The Golem Effect Isn't Why You're Stuck. Your Excuse for It Is.

What a half-marathon taught me about the difference between someone doubting you and someone being right

My coach told me I couldn't do it in one go.

He wasn't wrong. My data said the same thing: 5:30/km pace, no long run past 15K, zero business finishing a half marathon under two hours.

I finished it anyway. Not by proving him wrong. By proving something else entirely.

The Convenient Lie About the Golem Effect

Here's the popular version of the Golem effect you'll read everywhere: someone expects little of you, you internalize it, you perform to that low bar. True. Documented. Real psychology, real consequences.

Here's what most people do with that idea: they use it as a shield.

"My manager doesn't believe in me, so I've stopped trying."

"\My coach said I wasn't ready, so why bother?"

"Nobody expected much from someone like me, so this is just where I landed."

I'm going to say something that won't make it into most leadership content: sometimes low expectations aren't the Golem effect. It's just accurate feedback wearing a costume you don't want to look at.

The Golem effect explains a real phenomenon. It does not explain every hard truth someone hands you. Confusing the two is how competent people stay mediocre while calling it self-protection.

The skill that actually matters isn't "ignore anyone who doubts you." It's knowing which kind of doubt you're standing in front of.

The Pace That Told the Truth

Eighteen months ago I started training for a half marathon. I was well past the age where most people start something like this from zero. My splits were slow. 5:30 a kilometer, on a good day. My longest run topped out around 15K, and it hurt.

My coach looked at the numbers and said it straight: not in one go. Build the base first. Manage expectations.

He was reading the data correctly. That's the part people skip when they tell this story — they want the coach to be the villain, the doubter, the Golem-effect voice to defeat. He wasn't. He was giving me an honest read of where I actually stood.

What changed the outcome wasn't rejecting his assessment. It was the group of 40-plus runners I trained with every week. Same data. Same slow pace, same short long-runs, same unglamorous numbers. Different response to them.

They didn't tell me the coach was wrong. They told me the numbers were a starting point, not a verdict. Every Sunday long run, someone was slightly ahead of me, pulling my pace without saying a word about it. Every week someone asked how the last run went before I'd even brought it up. That's not motivation-poster energy. That's a group of people who expected me to keep showing up, so I did.

I finished the half marathon. Sub-2. The exact outcome my coach had, accurately, said wasn't happening in one training block.

The lesson isn't "don't trust experts." The lesson is this: the antidote to a low expectation isn't denial. It's surrounding yourself with people who hold a higher one, on the same honest data.

Where This Shows Up at Work

I've watched the same pattern play out in a SOC, and later, in a classroom, and it never looks like the movies make it look.

When I first stepped into leading a team, I wasn't good at it. Not in the "still finding my style" way, in the "clearly not landing this" way. I know that because my manager and senior manager told me, directly, without softening it. That was accurate feedback. I could have taken it as a verdict and quietly checked out of the role, the way a lot of first-time leads do when the early results don't match the title.

Instead, they kept investing time in me anyway. Not blind cheerleading, actual coaching, actual course-correction, actual "here's specifically what didn't work in that incident review." The expectation stayed high even while the feedback stayed honest. That combination is what moved me. Not one or the other.

I lead that team effectively now. Not because someone told me I was already good at it. Because people who had every reason to write me off decided not to, and kept the bar where it was

The Trap Senior People Build for Themselves

There's a second, quieter version of the Golem effect, and it's self-inflicted. It shows up once you've been in a leadership seat long enough to feel established.

The assumption goes: I've arrived. My track record speaks for itself. I don't need to prove competence the way I did five years ago.

That's a low expectation you're setting for yourself, dressed up as confidence.

I'd bet against anyone who thinks the competition thins out once you're in leadership. It gets sharper. The room gets smaller, and every person in it is better than the last room. A suggestion lands not because it's correct, but because of who said it, and if you've stopped learning, you've quietly started coasting on a reputation that has an expiry date you can't see.

The people who stay sharp in leadership roles are the ones who keep treating themselves the way that running group treated me: current data, no free pass, and an expectation that stays high regardless of the last result.

The Expectation Audit

Every time someone hands you a low expectation a coach, a manager, a comment on a podcast episode you put out, an interview panel run it through three questions before you decide what it is:

1. Is this a diagnosis or a dismissal? Diagnoses come with specifics. Dismissals come with vibes. My coach gave me pace numbers. That's a diagnosis.

2. Does this person have any stake in my getting better? A coach with your training log has skin in the outcome. A stranger's offhand opinion does not. Weight them accordingly.

3. Am I using this as feedback, or as an exit ramp? This is the one people skip, because it's the one that implicates you, not the other person.
   

If it's a dismissal from someone with no stake in you, that's the actual Golem effect, and you're right to route around it. If it's a diagnosis from someone who's invested, that's not an excuse. That's a starting line.

The Part I Don't Usually Say Out Loud

I still think about the moment my coach said "not in one go," because for about a week, I believed him in the wrong way. Not "this is where I start." "This is where I stop." That's the version of the Golem effect nobody warns you about: the one where accurate information tips into a story you tell yourself about your ceiling.

What pulled me out of it wasn't willpower. It was showing up on a run day I didn't want to do, because I knew someone would ask where I'd been if I skipped it. Some weeks, belief isn't a mindset. It's a group of runners that expects you at 5 a.m.

Where This Leaves You

You are, right now, sitting on some piece of feedback that felt like a low expectation. Maybe it was. Maybe it was just true, and you've been calling it unfair because that's easier than doing something about it.

Run it through the audit. Then go find the version of that Saturday running group for whatever you're building next because the fastest way out of a Golem effect, real or imagined, was never arguing with the person who doubted you. It was finding people who didn't, and showing up anyway.

If you're building a leadership habit, a fitness habit, or a brand from a standing start and you want a second set of eyes that won't just tell you what you want to hear, that's what I talk through every week on The Goyal Show.

Come find the people who'll hold the bar high with you.

Find the people