that happens to everyone. Sometimes people are really. They really have a strong mind and strong mindset, and they say, like, oh, I don't care what other people say. I know that I'm pretty good at what I do. So this is what I think I can explain about pygmalion effects. And of course, it impacts our life in so many ways, but it will impact more in our life when we have these leadership positions are telling us how we do in our work or the things we are developing, et cetera. So it really comes down to how we give feedback and how we take feedback, right? Yeah, exactly. Actually, a lot of managers, they use it to give a feedback when they know that they want to motivate their team, or they know that they want to make some of the people in their team to feel pressure. They can use the pigmalon effect if you use it in a positive way. We call it pikmalion rice. Pikmalion rice. Because you're actually uplifting this person. You're making these people to go forward because you know that their behaviors that he will have after the feedback will be improved thanks to the things you said to him or have. Yeah. And I'm in context of our audience thinking about code reviews. I mean, it's textual written, but there's a lot of influence how the other developer is going to be motivated or, you know, could have his or her confidence damaged. You know, I think a lot of this is also having empathy. Right. Like, really putting yourself in the shoes of the other person. But, yeah. Let's move on to this next question. How can we use the Pygmalion effect positively in our daily lives? Well, you already said one. One use case would be, when we leave feedback to people, we sit down in front of that person and we let them know the way we feel towards his actions or her actions. Right. So that would be one way. I think another way would be the way we start speaking to our families, to our friends. Okay. So you have a power every time you open your voice, every. Sorry, every time you open your mouth, because you can start saying phrases that are not motivational. I'm not speaking about motivation and telling that you can have an impact on people performance. So if someone is going to do a hard task and they are doubting of themselves or they are doubting about how they can do it, then that's the moment where you can use the tick valley effect and you can say, hey, I trust you. Hey, I respect you. Hey, you know, you can count on me. But trust me, I know that you can do it alone. So these kind of phrases, that sounds like a movie phrases, they are not movie phrases related. These are the phrases that you, as a manager, as a leader, as a colleague, can say to your coworkers or to your team because it will boost their confidence, it will boost their self esteem. And, you know, it's just a phrase, it's just a sentence. And imagine all the impact that you can have in someone else's life just by saying these kind of phrases. Right? And it's easy to do. Right? Easy peasy. You don't have to pay for it. Right. Easy to do, easy not to do. A lot of missed opportunities. Yeah. So tell me a bit about more about the role of communication and interpersonal relationships in the Pygmalion effect then. Well, you know, sometimes people who are not good with, you know, speaking in public or having dialogues with their teams, it's hard for them to communicate that someone is doing a great job. So you know, what you have to do to use your nonverbal language, you know, pack in the bag or trying to tell people or to express your feelings in another way. So nonverbal communication is also important for the Pygmalion effect. So why is it so important to praise people? Because they're going to feel entitled to do things in a better way. They're going to feel that you trust them. So that's the reason why you're going to have a better outcome, because they will see that you, as a manager, as a leader, as a colleague, are trusting or respecting them in a good way. However, I must say that there is a negative side of this. Sometimes we have leaders or managers or coworkers that are really, really, really mean with us. And if they're mean with us, you know, what's going to happen is that our performance is going to decrease. So pigmalion can be used as a tool to make people go up or also make people feel down. You know, yesterday I saw a LinkedIn post of a guy who was working in Apple and it was crazy because he got like 5000 likes in his post. And you know, what was the post about? It was about that he was working for Apple and his two team leaders were actually abusing him. Sorry, not abusing him, but making him feel bad about everything that he was doing. So he was working as a developer for Android and iOS at the same time. He has to work more than 14 hours per day. So of course this is a crazy case. I don't know if it's true or not. This is just something, Randall, that I read online. Apparently it's true, but of course I don't have the true light. Maybe we'll have to see this. But this happens a lot. Yeah, I'm hearing this all over the place. It was so crazy that then I started reading the comments and everyone was like, oh, of course that happens in that company. There is a case and they started putting links about the things. So imagine that you have a team leader like that that is always pushing you to have a good performance, but it's always telling you you're not good enough. If you're here, it's because I led you be here. And that's not a good way to create a nice environment. That's a toxic environment. Toxic. Yeah. I was just going to say we have to do exactly toxicity is what we have to be against you, and now we have to create environments where you can be vulnerable. Those environments are created by leaders who are capable of telling you or to give you feedback, to use pygmalion effects into you to improve your performance by telling you the things in a realistic way. This is not magic. Again, this is, as I said, a psychological tool that we can use to make people feel better about the way they behave so they can have a better performance. Right. It sounds like a culture shift as well. Right? Exactly. Calling