Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World

by Marcus Buckingham

In the same vein, your rating of a team member on something called “performance” is unreliable, because your definition of performance is unique to you. But in contrast, your response to the question, “Do you turn to this team member when you want extraordinary results?” is entirely reliable.

So there is no such thing as having potential. Or rather, there is, but it doesn’t mean anything. Or rather, it doesn’t mean anything beyond being a human. To say that you have potential means simply that you have the capacity to learn, and grow, and get better, like every other human.