Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

by Adam M. Grant

He could see potential where others had missed it. He was looking to grow roses in concrete.

That motivation wasn’t innate; it tended to begin with a coach or teacher who made learning fun. “What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn,” the lead psychologist concluded, “if provided with appropriate . . . conditions of learning.”

What look like differences in natural ability are often differences in opportunity and motivation.

When we assess potential, we make the cardinal error of focusing on starting points—the abilities that are immediately visible. In a world obsessed with innate talent, we assume the people with the most promise are the ones who stand out right away. But high achievers vary dramatically in their initial aptitudes. If we judge people only by what they can do on day one, their potential remains hidden.

You can’t tell where people will land from where they begin. With the right opportunity and motivation to learn, anyone can build the skills to achieve greater things. Potential is not a matter of where you start, but of how far you travel. We ne...

People who make major strides are rarely freaks of nature. They’re usually freaks of nurture.

The capacities to be proactive, prosocial, disciplined, and determined stayed with students longer—and ultimately proved more powerful—than early math and reading skills.

they knew opportunity wouldn’t just come knocking—they’d have to build their own doors.

Character skills do more than help you perform at your peak—they propel you to higher peaks.

It’s often said that where there’s a will, there’s a way. What we overlook is that when people can’t see a path, they stop dreaming of the destination. To ignite their will, we need to show them the way.

They weren’t worried about being the smartest player in the room—they were aiming to make the room smarter.

By changing systems that prematurely write people off, it’s possible to improve the odds for underdogs and late bloomers.

The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.

Character is often confused with personality, but they’re not the same. Personality is your predisposition—your basic instincts for how to think, feel, and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts.

Knowing your principles doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to practice them, particularly under stress or pressure. It’s easy to be proactive and determined when things are going well. The true test of character is whether you manage to stand by those values when the deck is stacked against you. If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.

Personality is not your destiny—it’s your tendency. Character skills enable you to transcend that tendency to be true to your principles. It’s not about the traits y...

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved. —Helen Keller

Becoming a creature of discomfort can unlock hidden potential in many different types of learning. Summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill—an especially important form of determination. It takes three kinds of courage: to abandon your tried-and-true methods, to put yourself in the ring before you feel ready, and to make more mistakes than others make attempts. The best way to accelerate growth is to embrace, seek, and amplify discomfort.

Procrastination is a common problem whenever you’re pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone.

Many people associate procrastination with laziness. But psychologists find that procrastination is not a time management problem—it’s an emotion management problem. When you procrastinate, you’re not avoiding effort. You’re avoiding the unpleasant feelings that the activity stirs up. Sooner or later, though, you realize that you’re also avoiding getting where you want to go.

I’ve seen many people shy away from writing because it doesn’t come naturally to them. What they overlook is that writing is more than a vehicle for communicating—it’s a tool for learning. Writing exposes gaps in your knowledge and logic. It pushes you to articulate assumptions and consider counterarguments. Unclear writing is a sign of unclear thinking.

Although listening is often more fun, reading improves comprehension and recall. Whereas listening promotes intuitive thinking, reading activates more analytical processing.

Unless you have a reading disability or learning disorder that makes it difficult to parse text, when it comes to critical thinking, there’s no substitute for reading.

Comfort in learning is a paradox. You can’t become truly comfortable with a skill until you’ve practiced it enough to master it. But practicing it before you master it is uncomfortable, so you often avoid it. Accelerating learning requires a second form of courage: being brave enough to use your knowledge as you acquire it.

Once people saw discomfort as a mark of growth, they were motivated to stretch beyond their comfort zones.

When discomfort is a signal of progress, you don’t want to run away from it. You want to keep stumbling toward it to continue growing.

You don’t have to wait until you’ve acquired an entire library of knowledge to start to communicate. Your mental library expands as you communicate.

When we’re encouraged to make mistakes, we end up making fewer of them. Early mistakes help us remember the correct answer—and motivate us to keep learning.

When you get praised for making an effort, the feeling of effort itself starts to take on secondary reward properties. Instead of having to push yourself to keep trying, you feel pulled toward it.

If we wait until we feel ready to take on a new challenge, we might never pursue it all. There may not come a day when we wake up and suddenly feel prepared. We become prepared by taking the leap anyway.

The progress we normally chalk up to working harder may actually be due to working smarter. Cognitive skills aren’t sufficient for learning, but they’re necessary. Basic literacy makes it possible to leverage character skills more effectively—to be proactive in learning more and learning faster. Prosperity rises as people become more capable of absorbing new ideas and filtering out old ones.