it a tool. So is there a way to implement this? Like, are there tools to implement this or is this just a general shift in mentality and just culture? Basically, it's a good question. I think it's a general tool that everyone can use. You don't have to go to a course to learn about big dalian effects. But then again, of course there are like some specific tactics. For example, if you want to give a praise to someone, don't do it in doing it with honesty. Do it with honesty. Don't do it by lying, because then they will notice that you're not telling them the truth. So it's important that every time you use these kind of phrases, it comes from your heart, it comes from your honesty, it comes from the things that are realistic, because otherwise people will not believe in this and it will not cause any impact on their performance. And I think that's the only thing I would say about this specific question. Yeah. Cool. So how can we manage the expectations others have for us and avoid being limited by them? Well, it's hard. You cannot manage what other people think, what other people are thinking about you. You cannot do it, but what you can do is to work on yourself a lot. So when we see someone, we only see what that person is allowing us to see. When you see someone who is successful, you see that maybe it's a person who owns a nice car, who has a company or whatever, but you don't know what's happening behind the stage. You don't know if that person is actually rich or not, or he's just bragging about what he has, but then he doesn't have anything. So you are the owner of your own life, but you are also the owner of your own narrative. I think that by being yourself, by being authentic, it's a way for you to show your true colors and it's a way for you to let people know who you are. So you cannot expect, or you cannot expect that people think, in a way about you. You can only show them who you really are. And in order to do that, you have to be authentic. And I think that's it. Yeah. No, and I think it's important because I think we get tied up a lot about what people think of us or, you know, and you kind of control it. Right. So you cannot control it. So be yourself, you know, because once you are really authentic, then you don't care too much about what other people are thinking about you. Because that noise that comes from this one is telling me this. Whatever. You won't care because you know who you are. So that's the reason. What I always said to my friends, spend money in technical courses, but spend money also in professional development courses. Why? Because if you improve yourself, you won't care about what other people think about you. Yep. And it all starts in the mind, as we have established before. Exactly. It's all about mindset. Yeah. Yeah. So lastly, do you want to share an example? A story or pygmalion effect had a noticeable impact? Yeah. You know, it was with my brother, it was not with me. You know, my brother, he suffered from dyslexia. So he's not, he's. Right now he's an oil engineer, but he was really bad with numbers and he's an oil engineer. So my mom, she is amazing. She's a teacher, she's a professor now at the university. But in the past she used to be a teacher at school. And I remember that when my brother was like twelve years old, or maybe 1314, I don't remember the exact. We realized that he was having difficult difficulties to learn. So my mom was always pushing my brother without even knowing that he has the last lecture. He was always pushing, no, you can't, you can learn it. Take your time, you're going to be able to learn. So my mom, I didn't know that until now that I'm a grown up, that she was so optimistic about everything that I think that I get that from her. My dad is always pretty optimistic, but my brother, he was really bad with numbers and also he didn't know how to, how to read. So imagine having 1314 and not knowing how to read and then becoming an engineer. I think that my mom, she was always putting the best beliefs and the best resources for my, for my brother. And now he's living in New York, he has to create career, whatever. And you would never notice that he suffered from dyslexia because now he's picking even like languages. So it's so great that in this case, this is a personal story, but so great that he helped to boost his confidence, you know, by my, through my mom, because it was always pushing him to be the best version of himself. And I think that he believed a lot in my mom because he was always telling me, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it. Clearly he had a condition, but now we know that he's capable of learning and now he keeps learning because he had a good job. He has said a good life. Yeah, beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. That's a beautiful story. And it's also nice how the three topics come together in one story because that's the big melee effect, that's the growth mindset. And that's also the power of positive self talk, right? Or. Well, exactly. Yeah, your mom and setting that example. But it's all about mindset at the end. It's all about having a positive mindset, a growth mindset. It's about learning all these tools in order to apply on your daily basis. This is not magical. This is not something that is like a happy thing or like, you know, sometimes people think that coaching or these kind of tools are not good enough for them because this is for another kind of people. Well, I used to be that kind of people. I used to be the person. I mean, I didn't know all the concepts that I know now. Now I learned a lot about mindset hacking, optimism. And I'm cultivating myself into these topics because I know that they are really helpful in my life, but also in my work. Awesome. Super inspirational. And lastly, I think I know our audience, right? And they always want to learn more and read up and even geek out on this stuff. So maybe in the show notes of this one, we can add a couple of resources. Your favorite books, maybe for the sake of time, maybe don't mention them all here, but people can go to the description of this episode