Get off his back. He is just learning.’ And our son would cry and insist he’d never be any good and that he didn’t like baseball anyway.

Nothing we did seemed to help. We were really worried. We could see the effect this was having on this self-esteem. We tried to be encouraging and helpful and positive, but after repeated failure, we finally drew back and tried to look at the situation on a different level.

At this time in my professional role I was involved in leadership development work with various clients throughout the country. In that capacity I was preparing bimonthly programs on the subject of communication and perception for IBM’s Executive Development Program participants.

As I researched and prepared these presentations, I became particularly interested in how perceptions are formed. They govern the way we see. And how the way we see governs how we behave. This led me to a study of expectancy theory and self-fulfilling prophecies or the ‘Pygmalion effect,’ and to a realization of how deeply imbedded our perceptions are.