Well, before we take on “the world,” let’s start with just one person …

Dr. Charles Elliott, then dean of Trinity Hall at Cambridge University, was reviewing an application for admission one afternoon.

He’d left his glasses at home, but it looked like others had signed off on admitting the applicant. “If she was good enough for them,” he thought, “she’s good enough for me.” So he signed off, too.

“Four years later,” he says, “I heard a knock at my door. A young lady had climbed the two flights of stairs to my office to thank me.

“She said, ‘Dean Elliott, when no one else would believe in me, you believed in me. With grades like mine, I didn’t belong at Cambridge, but I figured that if you believed in me, I could do the work. Thanks to you, I will be graduated summa cum laude later today.’”

This story always reminds me of the people who have believed in me over the years. What a difference they’ve made in my life.

I’ll bet you have those memories, too … when someone saw something in you that you didn’t see in yourself. They saw a seed, a potential, and it made a difference in your life. (And even if you don’t know it, there’s also been a time when you believed in someone and it made a difference for them.)

It may seem surprising that someone’s expectations can have such power. Yet in experiment after experiment, social scientists have found it to be true.

In one classic study, teachers were told that certain students had high potential for academic success. In fact, the children were selected at random. Several months later, the chosen few were indeed outperforming their classmates.

OK, it’s settled: How we see other people influences them as individuals. But what’s that got to do with “changing the world”?

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