Hidden Potential

by Adam M. Grant

“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.

Potential is not a matter of where you start, but of how far you travel. We need to focus less on starting points and more on distance traveled.

What counts is not how hard you work but how much you grow. And growth requires much more than a mindset—it begins with a set of skills that we normally overlook.

Character is more than just having principles. It’s a learned capacity to live by your principles.

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.

If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.

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.

Instead of seeking feedback, you’re better off asking for advice.23 Feedback tends to focus on how well you did last time. Advice shifts attention to how you can do better next time. In experiments, that simple shift is enough to elicit more specific suggestions and more constructive input.

One day at lunch, Bill gave Mellody some tough feedback. He told her that in his basketball days, he had seen talented players take all the shots themselves instead of passing the ball to others. She had a tendency to dominate the room, and if she wasn’t careful, she would become a ball hog. Mellody felt tears welling up.

Sea sponges don’t just expunge toxins. They also produce biochemicals that protect and promote life28 with anticancer, antibacterial, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory properties.

The latest evidence suggests that sea sponges actually contributed to this process. By filtering organic matter out of the water, they helped to oxygenate the oceans, which enabled animals to evolve.

There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in1 —LEONARD COHEN

Ando is esteemed for his ability to make the most of limited spaces with limited budgets. He’s only able to do this because he fully rejects the notion of perfectionism. He knows that to be disciplined in some areas, we have to let others go.

Tadao Ando

We usually associate aesthetic and technical prowess with a drive for flawless results.

Prowess

I’ve come to understand that unlocking hidden potential is not about the pursuit of perfection. Tolerating flaws isn’t just something novices need to do—it’s part of becoming an expert and continuing to gain mastery.

When I was growing up, my mom often said that no matter what grades I got in school, as long as I did my best, she’d be proud of me. Then she added, “But if you didn’t get an A, I’ll know you didn’t do your best.” She said it with a smile, but I took it seriously: I shouldn’t settle for anything less than perfect.

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.

The great architects had rarely been great students:9 they typically finished college with a B average. Their perfectionistic colleagues had gleaming grades but went on to build far fewer glistening buildings.

This legend traces back to the sixteenth century, when the Japanese tea ceremony underwent a seismic shift. Immaculate dishes were replaced with chipped bowls. People drank from pottery that was worn and weathered. They called this practice wabi sabi. Wabi sabi is the art of honoring the beauty in imperfection.11 It’s not about creating intentional imperfections.

And diving was a nerd sport—it mostly attracted athletes who lacked the size, speed, or strength to star in more mainstream sports.

I was tilting slightly to the left or the right. I was Goldilocks: I expected everything to be just right.

The lesson hit home: I didn’t need to be perfect. I just needed to aim for a clear, high target. Eric worked with me to set goals for each dive at the edge of my abilities.

Many new skills don’t come with a manual, and steeper hills often require a lift. That lift comes in the form of scaffolding: a temporary support structure that enables us to scale heights we couldn’t reach on our own.

But I was wrong. The scaffolding that psychologists offer to boost resilience is a game of Tetris. Yes, Tetris.

Scaffolding unleashes hidden potential by helping us forge paths we couldn’t otherwise see. It enables us to find motivation in the daily grind, gain momentum in the face of stagnation, and turn difficulties and doubts into sources of strength.

The Academy didn’t accept her. Multiple expert panelists voiced concerns about a lack of ability. They concluded she had no hope of making it as a professional musician. Less than a decade later, Evelyn became the world’s first full-time percussion soloist. Normally, drummers aren’t the musicians crowds flock to see. They play in the background of an orchestra or band, like Ringo sitting in the shadow of John and Paul.

Evelyn’s ears had begun failing her when she was eight. By the time she was twelve, when people spoke to her, she could barely make out a sound. An audiologist diagnosed her with degenerating nerves and said it would be impossible for her to play music. The degree of difficulty was too high and the distance to travel too far.

We’re often told that if we want to develop our skills, we need to push ourselves through long hours of monotonous practice. But the best way to unlock hidden potential isn’t to suffer through the daily grind. It’s to transform the daily grind into a source of daily joy. It’s not a coincidence that in music, the term for practice is play.

The monotony of deliberate practice puts them at risk for burnout—and for boreout. Yes, boreout is an actual term in psychology. Whereas burnout is the emotional exhaustion that accumulates when you’re overloaded, boreout is the emotional deadening8 you feel when you’re under-stimulated.

In twenty-minute intervals, Brandon has Curry bouncing from one shooting-and-quickness challenge to another. The variety isn’t just motivating—it’s also better for learning. Hundreds of experiments show that people improve faster when they alternate34 between different skills. Psychologists call it interleaving, and it works in areas ranging from painting to math, especially when the skills being developed are similar or complex.

