Transcribed from video:
– A really interesting piece of research, and I think this was probably in the days before we had ethics committees and stuff, because it’s not necessarily ethical, but they took a class of school kids, like year one pre-primary sort of age school kids, and on the first day of the year they administered a test to all these kids. So they handed out a test to all these kids and this test was to work out what their potential was to learn, to develop, to be high performers. So they did these tests, and then they got all the results, and they threw them in the bin. And then they randomly picked out, okay you, you, you, you and you. And they said these are the high performers, just randomly picked them out of a hat. And they didn’t tell the kids, but they went to the teacher, and they said okay, there, these are your high performers, they have high potential. We’re going to leave that with ya. Came back on the last day of the school year, they administered a test, this time they did keep the results. And the kids who’d been identified randomly as having high potential got the best marks. Now it wasn’t even the kids, they didn’t know that they had high potentials. It was the teacher. The teacher was saying, all right these kids can handle more complex information, more advanced teaching methods, they would really benefit from more of my time. And if you’re learning more complex material with more advanced teaching methods with more time and resources, of course you’re going to improve more. And it’s this self fulfilling prophecy. And that’s someone else, the same thing is going to apply if you identify as being a bad squatter. The same thing will happen there. So it’s something that I’m very aware of working with athletes, and people of all ages, ranges and abilities, is that I’m very aware that I don’t want to pigeon-hole someone. So I have to stop myself, and I don’t do it much, but if I’m saying, okay here is a lady in her early seventies, I better not make her squat. No I need to hold her to a higher standard, because as soon as I say I’m going to cotton ball her and overdo it on caring for her, and aw I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to break you, she will rise to meet my expectations, and if my expectations are low then she will meet my low expectations. If I hold her to the same standard that I do for someone who’s going to the Olympic games, or the commonwealth games, or the cross city games, if I hold her to that standard, they will rise to meet that standard. So be careful how you treat people, because they will give you exactly what you’re asking for from them. And it’s something here I, and those who’ve trained with me will know that I hold people to high standards. And I’ll say to them, I know I’m holding you to a high standard but I’m not going to apologise for that. Here’s why I’m doing it. Because if you meet that standard, then it’s going to make you better, and maybe in the short term people go, aw he’s being hard on me this is tough, I’m always getting picked up on these things. But hopefully, my hope is in the long run it’s the old, you’ll thank me when I’m older sort of thing. Which Dad still says to me. So, yeah, have those high expectations of yourself for high self confidence, it can really help.
