Essentially, Leader expectations >>> Leader behaviour >>> Employee self-belief >>> Employee performance

When leaders have higher expectations of an employee's performance they are more likely to set more challenging goals, delegate more meaningful work, spend more time coaching, provide more development feedback and many other confidence and skill building actions. The employee then develops higher self-belief and achieves more.

This is known as the Pygmalion Effect and one of the reasons top talent programs can be so powerful is that they don't just develop capability they also change expectations. When leaders genuinely believe someone has the potential to succeed, they naturally invest more time in coaching, provide more challenging opportunities and communicate greater confidence. Those behaviours, in turn, can increase the individual's confidence, motivation and ultimately their performance. Sometimes, believing in someone's potential is the catalyst that helps them realise it and McDonald's Australia does this exceptionally well.

The image above is from the McDonald's Organisational Acceleration Programme. We have had the pleasure of delivering the programme for the past 10 years and we love seeing the change in self-belief of the participants. They often arrive believing they don't belong in the group and at the end of the six months they leave very different!

Congrats to the 2026 'Grads' and good luck with your presentation to the Ops Board and CEO 👏 👏 👏

We will miss working with you!

Always awesome to work with you Andrea Gibson and the OGs - Lisa Apthorpe, Sarah Kevin, Sylvia Davis and Andrea Kerr.