If you’re solving a Rubik’s Cube,7 the easiest method is layer by layer. You make a blue cross on one side, then rotate it to fill in the corners and start working on the next side. About 130 moves later, you’re done. If you want to do it faster, you’ll need to memorize a list of algorithms. It will take you longer at first, but eventually you’ll only need 60 moves.

In a clever study, economists wanted to find out whether students really learn more from experts. They collected data on every freshman at Northwestern University from 2001 to 2008. They investigated whether freshmen did better in their second course in a subject if their introductory class was taught by more qualified instructors. You might assume that students would be better off learning the basics from an expert (a tenure-track or tenured professor) than a nonexpert (a lecturer with less specialized knowledge). But the data showed the opposite: students who took their initial class with an expert ended up with poorer grades in the next class.

That was Einstein’s curse in the classroom.16 He knew too much, and his students knew too little. He had so many ideas swirling in his head that he had a hard time keeping his lectures organized—let alone explaining to a beginner how gravity bends light. When he made his teaching debut in a thermodynamics course, despite being a rising star in physics, his lackluster teaching attracted only three students.

You’re not seeing enough progress to maintain your motivation. There’s a name for that feeling: it’s called languishing.23 Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. The term was coined by a sociologist (Corey Keyes) and immortalized by a philosopher (Mariah Carey). Languishing is the emotional experience of stalling.

When I ask people what it takes to achieve greater things, one of the most common answers is that you need to be laser focused and single-minded in your dedication. You need to double down and block out anything that threatens to drain your energy or divide your attention. If you want to excel at your job, spend more time at work: get in early, go home late. Put your hobbies on the back burner … and definitely don’t take on a side hustle.

In one study, when people had spent engaging evenings on their side hustles,27 they performed better the next day in their regular jobs. The progress they made at night put an extra spring in their step the following morning. The motivation benefits outweighed any distraction costs.

When you get stuck on your way up a mountain, it’s better to shift into reverse than to stand still. As you take U-turns and detours, you’ll feel as if you’re going in circles. In the short run, a straight line brings faster progress. But in the long run, loops lead to the highest peaks.

In U.S. intelligence agencies, if you want to predict which teams will produce the best work, the most important factor to consider is how often colleagues teach and coach one another.5 In medical schools, students learn as much when they’re taught by peers6 as by faculty.

As she gasped for air, Alison Levine wondered21 if she had made a mistake. It was 2002, and Alison was captaining the first expedition by a group of American women up Mount Everest—the highest peak on earth. Alison had reached the most treacherous part of the climb: the Khumbu Icefall. Above her were 2,000 vertical feet of ice, which would become increasingly unstable as the sun’s heat intensified. She needed to move quickly to avoid the possibility of a crack in the ice or a sudden avalanche.

Good story about Alison Levine. Who gave up a Everest summit attempt, but returned years later to complete it.

The desire to prove others wrong can light a spark of motivation. Turning the spark into a flame, though, often requires more. Ignorant naysayers may give us something to fight against, but a roaring fire comes from having something to fight for.

Alison became one of only a few dozen people on earth to climb the tallest peak on all seven continents and ski to both the North and South Pole. But looking back, she says her proudest moment wasn’t the last step she took to reach the summit. It was the distance she traveled back to Everest to reach the spot where she had turned around.

Making progress isn’t always about moving forward. Sometimes it’s about bouncing back. Progress is not only reflected in the peaks you reach—it’s also visible in the valleys you cross. Resilience is a form of growth.

Despite their historic achievements, the Golden Thirteen went unrecognized by the Navy for many years. When they completed officer training in 1944, there was no graduation ceremony or celebration. They were banned from the officers’ club at Great Lakes.

The winner was none other than the unheralded underdog country of Finland. Just a generation earlier, Finland had been known as an education backwater—on par with Malaysia and Peru, and trailing behind the rest of Scandinavia. As of 1960, 89 percent of Finns didn’t make it past ninth grade. By the 1980s, in international comparisons of graduation rates as well as math and science Olympiad performances, Finnish students were still mediocre.

After the mine collapsed in Chile, the first few days of the rescue effort were sheer chaos. There were multiple police units on the scene along with mining professionals, firefighters, rescue workers, and rock climbers.

Great story about the rescue of the miners in Chille. Over the leadership of André Sougarret.

When teams were relatively reactive, waiting for direction from above, extraverts drove the best results. They asserted their visions and motivated teams to follow their lead. But when teams were proactive, bringing many ideas and suggestions to the table, it was introverts who led them to achieve greater things. The more reserved leaders came across as more receptive to input from below, which gave them access to better ideas and left their teams more motivated. With a team of sponges, the best leader is not the person who talks the most,23 but the one who listens best.

In Chile, André’s first leadership move was to wield his listening skills. Despite the time pressure, he didn’t rush into action.

André needed ideas—fast. He started holding daily meetings with the full rescue team. As he put it later, he knew there would be “no super leader who had all the answers.” It was time to build a team process and an organizational system to unlock collective intelligence.