The Pygmalion effect- How statues come to life.

The Pygmalion effect was taught to us in management of organizations in the last term. The term is derived from the name of a sculptor in Greek mythology who carves a statue of a woman and falls in love with the statue, his love is so strong that he starts praying to the gods who bring the statue to life.
In psychology it is also called as “teacher –expectancy effect” wherein if a teacher believes that a particular student will do better than others or is more gifted than others then they unconsciously perform actions that will lead to the aforesaid students actually performing better than others and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Can the same be done in other places? Can you for example make your employees work better by erroneously assuming that they are more gifted than they actually are? Can you make a crooked politician work better by assuming that he in fact is a great person?
In management you probably can ( at least the article said so) I am not so sure about the politicians it seems to me that nothing can make them work except their own self interest , or am I too cynical?