Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

by Adam M. Grant

In most workplaces, opportunity exists on a ladder. The person immediately above you is in charge of decisions about your growth. Your direct boss sets your job description, vets your suggestions, and determines your readiness for promotion. If you can’t get your boss to hear you out, your proposal is toast. The system is simple. But it’s also stupid—it gives one individual far too much power to shut creativity down and shut people up. A single no is enough to kill an idea—or even stall a career.

Organizations can solve this problem with a different kind of hierarchy. A powerful alternative to a corporate ladder is a lattice. A physical lattice is a crisscrossing structure that looks like a checkerboard. In organizations, a lattice is an organizational chart with channels across levels and between teams. Rather than one path of reporting and responsibility from you to the people above you in the hierarchy, a lattice offers multiple paths to the top.

A lattice system isn’t a matrix organization. You’re not stuck with eight different bosses breathing down your neck like in Office Space. You don’t have multiple managers holding you back and shooting you down. The goal is to give you access to multiple leaders who are willing and able to help move you forward and lift you up.

A lattice system rejects two unwritten rules that dominate ladder hierarchies: don’t go behind your boss’s back or above your boss’s head. Amy Edmondson’s research suggests that these implicit rules stop many people from speaking up and being heard. The purpose of a lattice system is to remove the punishment for going around and above the boss.

Weak leaders silence voice and shoot the messenger. Strong leaders welcome voice and thank the messenger. Great leaders build systems to amplify voice and elevate the messenger.

Igor’s claw idea saved his plan B—and his idea for plan B helped save 33 lives. There’s no question that we should applaud the creative, heroic efforts from him and so many others. But let’s not forget the unsung heroes of this story: the leadership practices, team processes, and systems of opportunity that made it possible for people to speak up and be heard.

Diamonds in the Rough Discovering Uncut Gems in Job Interviews and College Admissions Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles . . . overcome while trying to succeed. —Booker T. Washington

applicants who have already excelled, selection systems underestimate and overlook candidates who are capable of greater things. When we confuse past performance with future potential, we miss out on people whose achievements have involved overcoming major obstacles. We need to consider how steep their slope was, how far they’ve climbed, and how they’ve grown along the way. The test of a diamond in the rough is not whether it shines from the start, but how it responds to heat or pressure.

In schools and workplaces, selection systems are usually designed to detect excellence. That means people who are on their way to excellence rarely make the cut. We don’t pay enough attention to these people and their paths—which are often filled with speed bumps and roadblocks. When we fail to see hidden potential, along with shattering people’s dreams, we lose out on their contributions.

Evaluators end up making life-altering decisions for candidates who have been reduced to thin slices of information.

So, you need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience . . . and that experience reveals little about your potential.[*] The key question is not how long people have done a job. It’s how well they can learn to do a job.

It’s often said that talent sets the floor, but character sets the ceiling.

If natural talent determines where people start, learned character affects how far they go. But character skills aren’t always immediately apparent. If we don’t look beyond the surface, we risk missing the potential for brilliance beneath.

We all know that performance depends on more than ability—it’s also a function of degree of difficulty. How capable you appear to be is often a reflection of how hard your task is. The same Jeopardy! contestant will look smarter on the $200 questions than the $1,000 stumpers.

Yet when we judge potential, we often focus on execution and ignore degree of difficulty. We inadvertently favor candidates who aced easy tasks and dismiss those who passed taxing trials. We don’t see the skills they’ve developed to overcome obstacles—especially the skills that don’t show up on a resume.

The goal of measuring degree of difficulty at the individual level isn’t to advantage people who face adversity. It’s to make sure we don’t disadvantage people for navigating adversity. It seems that personal essays would give us a window into college applicants’ challenges, but students who have experienced extreme suffering are understandably distraught at the thought of advertising their trauma and marketing their pain. Meanwhile, those who have been lucky enough to avoid significant setbacks often feel pressure to exaggerate their own struggles. Ultimately, the key indicator of potential isn’t the severity of adversity people encounter—it’s how they react to it. That’s what a better selection system would assess.

Acing easy classes might give you higher odds of acceptance than doing reasonably well in hard classes.

Selection systems need to put performance in context.

We penalize people who rise after rocky starts when we should be rewarding them for the distance they’ve traveled.

Early failure followed by later success is a mark of hidden potential.

In the science of interviewing, there’s a name for these kinds of demonstrations. They’re called work samples. A work sample is a snapshot of an applicant’s skills. Sometimes you can provide one by submitting a portfolio of your past work. Many colleges have those built into their admissions processes, inviting students to submit their creative portfolios. You can send in recordings if you’re a musician, scripts if you’re a screenwriter or playwright, and videos if you’re an actor, dancer, or magician.

