Episode 172: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Dr. Chelsea: Hey, coaches and teachers! If you are new to the show, it might be a little overwhelming to know which episodes to listen to. You can always go back to the beginning and binge listen, of course, but I also know we don't have a single spare minute in our days. So, to help you decide where to start, I have a short, five-question quiz that will tell you which episodes will help you with whatever is going on right now. It's kind of like a personality quiz, and after a few quick questions, you get a curated podcast list of the top five episodes that will help you most where you're at right now.
Maybe you need some motivation or inspiration, maybe your dancers need something to listen to for help, or maybe you're looking for a little boost of confidence. Whatever support you need, take the short quiz and find out. Go to www.chelseapierotti.com/podcastquiz to get started. Click the link in the episode’s show notes, if that's helpful, and thank you for being here. I'm so happy to have you as a part of this community!
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Welcome to Passion for Dance! I'm your host, Dr. Chelsea, and I'm on a mission to create happier, more successful dancers through positive mental skills. And today, I want to talk about how our expectations as teachers, they shape our dancers’ abilities.
It feels intimidating to me sometimes to consider how powerful our decisions can be and how much influence we're capable of, but we do have a lot of power over our dancers’ journeys, and we have a lot of influence. So let's make sure we aren't allowing our expectations and the labels that we assign to have too much sway in our dancers’ training.
We don't always mean to, but we often label our dancers. Even if it's only in your head and you never say it out loud, we tend to do it. You know who your solid turner is, who is lazy, who has style and great facials, and who you can count on to know the counts. We get to know our dancers, and we inadvertently label them. So do those expectations of talent influence how your dancer trains? Well, yeah, your expectations and your labels matter. So let's talk about what to look out for and how to use this power to your advantage!
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Hi, I'm Dr. Chelsea, a former professional dancer and mental performance coach. I know what it feels like to be a passionate dance teacher who cares about your dancers, but you want to challenge them and help them be their best, and I also recognize that some traditions and teaching practices in the dance world are harmful. So I'm on a mission to change our dance industry by creating happier, more successful dancers using positive mental skills.
When you understand how to help your dancers with their confidence, how to find their own motivation, work together as a team and more, your dancers will unlock new levels of competitive success and happiness. And it's not just about them; you deserve the same. So we'll talk about how dance teachers can use positive mental skills to be more confident, resilient, and motivated as well.
Be sure to hit “subscribe” wherever you listen to podcasts. There are new episodes every Thursday, and each week you'll hear from me and my guests with advice and actionable tips for building mental toughness, covering topics about mindset, motivation, resilience, and building a community. Passion for Dance is a show designed to help dance educators like you have a positive impact on every dancer you teach.
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The Impact of Labeling Your Dancers – 3:25
Were you labeled in some way as a dancer? You probably were, and I bet even if a teacher never said it out loud, you felt it. I was the leggy dancer and the mama bear, I guess. So if a routine or a ballet had any kind of maternal character, that was my part. And if I had a highlight in a routine, it was usually related to flexibility – lots of 90s layouts and leg turns because I have long legs and a flexible back. But if it involved turns, I'm definitely not in front.
But it became clear that my teachers expected me to be able to do any kind of leggy-related flexibility skill and not able to do any kind of challenging turn skill. So what happened? In my 18 competition routines in my senior year, I was showing off my flexibility a zillion times and only turning when it was a whole-group skill.
So think about how many reps you get in when you're pigeonholed like that. And I can speak for myself and say I started to resent it. I wanted to be a better turner, but I rarely practiced it because I was never in those sections. And so, there was very little practice, and my back was often really sore after convention weekends and long competitions because of overuse.
And now, I'm not blaming my teachers. We didn't know any better. I certainly never stood up for myself and asked for it to be different. But the fact remains that my label as a flexible non-turner changed the way I trained, and it changed the way I grew up as a dancer. I became more and more talented with different kinds of battement tilts and layouts but less and less confident in turns.
And why? Because my teachers communicated — not overtly, they didn't say it out loud, but they communicated through their choreography and decisions that I was good at this and not good at that. So I believed it, and I trained with that belief. And the longer that went on, the more accurate the label.
So now as a teacher, I understand the psychological phenomenon that's happening here and making decisions around competition routines or choreography can feel more daunting because I see what's happening. There are so many decisions as a choreographer that I always wrestled with when I was preparing a competition routine. I spent a lot of time deciding which skills to include, making sure it showed difficulty, but wasn't just trick, trick, trick. And once I decided on skills I wanted to be featured, I would struggle to choose who to perform those skills. “What should be a team trick? What should we do as a highlight?” And sometimes the question isn't, “Who can do it?” The question is, “Who can I count on to perform that trick when the pressure is on?”
It's one of the biggest coaching decisions we often have to make. And those decisions create labels and reinforce beliefs about who can do what and who can't. My expectation of who could do the skill and who couldn't starts to actually influence the end result of who can execute it.
So say, for example on a dance team, you want to add a triple pirouette to the routine as a whole-team skill. The problem is you're not sure if everyone on the team is capable of it. In fact, maybe you're pretty sure there's one girl in particular who will likely struggle to be ready for competition. Of course, you want the best team skill you have, and you don't want one dancer's ability to hold you back. And short of taking her out of the routine, how do you guarantee to get her best performance? Well, you just notice and beware of labeling her as the one that will struggle, even if it's in your head and you never say it out loud, because that bias will start a ripple effect, and it's called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is scientific fact that a coach's expectation of an athlete can become a reality. It's that simple. What you expect of your dancer's performance can and will become a reality. And again, it's that self-fulfilling prophecy. The power and influence of this is really a simple four-step process, but it's pretty amazing. So since we know it happens no matter what, let's use it to our advantage, right? Your expectations and your labels are going to influence how your dancers train, so it's going to influence how they are able to perform and what they learn.