and learn about your favorite, maybe top three books or resources that really have helped you in this journey, if that's okay. Yes, of course. I love Daniel Gulliman. You should read every book of that author. Emotional intelligence, right? Yes, exactly. Classic. That's a classic. You know, 30 years ago it was a bestseller, and I think it should be a bestseller for everyone right now. So that would be one of the books, emotional intelligence by Daniel Koliman. Then I would say that I love Tim Ferriss. And you spoke about him. He has several books. You just said about the 4 hours week. I would recommend also to read that book and because you will see that there are so many beliefs that we have towards the thing that we need to do because the society is doing it that way. He will break all those beliefs and show you his path or the way he sees things. I'm not telling that it's the best book. I'm telling you that it's a good book for you to start rethinking the way you think about certain things. If I can chime in. I love that. I was listening to his latest interview with Seth Godin. It's another good one to listen to, right? Overall, yeah, Seth was actually paraphrasing the book because it's super sleazy title, right? Like four hour workweek scam. But that was exactly the point, right? It's not like, it's not the point that you work for hours. That's not happening. It's automate your life and earn that freedom and work remotely and do things more efficient. So. But he really started that movement, in a sense, back in 2007. But it was more like, I like what you said, like, the rethinking, like, reading that book, I think I read it in 2009, opened my mind to like, hey, you can work remotely. Hey, you can earn more freedom. Hey, you know, you can do things more efficiently. So it's more like. So it is a hardcore business book. Let's let there not be a mistake. But it's also a mindset shifter. Just want to. Because we. Nice, nice. I really like you said that because I completely agree. I totally agree with you. Then the third book I would like to recommend, it's not going to be a book about mindset. It's actually going to be a book about data driven mindset, which is factfulness by Hans Romsley and his brother and his sister. They wrote a book about the way people think. They know a lot about the state of the world, but then we know nothing about it. We think that we are in a world that has a lot of poverty, but it's not true. If we compare that to the last 100 years, we think that we are in a. In a world where people doesn't know how to read. But that's not true. Most of the people in the world, they know how to read. So what am I saying? That because, yes, it's important to have our mindset, but also it's important to have a realistic mindset. And data is also important because sometimes people ask me, like, all the things that you do, like the things that I was explaining here in the, in the three episode podcast. Do you, do you, do you apply this into your daily basis? Yes, of course I do. And have you measured this? Yes, of course. Because I used to be part of the employee prior department in my company, and we have applied this and now we have data that supports that by applying these kind of tools, we have a better and more happy environment in our company. So of course, that data is also important. So read factfulness because it's a beautiful book and you like it. Yeah, I read it a long time ago and it goes back also what I said about the news in a previous episode, like, we're biased, thinking that it's all bad, but then actually going to measure the data. Not the case, but curious. Now, you said, like, you measured that and you had a tangible improvement. How do you measure that? We have a survey that we send every month, and in that survey we asked to our employees, how do they feel? So are you feeling motivated, depressed? And we have the metadata because we don't have the specific name of the person who is actually replying to that. Survey, but we do have the office where they're located, so then we can have specific actions for them, you know. So we asked, we also have another metric, which is the employee net promoter score, where we ask them, would you recommend this place to work to your friends or any other colleague? And usually we have good responses. And then we also have an open question where we ask, what would you do in order to improve our culture in this company? And, you know, it's a mandatory question. And they always put things that we can do in order to help them to have this positive environment. So of course we need to listen to what people are saying because that's the only way we can create a better environment in our work. And it's going to improve the mindset of the whole organization because we're allowing them to tell us what we need to do in order to improve the state of the things in our company. That's awesome. Yes. Pyewites, we started our yearly survey as well last year, and we already made some changes or did some new things based on that. So yeah, always listen to your people. Great. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing. Happy that you mentioned the books that we did end up ending that we did ending talking about books because we love books. So Daniel Goldman, mainly emotional intelligence. Tim Ferriss, for our work week and factfulness. Recommend your favorites. Right in this. Yes, it is this area. Cool. Well, thanks so much, Alejandro. This has been a ride, a lot of good stuff. And yeah, I hope our audience will take advantage of it. And of course join our slack people can reach out, and I think the second or first channel to really reach out to you is on LinkedIn. I know you're active there, so I'll link that as well below in the notes. Awesome. Thank you. Congratulations. Gracias. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte friends, that is pibit es friends and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show and to join our thriving slack community of python programmers, go to pybytes community, that's Pibit es community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.