Hidden Potential Quotes

“Chetty and his colleagues were interested in how opportunity shapes who ends up innovating. They reasoned that some kids would grow up in environments that gave them special access to resources. When they linked federal income tax returns with patent records for more than a million Americans, they found an alarming result. People raised in the top 1 percent of family income were ten times more likely to become inventors than people from families below the median income. If you grew up wealthy, your odds of earning a patent were 8 out of 1,000. If you grew up poor, they plummeted to 8 out of 10,000.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“When you’re invested in a goal, being doubted by experts is a threat. They may be credible, but since they don’t recognize your potential, they’re not coaches who will help you improve. Their disbelief quickly becomes your insecurity. It shatters your confidence and stifles your growth. That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the research suggests that when they come from an uninformed audience, low expectations can become a self-negating prophecy. You’re motivated to shatter their confidence that you won’t succeed. Samir calls it the underdog effect.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Considerable evidence shows that studying with knowledgeable colleagues is good for growth. 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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Teaching is a surprisingly powerful method of learning. In a meta-analysis of 16 studies, students who were randomly assigned to tutor their peers ended up earning higher scores in the material they were teaching. Students who taught reading improved in reading; those who taught math got dramatically better at math. The more time they spent tutoring, the more they learned. As one group of researchers concluded, “Like the children they helped, the tutors gained a better understanding of and developed more positive attitudes toward the subject matter covered in the tutorial program.” [*]”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“ambition is the outcome you want to attain. Aspiration is the person you hope to become.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“For every Mozart who makes a big splash early, there are multiple Bachs who ascend slowly and bloom late.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Everyone has hidden potential. This book is about how we unlock it. There’s a widely held belief that greatness is mostly born—not made. That leads us to celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But you don’t have to be a wunderkind to accomplish great things.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Maurice reminded them they could control only their decisions—not their results”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“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. It’s not about creating intentional imperfections. It’s about accepting that flaws are inevitable—and recognizing that they don’t stop something from becoming sublime. That’s been a dominant theme in Tadao Ando’s architecture and his life. He’s an imperfectionist: he’s selective about what he decides to do well.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“a young man once sought out a master to teach him the Japanese tea ceremony. The master tested him by asking him to clean up a garden. The young man removed the weeds and raked the leaves until the grounds were pristine. As he reviewed his flawless work, he decided something was missing. He walked over to a cherry tree and shook it so that some flower petals fell to the ground. By finding the beauty in imperfection, he showed he was ready to become a master.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“In their quest for flawless results, research suggests that perfectionists tend to get three things wrong. One: they obsess about details that don’t matter. They’re so busy finding the right solution to tiny problems that they lack the discipline to find the right problems to solve. They can’t see the forest for the trees. Two: they avoid unfamiliar situations and difficult tasks that might lead to failure. That leaves them refining a narrow set of existing skills rather than working to develop new ones. Three: they berate themselves for making mistakes, which makes it harder to learn from them. They fail to realize that the purpose of reviewing your mistakes isn’t to shame your past self. It’s to educate your future self.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“I’d tried to do that in the past by asking for feedback. But research suggests that’s a mistake. Instead of seeking feedback, you’re better off asking for advice. 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.[*] Rather than dwelling on what you did wrong, advice guides you toward what you can do right.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“It’s easy for people to be critics or cheerleaders. It’s harder to get them to be coaches. A critic sees your weaknesses and attacks your worst self. A cheerleader sees your strengths and celebrates your best self. A coach sees your potential and helps you become a better version of yourself.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“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. Going Out of Style There’s a popular practice in schools that has dissuaded many learners from seeking discomfort. It arose as a well-intentioned solution to a pervasive problem in the American education system. For”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The capacities to be proactive, prosocial, disciplined, and determined stayed with students longer—and ultimately proved more powerful—than early math and reading skills.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“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

“For every Mozart who makes a big splash early, there are multiple Bachs who ascend slowly and bloom late. They’re not born with invisible superpowers; most of their gifts are homegrown or homemade. 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

“If they were singled out by their coaches, it was not for unusual aptitude but unusual motivation. That motivation wasn’t innate; it tended to begin with a coach or teacher who made learning fun. “What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn,” the lead psychologist concluded, “if provided with appropriate . . . conditions of learning.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Recent evidence underscores the importance of conditions for learning. To master a new concept in math, science, or a foreign language, it typically takes seven or eight practice sessions. That number of reps held across thousands of students, from elementary school all the way through college.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“When we’re facing a daunting task, we need both competence and confidence. Our ability to elevate our skills and our expectations depends first on how we interpret the obstacles in front of us. Extensive evidence shows that when we view hurdles as threats, we tend to back down and give up. When we treat barriers as challenges to conquer, we rise to the occasion.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“I like to break trustworthiness down into three components: care, credibility, and familiarity.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The test of a diamond in the rough is not whether it shines from the start, but how it responds to heat or pressure.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest . . . the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Being polite is withholding feedback to make someone feel good today. Being kind is being candid about how they can get better tomorrow. It’s possible to be direct in what you say while being thoughtful about how you deliver it.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The sweet spot is when people are proactive and growth oriented. That’s when they become sponges. They consistently take the initiative to expand themselves and adapt. That character skill is especially valuable when the deck is stacked against you—as a pair of young athletes in Africa learned.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Open doors for people who are underrated and overlooked. Create systems that invest in and create opportunities for all—not just gifted students and high-potential employees. A good system gives underdogs and late bloomers the chance to show how far they’ve come.”
― Adam Grant, Hidden Potential

“It was because they cleared a motivational hurdle: they got comfortable being uncomfortable.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“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? 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. Many people dream of achieving goals. They measure their progress by the status they acquire and the accolades they collect. But the gains that count the most are the hardest to count. The most meaningful growth is not building our careers—it’s building our character. 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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“A rut is not a sign that you’ve tanked. A plateau is not a cue that you’ve peaked. They’re signals that it may be time to turn around and find a new route. When you’re stuck, it’s usually because you’re heading in the wrong direction, you’re taking the wrong path, or you’re running out of fuel. Gaining momentum often involves backing up and navigating your way down a different road—even if it’s not the one you initially intended to travel. It might be unfamiliar, winding, and bumpy. Progress rarely happens in a straight line; it typically unfolds in loops.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“It is neither work nor play, purpose nor purposelessness that satisfies us. It is the dance between. —Bernard De Koven”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things