Four-Step Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Process (Negative Direction) – 7:23
Let me take that example from earlier about a team turn section. Imagine you're planning the choreography for your competitive routine, and you decide on a team triple as your goal. Yet there's one dancer you expect will not be able to get that skill before competition season. Here's how this self-fulfilling prophecy would work. It's four steps.
So in step one, the coach has this expectation for your dancer. When you make the decision to put in a team triple, you also have instinct about each dancer's ability, and you have the dancers you know you can put in front. You expect them to be consistent and hit it when it counts. There're athletes you're pretty confident will be fine by competition season. And again, there's the one dancer, in your gut, you don't expect to be able to get it. That thought and that thought alone starts this process.
So after you have that expectation, step two is your expectation influences how you treat that individual athlete. And again, I'm not even talking about saying anything overtly or being mean. Without realizing it, you may start to treat that athlete differently because of your label. It could be conscious, it's often not, but you treat the athlete differently because of that label that the dancer will struggle with the skill.
You might watch her practice with your arms folded and project that closed body language. Maybe she nails a turn in practice and you're excited, but you actually communicate surprise rather than positive reinforcement. When she struggles and starts to get down on herself, you think, “Well, that's what I thought would happen,” and move on to work with another athlete, communicating disappointment, which again could be real or not, but it's what you're projecting to the dancer.
That leads to step three, that the way you treat the athlete communicates really important information. The coach is communicating how capable you believe your dancer to be. Your actions and your words, many of them subconsciously, start to communicate to your dancer that you don't think she can do it. She'll interpret your crossed arms or lack of feedback or surprise at success to mean she's not capable. That inner dialogue, then, spirals from there. The dancer might quickly lose confidence in her ability. It's creating their own internal dialogue of, “Ugh, coach knows I can't do it. It's not worth the effort. She'll take me out anyway.”
Which leads to step four where the athlete's behavior and performance confirm what you originally expected. And so, sure enough, the dancer continues to struggle at practice and is, in fact, unable to consistently do that skill. Coach's original expectations are confirmed. “She can't do the triple. We have to take it out,” and disappointment reigns, right? That's this vicious cycle that will continue forever.
But the good news is this process works in the positive direction too. That's where we have to take back our power for good as teachers and use the self-fulfilling prophecy to help our dancers train harder and continue to improve.
Four-Step Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Process (Positive Direction) – 10:12
Say you're a high school coach, and you have a new dancer on your team who has never done hip-hop before. Nonetheless, you took her on varsity because you believe she's able to get the style down with some help. So here's the same four-step process in the positive direction.
Step one: coach develops an expectation. You believe your dancer will be able to do it. Maybe you think she's got good body awareness and talent in other styles and just needs more time, or maybe you saw an incredible work ethic earlier that makes you think she can handle this level. Whatever the reason, you develop the expectation that she will have this new style in plenty of time to compete.
That leads to step two, where you treat the athlete according to that expectation. So because you believe she can do it, you may start to give her more attention during practice, offering a little more time and advice than you might otherwise. Maybe you give her an extra high five after a completed skill and a simple, “You got this!” Maybe she catches you smiling at her when she asks a senior to help her during a water break. In lots of small ways, you start to treat her according to your expectation that she'll be successful soon.
That leads to step three, where the coach is communicating feelings of ability. If you add up all those small actions, bits of body language, words of encouragement, your dancer soon believes she is capable. Your expectation caused you to treat her according to that, and it projects this image of competence and ability. You believe in her. So now you communicated that sense of confidence to your dancer, and she believes she can do it too. That's going to change how she shows up and trains every day.
Which leads to that step four that the athlete's performance meets your expectations. So, sure enough, a few weeks later, months later, she is successfully executing new skills and matching the team's style. She's excited, and you may even congratulate yourself for having a good eye for talent. And the reality is your expectations can and will influence your athlete's abilities.
Take Note of Your Belief in Your Dancers – 12:09
Now, of course, it has to be genuine because I’d mentioned many of these changes in treatment and communication are unconscious and not purposeful. So you can't say to yourself, “I'm going to believe she'll get that headspring,” and expect the self-fulfilling prophecy to work magic. If your true feelings are that she won't get it, that's what will be communicated. Your power as a coach comes from your ability to be aware of your thoughts and your beliefs about your athletes. Don't pigeonhole them into certain roles and abilities and expectations.
If you deem one dancer as a hard worker and another one as a lazy dancer, soon enough your expectations will alter how you treat them in subtle but important ways. Your behavior communicates your thoughts and beliefs to your dancers, and eventually their behavior will confirm your beliefs, and the cycle continues.
So take notice in your beliefs about your dancers. Do you hold certain expectations for their behaviors and their skill level and why? Are you sure those feelings are actually supported? Especially if you've known athletes for years, make sure your beliefs aren't based on behavior or skill level that is now years old and likely outdated. That's where labels get really dangerous is when we attach them and then never adjust them as our dancers mature and grow.
So when you develop an expectation about an athlete's talent, character, or motivation, you're setting the stage for that expectation to become a reality. So make sure it's a reality you both want to see. Use your talent and powers as a teacher for good.
I hope this was helpful and inspired you to think about teaching in a new way and, above all, keep sharing your passion for dance with the world!
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Thank you for listening to Passion for Dance! You can find all episode resources at www.chelseapierotti.com/podcast, and be sure to follow me on Instagram for more high-performance tips at @dr.chelsea.pierotti. This podcast is for passionate dance teachers and coaches who are ready to change the dance industry by creating happier, more successful dancers. I'm Dr. Chelsea and keep sharing your passion for dance with the world.
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