Epilogue Going the Distance Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. —Langston Hughes

Importante

Then I came across new evidence that people with bigger dreams go on to achieve greater things. When economists tracked thousands of people from birth until age 55, the aspirations they formed as adolescents foreshadowed how their adult lives would unfold. Young people with grander dreams went further in school and climbed higher at work. Even after accounting for a host of other factors—their cognitive skills, character skills, family income, and parents’ education, occupations, and aspirations—their own dreams made a unique contribution to how they progressed and who they became.

My success wouldn’t depend on my initial ability. It would depend on my ability and motivation to learn.

When I failed Harvard’s writing test, they hadn’t declared me a failure as a writer. They’d failed a tiny snapshot of my writing. They didn’t know me, so I set out to prove them wrong. I was determined to go from failing the test to acing the class.

Impostor syndrome says, “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s only a matter of time until everyone finds out.” Growth mindset says, “I don’t know what I’m doing yet. It’s only a matter of time until I figure it out.” Scaffolding gives you the support you need to figure it out.

Importante

Not long ago, it dawned on me that impostor syndrome is a paradox: Others believe in you You don’t believe in yourself Yet you believe yourself instead of them If you doubt yourself, shouldn’t you also doubt your low opinion of yourself?

Importante

I now believe that impostor syndrome is a sign of hidden potential. It feels like other people are overestimating you, but it’s more likely that you’re underestimating yourself. They’ve recognized a capacity for growth that you can’t see yet. When multiple people believe in you, it might be time to believe them.

Success is more than reaching our goals—it’s living our values. There’s no higher value than aspiring to be better tomorrow than we are today. There’s no greater accomplishment than unleashing our hidden potential.

The learning process isn’t finished when we acquire knowledge. It’s complete when we consistently apply that knowledge.

Unleash hidden potential through character skills. The people who grow the most aren’t the smartest people in the room. They’re the ones who strive to make themselves and others smarter. When opportunity doesn’t knock, look for ways to build a door—or climb through a window.

Seek discomfort. Instead of just striving to learn, aim to feel uncomfortable. Pursuing discomfort sets you on a faster path to growth. If you want to get it right, it has to first feel wrong.

Set a mistake budget. To encourage trial and error, set a goal for the minimum number of mistakes you want to make per day or per week. When you expect to stumble, you ruminate about it less—and improve more.

Ask for advice, not feedback. Feedback is backward-looking—it leads people to criticize you or cheer for you. Advice is forward-looking—it leads people to coach you. You can get your critics and cheerleaders to act more like coaches by asking a simple question: “What’s one thing I can do better next time?”

Be the coach you hope to have. Demonstrate that honesty is the highest expression of loyalty. Model effective coaching by being forthcoming in what you say and respectful in how you say it. Show people how easy it is to hear a hard truth from someone who believes in their potential and cares about their success.

Strive for excellence, not perfection. Progress comes from maintaining high standards, not eliminating every flaw. Practice wabi sabi, the art of honoring beauty in imperfection, by identifying some shortcomings that you can accept. Consider where you truly need the best and where you can settle for good enough. Mark your growth with Eric Best’s questions: Did you make yourself better today? Did you make someone else better today?

Be your own last judge. It’s better to disappoint others than to disappoint yourself. Before you release something into the world, assess whether it represents you well. If this was the only work people saw of yours, would you be proud of it?

Engage in mental time travel. When you’re struggling to appreciate your progress, consider how your past self would view your current achievements. If you knew five years ago what you’d accomplish now, how proud would you have been?

Turn practice into play Turn the daily grind into a source of daily joy. To maintain harmonious passion, design practice around deliberate play. Set up fun skill-building challenges—like Evelyn Glennie learning to play a Bach piece on a snare drum, Steph Curry trying to score twenty-one points in a minute, or medical residents honing their nonverbal communication skills by using nonsense words in improv comedy games.

When you compete against yourself, the only way to win is to grow.

Don’t hold yourself hostage to a fixed routine. It’s possible to avoid burnout and boreout by introducing novelty and variety into your practice. You can alternate between different skills you’re practicing or switch up the tools and methods you use to learn those skills. Even small tweaks can make a big difference.

Be proactive about rest and recovery. Don’t wait until you’re burned out or bored out to take breaks—build them into your schedule. Taking time off helps to sustain harmonious passion, unlock fresh ideas, and deepen learning. Rela...

When you’re stuck, back up to move forward. When you hit a dead end, it might be time to turn around and find a new path. It feels like regressing, but it’s often the only way to find a route to progress.

Find a compass. You don’t need a map to start on a new route—you just need a compass to gauge whether you’re heading in the right direction. A good compass is a credible source that signals when you’re going off course.