I have. They involve many assumptions, and are rarely said directly to the person involved. These words are the beginning of a self fulfilling prophecy.
A self fulfilling prophecy starts because of a held belief. If I believe people in my team are incapable, then I start to treat them that way. Eventually, they fail and my self fulfilling prophecy has come true. So I say “I told you so”, to anybody who will listen. I was right — they weren’t good enough to do the job. Or were they?
An example of how a self fulfilling prophecy works
Kelly decides that Nick should lead a small project. Kelly is nervous, because she doesn’t believe that Nick is up to the job. But she doesn’t see too many other options. She can’t take it on herself as she’s too busy.
She assigns Nick the project and makes it clear that he is accountable for the outcome. Nick seems keen enough to take the opportunity. Kelly is still a little nervous, as she doesn’t see Nick as much of a go-getter. Each week she meets with Nick to get an update on how the project is going.
At the weekly meeting, Kelly asks a lot of questions. Why haven’t you done this? Why didn’t you do that? Have you spoken to Bob yet? You need to be talking to Bob right now!
Because Kelly believes that Nick isn’t up to it, she unconsciously focuses on the signs that things are going wrong. She becomes more convinced that there is a problem and that she was right. Nick senses this. He can tell that Kelly is focused intensely on his every move with the project. Not surprisingly, Nick starts to get stressed.
Nick begins to think, “I thought things were going OK, but I must be doing a terrible job if Kelly is watching me so closely!”
Before long, Nick’s performance begins to suffer, because he loses confidence. He starts to second-guess himself and takes longer to make decisions. He doesn’t think that Kelly has his back. He starts to take a back seat and lets Kelly run the show, because he thinks he’s doing a bad job.
After the project, Kelly is even more convinced that Nick isn’t any good. Now this belief is stronger than ever, making it very difficult to change.