Hidden Potential

by Adam M. Grant

culture has three elements:9 practices, values, and underlying assumptions.

Their role evolves from instructor to coach and mentor. Along with delivering content, they’re able to help students progress toward their goals and navigate social and emotional challenges.

Each lesson was a maximum of 45 minutes, followed by 15 minutes of recess. This is another practice backed by research: much like they do for adults, short activity breaks41 are known to improve children’s attention and some aspects of their learning.

Finnish educators assume the most important lesson to teach children is that learning is fun.

A culture of opportunity only succeeds when students are motivated to take advantage of those opportunities.

wellspring of intrinsic motivation61 is having the freedom of opportunity to explore our interests.

“Reading is the basic skill for all subjects,” Kari explained. “If you don’t have the motivation to read, you can’t study any other subject.” Cultivating the desire to read nourishes individual interests.

Children pay attention to our attention: where we focus tells them what we prize.

Reading is a gateway to opportunity: it opens the door for children to keep learning.

A teacher’s task is not to ensure that students have read the literary canons. It’s to kindle excitement about reading.

In too many elite education systems, students sacrifice their mental health for excellence.

Unlocking the hidden potential in groups requires leadership practices, team processes, and systems that harness the capabilities and contributions of all their members.

that collective intelligence depends less on people’s cognitive skills than their prosocial skills.

What really makes a difference is whether people recognize that they need one another to succeed on an important mission.

The people to promote are the ones with the prosocial skills to put the mission above their ego—and team cohesion above personal glory.

when organizations have cultures that prize results above relationships,20 if they have a leader who puts people first, they actually achieve greater performance gains.

What made for effective leadership depended on how proactive a team was.

the best leader is not the person who talks the most,23 but the one who listens best.

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.

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.

It’s a mistake to judge people solely by the heights they’ve reached. By favoring 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.

The test of a diamond in the rough is not whether it shines from the start, but how it responds to heat or pressure.

The key question is not how long people have done a job. It’s how well they can learn to do a job.

talent sets the floor, but character sets the ceiling. Brady

If natural talent determines where people start, learned character affects how far they go.

when we judge potential, we often focus on execution and ignore degree of difficulty.

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.

Ultimately, the key indicator of potential isn’t the severity of adversity people encounter—it’s how they react to it.

Early failure followed by later success26 is a mark of hidden potential.

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.”

impostor syndrome is a paradox: Others believe in you You don’t believe in yourself Yet you believe yourself instead of them