Psychologist Kraut once conducted such an experiment: He asked a group of participants to make donations to charity, and then based on whether they made donations, they were called "charitable people" and "charitable people". "Uncharitable person". Correspondingly, some participants were not drawn to such a conclusion. After a period of time, when these people were asked to donate again, it was found that those who donated money for the first time and were said to be "charitable" donated more money than those who had not been judged, and those who had not been judged. People who were called "uncharitable" for the first time donated less than those who had not been judged.
A person is drawn to a certain conclusion by others, just like a product is labeled with a certain label. The above experiment shows that when a person is labeled by a word name, he will perform impression management to make his behavior consistent with the content of the label. This phenomenon is caused by labeling, so it is called the "label effect". It follows from this that when a child is always called stupid by his parents, he will definitely doubt his own abilities and lose confidence in himself; when an employee is considered by his boss to be incompetent in some aspects, he will definitely also He will doubt his ability in this area, and then lose confidence in himself. Even if he has the ability in this area, he will not show it anymore. The employee will think that "the boss already thinks that his ability is not good, so what else can he show?"
After all, employees are not their own children, so managers will not show too much verbal dissatisfaction like parents. But in fact, your attitude towards a person is not necessarily expressed entirely through words. When you have a very negative attitude towards a person, even if you don't say a word, your attitude towards the person is clearly revealed in your behavior. A look or an action will show that disapproval, and these non-verbal signals are enough to label employees.
Some managers will say: "Employees are not children, nor are they stupid. If you call them stupid, they really think they are stupid. If I call them stupid, they really think they have no future. I am like this Scolding him is just a way of motivating him, just to make him better." This view seems to have some truth, because some psychologists have found in research that in the "labeling effect", if the label is applied. If it is not positive and positive, then the person being labeled may also take actions in the opposite direction to the content of the label because they feel it is unfair. In other words, this "provoking method" is sometimes feasible. However, at the same time, we should also be clear that if we want to apply negative and negative labels to have a positive effect, two conditions are required: first, the person being labeled can understand whether the label is objective and fair; second, the person being labeled The independence of the person should be relatively strong.
If you are a leader, can you reflect on your attitude towards your subordinates? Do those subordinates you label as bad really behave in your eyes as you expected? In order to better avoid the adverse consequences of such wrong behaviors or concepts, it is recommended that we pay more attention to the extent to which employees complete target tasks at work, rather than focusing on the shortcomings of employees. Because everyone has shortcomings, this is an impossible or difficult fact to change. What you have to do is to let them use their strengths and avoid their weaknesses at work.