個案總覽

What has long been recognized by teachers, physicians, and behavioral scientists holds true for management: One person's expectations shape another person's behavior. If a manager has high expectations, employees are likely to excel; if expectations are low, employees will likely respond with poor performance. In this HBR classic article from 1969, J. Sterling Livingston draws on numerous case studies and other research to demonstrate the importance of managerial expectations to individual and group performance. Consider the insurance executive who identified his six best agents and assigned them to his most capable manager. Not surprisingly, this group surpassed its already ambitious target. Equally unsurprising was what happened to a group of low producers assigned to the company's least capable manager. Their performance declined even further. But what happened to the group of average agents assigned to an average manager? That group increased its productivity by a higher percentage than the top group, because the manager refused to consider herself--or her agents--less capable than the superstars. And managers' beliefs about themselves influence how they view and treat their employees.

Formal education programs emphasize the development of problem-solving and decision-making skills, but give little attention to finding and exploiting opportunities or to dealing with potential problems. Effective managers, on the other hand, share characteristics that cannot be taught in a classroom: they need to manage, they need power, and they have the capacity for empathy. Furthermore, managers develop leadership capacities by firsthand observation of their environment and by an assessment of feedback from their actions. Managerial aspirants must be taught how to learn from their own first-hand experiences. McKinsey Award Winner.