Great Expectations
Great Expectations
It’s not just people who are influenced by how they talk to themselves. Entire communities are also influenced by what they believe and say about themselves.
About twenty years ago, West Orange, New Jersey, was a community in rapid decline. The mayor—who had served well for many years—sadly encountered a sudden outbreak of corruption in his administration. For various reasons, the township began to appear to deteriorate. Property values declined, a titanic amount of negative publicity tarnished the town’s image, and people complained vociferously about community taxes, crime rates, and the educational system.
The town council decided to create a public relations committee led by the CEO of what was the largest advertising firm in New Jersey. I was appointed to be a part of this strategic commission. Our charge was to study the cause of the real and perceived negative issues confronting our town, explore what was right about West Orange, and craft an effective strategy to reinvent our public image. Over the course of the next few months, we held meetings with every elected official, the chief of police, the superintendent of schools, and other key community stakeholders.
After much research, we determined that perhaps the main reason for our town’s plight was its self-perception.
Although West Orange had suffered very real setbacks, there really was much to be enthusiastic about in our community. The residents, however, glumly went about their daily business thinking and verbalizing negative feelings about the town going “down,” and thus the town underwent its own version of self-imposed prophecy. West Orange was, in fact, going down!
After reporting to the town council, we were empowered to set up a public relations infrastructure with the initial task of marketing West Orange to West Orange. We introduced the WOW campaign—West Orange Wonderful—and motivated the residents to start talking about all the reasons we love our community.
In due season, my good friend John McKeon, then the council president, was elected mayor. He brought a renewed positive energy and agenda to our town. Property values have soared. Many people who thought about leaving have stayed. A reinvestment was made into our school system, and the Washington Post ranked it in the top 1 percent in the nation. I believe the turnaround in West Orange had much to do with how the community changed the way it thought and spoke about itself.
“Sometimes we have to market faith and hope about ourselves to ourselves. What we believe and say about ourselves powerfully affects reality.”
What other people believe and say about us and what we believe and say about other people are just as influential. This is called “others-imposed prophecy”—how the expectations of one person govern another’s actions.1
People around us respond to what we imagine and communicate about them to them.
I saw a high school basketball coach attempt to motivate a group of talented athletes by telling them how terrible they were. What utter foolishness! The team conformed to what their leader believed about them. Likewise, a negative parent can make it very difficult for a teenager to develop into a positive adult. And a nagging spouse will usually get what he or she confesses.
Expectations influence behavior. In a fascinating study, a group of elementary school teachers were told that 20 percent of their students showed “unusual potential for intellectual growth.” The names of these “special” students were drawn randomly in this blind study; they did not technically have the potential that was suggested.
Eight months later, however, these children showed significant gains in IQ when compared to the students who were not singled out. These children radically improved not because they were smarter than their peers but because their teachers believed in them and unknowingly communicated their faith.2
I challenge you to love people enough to see the best in them and their future, even if that means using your imagination. Make the discipline of positive imagining intentional, and prophesy audaciously over those you love, sometimes in spite of what you see. Then watch as what you imagine comes to pass!
Have someone’s expectations made a difference—good or bad—in your life? Drop a comment and tell us about it.
Ronald B. Adler and Russell F. Proctor, Looking Out, Looking In, 13th ed. (Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011), 60.
Ibid., 58, citing Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils’ Intellectual Development (Norwalk, CT: Crown House, 1992).
Adapted from Live Ten (Thomas Nelson) by Terry A. Smith. All rights reserved.
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