Absorptive capacity is the ability to recognize, value, assimilate, and apply new information. It hinges on two key habits. The first is how you acquire information: Do you react to what enters your field of vision, or are you proactive in seeking new knowledge, skills, and perspectives? The second is the goal you’re pursuing when you filter information: Do you focus on feeding your ego or fueling your growth?

The sweet spot is when people are proactive and growth oriented. That’s when they become sponges. They consistently take the initiative to expand themselves and adapt. That character skill is especially valuable when the deck is stacked against you—as

When they have helpful input, people are often reluctant to share it. We even hesitate to tell friends they have food in their teeth. We’re confusing politeness with kindness. Being polite is withholding feedback to make someone feel good today. Being kind is being candid about how they can get better tomorrow. It’s possible to be direct in what you say while being thoughtful about how you deliver it.

It’s easy for people to be critics or cheerleaders. It’s harder to get them to be coaches. A critic sees your weaknesses and attacks your worst self. A cheerleader sees your strengths and celebrates your best self. A coach sees your potential and helps you become a better version of yourself.

Instead of seeking feedback, you’re better off asking for advice. Feedback tends to focus on how well you did last time. Advice shifts attention to how you can do better next time.

I replaced my usual feedback questions with a basic request for advice.[*] What’s the one thing I can do better? Suddenly people started giving me useful tips.

There’s nothing wrong with taking criticism personally. Taking it personally shows you’re taking it seriously. Getting upset isn’t a mark of weakness or even defensiveness—as long as your ego doesn’t stand in the way of your learning.

A key to being a sponge is determining what information to absorb versus what to filter out. It’s a question of which coaches to trust. I like to break trustworthiness down into three components: care, credibility, and familiarity.

Many people fail to benefit from constructive criticism because they overreact and under-correct.

Being a sponge is not only a proactive skill—it’s a prosocial skill. Done right, it’s not just about soaking up nutrients that help us grow. It’s also about releasing nutrients to help others grow.

Once you leave the predictable, controllable cocoon of academic exams, the desire to find the “correct” answer can backfire. In a meta-analysis, the average correlation between perfectionism and performance at work was zero. When it came to mastering their tasks, perfectionists were no better than their peers. Sometimes they even did worse. The skills and inclinations that drive people to the top of their high school or college class may not serve them so well after they graduate.

their quest for flawless results, research suggests that perfectionists tend to get three things wrong. One: they obsess about details that don’t matter. They’re so busy finding the right solution to tiny problems that they lack the discipline to find the right problems to solve. They can’t see the forest for the trees. Two: they avoid unfamiliar situations and difficult tasks that might lead to failure. That leaves them refining a narrow set of existing skills rather than working to develop new ones. Three: they berate themselves for making mistakes, which makes it harder to learn from them. They fail to realize that the purpose of reviewing your mistakes isn’t to shame your past self. It’s to educate your future self.

Perfectionism traps us in a spiral of tunnel vision and error avoidance: it prevents us from seeing larger problems and limits us to mastering increasingly narrow skills.

Wabi sabi is the art of honoring the beauty in imperfection. It’s not about creating intentional imperfections. It’s about accepting that flaws are inevitable—and recognizing that they don’t stop something from becoming sublime.

Extensive evidence shows that it’s having high personal standards, not pursuing perfection, that fuels growth. Many people interpret that as advice to shift from be the best to do your best. But aiming for your best is not the best alternative. Across hundreds of experiments, people who are encouraged to do their best perform worse—and learn less—than those who are randomly assigned to goals that are specific and difficult.

Do your best is the wrong cure for perfectionism. It leaves the target too ambiguous to channel effort and gauge momentum. You’re not sure what you’re aiming for or whether you’ve made meaningful progress. The ideal foil for perfectionism is an objective that’s precise and challenging. It focuses your attention on the most important actions and tells you when enough is enough.

Expectations tend to rise with accomplishment. The better you’re performing, the more you demand of yourself and the less you notice incremental gains. Appreciating progress depends on remembering how your past self would see your current achievements. If you knew five years ago what you’d accomplish now, how proud would you have been?

Beating yourself up doesn’t make you stronger—it leaves you bruised. Being kind to yourself isn’t about ignoring your weaknesses. It’s about giving yourself permission to learn from your disappointments. We grow by embracing our shortcomings, not by punishing them. Make it feel wrong.

People judge your potential from your best moments, not your worst. What if you gave yourself the same grace?