Hidden Potential Quotes

“What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn,”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The best cure to feeling uncomfortable about making mistakes is to make more mistakes.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The achievement is in the growing.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“When they have prosocial skills, team members are able to bring out the best in one another. Collective intelligence rises as team members recognize one another’s strengths, develop strategies for leveraging them, and motivate one another to align their efforts in pursuit of a shared purpose. Unleashing hidden potential is about more than having the best pieces—it’s about having the best glue.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The problem isn’t meetings themselves—it’s how we run them. Think about the brainstorming sessions you’ve attended. You’ve probably seen people bite their tongues due to ego threat (I don’t want to look stupid), noise (we can’t all talk at once), and conformity pressure (let’s all jump on the boss’s bandwagon!). Goodbye diversity of thought, hello groupthink. These challenges are amplified for people who lack power or status: the most junior person in the room, the sole woman of color in a team of bearded white dudes, the introvert drowning in a sea of extraverts.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“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?”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“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”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“For a class of 20 students, an above-average kindergarten teacher could be worth additional lifetime income of $320,000.[”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“People who make major strides are rarely freaks of nature. They’re usually freaks of nurture.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“After studying the character skills that unleash hidden potential, I’ve identified specific forms of proactivity, determination, and discipline that matter. Traveling great distances requires the courage to seek out the right kinds of discomfort, the capacity to absorb the right information, and the will to accept the right imperfections.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is not.”
― Adam Grant, Hidden Potential

“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 I asked Sara Maria what it takes to begin, she said she no longer waits to talk until she has a basic level of proficiency. She starts talking on the first day, discomfort be damned. “I’m always trying to convince people to start speaking,” she tells me. “Just memorize a few sentences—a short monologue introducing yourself and explaining why you’re learning the language.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“you might still have a preferred style of acquiring new knowledge and skills. What we now know is that your preference isn’t fixed, and playing only to your strengths deprives you of the opportunity to improve on your weaknesses. The way you like to learn is what makes you comfortable, but it isn’t necessarily how you learn best. Sometimes you even learn better in the mode that makes you the most uncomfortable, because you have to work harder at it.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“It’s often said that talent sets the floor, but character sets the ceiling.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“If we want our kids to enjoy reading, we need to make books part of their lives. That involves talking about books during meals and car rides, visiting libraries or bookstores, giving books as gifts, and letting them see us read. Children pay attention to our attention: where we focus tells them what we prize.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Being kind to yourself isn’t about ignoring your weaknesses. It’s about giving yourself permission to learn from your disappointments.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The real world is far more ambiguous. Once you leave the predictable, controllable cocoon of academic exams, the desire to find the “correct” answer can backfire.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The question is not how much money you earn, how many fancy titles you land, or how many awards you accumulate. Those status symbols are poor proxies for progress. 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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“What looks like a big breakthrough is usually the accumulation of small wins.[*6]”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The ultimate mark of potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but the distance you’ve traveled—and helped others travel.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“With a team of sponges, the best leader is not the person who talks the most, but the one who listens best.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“As the humorist Dave Barry quipped, “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be: ‘meetings.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Wabi sabi is a character skill. It gives you the discipline to shift your attention from impossible ideals to achievable standards”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“strive not for perfection but for “perfectly acceptable.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“We grow by embracing our shortcomings, not by punishing them.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“if I wanted to get closer to right, it had to feel wrong.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things