From a causal perspective, perhaps your last line could be flipped? I.e. Rewards tend to create low performers. Coaching in delight in the work tends to create high performers.
It's fairly common for phenomena to be locked into feedback loops : (A causes B) AND (B causes A).
Self-reinforcing processes are typically how small differences in initial conditions result in huge differences downstream.
I became aware of part of the problem a long time ago. Back in college, I noticed certain women who would start rather a lot of sentences with their self-identification as a reason for everything:
"As a feminist, I believe that..."
"As a feminist, I'm a vegetarian..."
"As a feminist, I'm a pacifist..."
It struck me as being odd that what they believe, or claim to believe, is a function of what they believe themselves to be. The other thing that struck me were all the glaring mismatches between their professed beliefs, and their actions:
At a party: huge pile of chicken bones on the plate of the "vegetarian who loves animals".
"As a feminist, I'm volunteering for Diane Feinstein, because I want justice for the people of Iraq".
If you point out that Feinstein voted for, and was one of the top profiteers in the Senate thereof, a situation in which depleted uranium shells were raining down on the heads of civilians who never did any of us any harm, she would become very angry and start spouting irrelevant nonsense:
"YOU'RE JUST SAYING THAT BECAUSE YOU LISTEN TO RUSH LIMBAUGH!"
There's no point arguing, because she simply rejects, and becomes angry over, any information that contradicts her sense of who she IS. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M HELPING THE PEOPLE WHO ARE WAGING THE WAR; I'M A PACIFIST!"
Gloria Steinem was once on local radio. A caller came on (a woman by the way) who asked her why she felt that women were being treated unfairly but never spoke out against men being drafted. There was an awkward pause, then she stammered "I'm a pacifist". The pandering interviewer then proceeded to reassure her about what was wrong with all these nasty people with bad attitudes.
Similarly, Joan Baez was once asked what she would do if she saw someone raping a child. She stammered and was unable to answer the question.
(The correct answer is some variation of "I would take measures to stop it", or "He'd have to kill me first!", or even or even "I would assertively but non-violently confront the attacker!". Otherwise it betrays a LACK of concern for other people. You could even work it into your agenda: "Well, I'd do something to stop it, because I hate unprovoked violence against others. That's why I'm opposed to the Vietnam War, yadda yadda...").
Since, in her mind, she IS a "pacifist", who "cares about people", the consequences of her actions, or for that matter, lack thereof, are totally irrelevant to her; she can't even "see" them; instead, she comes up with rationalizations that are convincing to her, but to no-one else except fellow travelers with the the same ideological orientations.
The Sansrkit word for action is "karma", by the way. People think of it as some sort of cosmic reckoning system, but all it means, literally, is "action". Actions have consequences.
It took me a while to make all the connections to more subtle patterns of behavior. It's actually a very common behavior pattern, it's just not as obvious among people whose identities are less ideological, less fanatical, and whose behaviors are at least more superficially consistent with their identities.
When you tell someone that he or she "IS" smart, "a geek/brain", or "good", or project visions of being the big hotshot engineer or doctor or lawyer, you're setting them up to become obsessed over trying to live up to the self-image, but only in the most superficial way possible. It's rather easier to "be" something by just calling yourself that thing, than to integrate a pattern of behaviors to actually DO something.
That's how "smart kids" end up underperforming, often going into college with straight-As from high-school, then flunking out their freshman year, because of their failure to adapt to the necessity of a much more rigorous study schedule. It's also how "good kids" from "church youth groups" end up in all sorts of horrific scandals.
The problem often seems to reach a crisis point right around teenage years. I suspect that this is the real reason that teenagers are often difficult for parents to manage. It's not the hormones; it's trying to live up to their sense of who they are, which has been crystallizing throughout their childhood, and, moreover, ASSERT that sense over reality and their parent's rights. They're trying to live up to who they think they are, in part, because they think their friends care--except the sad truth is their friends care only to the degree that their sense of identity reinforces their own!!
You can't BE anything. You can only DO, or NOT DO.
