Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

Metadata

• Title: Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things
• Author: Adam Grant
• Book URL: https://amazon.com/dp/B0C5LN1BCM?tag=malvaonlin-20
• Open in Kindle: kindle://book/?action=open&asin=B0C5LN1BCM
• Last Updated on: Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Highlights & Notes

Growing Roses from Concrete Did u hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete Proving nature’s laws wrong it learned 2 walk without having feet Funny it seems but by keeping its dreams it learned 2 breathe fresh air —“The Rose That Grew from Concrete,” written by Tupac Shakur

“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.

If we judge people only by what they can do on day one, their potential remains hidden.

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.

People who make major strides are rarely freaks of nature. They’re usually freaks of nurture.

ambition is the outcome you want to attain. Aspiration is the person you hope to become.

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.

Proactive: How often did they take initiative to ask questions, volunteer answers, seek information from books, and engage the teacher to learn outside class? Prosocial: How well did they get along and collaborate with peers? Disciplined: How effectively did they pay attention—and resist the impulse to disrupt the class? Determined: How consistently did they take on challenging problems, do more than the assigned work, and persist in the face of obstacles?

When Chetty and his colleagues predicted adult income from fourth-grade scores, the ratings on these behaviors mattered 2.4 times as much as math and reading performance on standardized tests.

I now see character less as a matter of will, and more as a set of skills. Character is more than just having principles. It’s a learned capacity to live by your principles.

He’s played ten games simultaneously against ten different opponents and won them all—blindfolded. But he believes character matters more than talent.

To keep improving, you need the proactivity, discipline, and determination to study old games and new strategies.

character skills “predict and produce success in life.” But they don’t grow in a vacuum. You need the opportunity and motivation to nurture them.

In learning, scaffolding serves a similar purpose. A teacher or coach offers initial instruction and then removes the support. The goal is to shift the responsibility to you so you can develop your own independent approach to learning. That’s what Maurice Ashley did for the Raging Rooks. He set up temporary structures to give them the opportunity and motivation to learn.

It’s often said that where there’s a will, there’s a way. What we overlook is that when people can’t see a path, they stop dreaming of the destination. To ignite their will, we need to show them the way. That’s what scaffolding can do.

‘This game is fun. Let’s go—I’m gonna beat you’… . stir their spirit, their competitive fire. They sit down, they start learning the game, and as they become hooked, and they lose a game, they want to win.”

“The achievement is in the growing.”

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 doesn’t set like plaster—it retains its plasticity.

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.

Personality is not your destiny—it’s your tendency. Character skills enable you to transcend that tendency to be true to your principles. It’s not about the traits you have—it’s what you decide to do with them. Wherever you are today, there’s no reason why you can’t grow your character skills starting now.

If our cognitive skills are what separate us from animals, our character skills are what elevate us above machines.

As more and more cognitive skills get automated, we’re in the midst of a character revolution. With technological advances placing a premium on interactions and relationships, the skills that make us human are increasingly important to master.

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Creatures of Discomfort Embracing the Unbearable Awkwardness of Learning 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

I was surprised to discover that when they finally picked up their first foreign tongue, it wasn’t due to overcoming a cognitive block. It was because they cleared a motivational hurdle: they got comfortable being uncomfortable.

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.

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There’s just one small problem with learning styles. They’re a myth.

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. This is the first form of courage: being brave enough to embrace discomfort and throw your learning style out the window.

As blogger Tim Urban describes it, your brain gets hijacked by an instant gratification monkey, who picks what’s easy and fun over the hard work that needs to be done.

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.

I’ve seen many people shy away from writing because it doesn’t come naturally to them. What they overlook is that writing is more than a vehicle for communicating—it’s a tool for learning. Writing exposes gaps in your knowledge and logic. It pushes you to articulate assumptions and consider counterarguments. Unclear writing is a sign of unclear thinking. Or as Steve himself quipped, “Some people have a way with words, and other people, uh … oh, not have a way.”

In the words of the great psychologist Ted Lasso, “If you’re comfortable, you’re doin’ it wrong.”

The popular adage “use it or lose it” doesn’t go far enough. If you don’t use it, you might never gain it in the first place.

It’s not enough to simply accept minimal discomfort when it arises. Surprisingly, we’re better off actively seeking out discomfort.

Comfort in learning is a paradox. You can’t become truly comfortable with a skill until you’ve practiced it enough to master it. But practicing it before you master it is uncomfortable, so you often avoid it. Accelerating learning requires a second form of courage: being brave enough to use your knowledge as you acquire it.

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“Your goal is to feel awkward and uncomfortable … it’s a sign the exercise is working,” the instructions said. Once people saw discomfort as a mark of growth, they were motivated to stretch beyond their comfort zones.

When discomfort is a signal of progress, you don’t want to run away from it. You want to keep stumbling toward it to continue growing.

That took a third form of courage—not just embracing and seeking discomfort, but amplifying it by being brave enough to make more mistakes.

The thought of making mistakes is especially distressing if you’re shy. Shyness is the fear of negative evaluation in social situations,

When we’re encouraged to make mistakes, we end up making fewer of them. Early mistakes help us remember the correct answer—and motivate us to keep learning.

“The more mistakes you make, the faster you will improve and the less they will bother you,” he observes. “The best cure to feeling uncomfortable about making mistakes is to make more mistakes.”

If we wait until we feel ready to take on a new challenge, we might never pursue it all. There may not come a day when we wake up and suddenly feel prepared. We become prepared by taking the leap anyway.

Human Sponges Building the Capacity to Absorb and Adapt 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. —Leon C. Megginson

Being a sponge is more than a metaphor. It’s a character skill—a form of proactivity that’s vital to realizing hidden potential. Improving depends not on the quantity of information you seek out, but the quality of the information you take in. Growth is less about how hard you work than how well you learn.

society through productive work. Determination and discipline became virtues; idleness and wastefulness became vices.

They found that as Protestant beliefs spread, entire countries had higher economic growth. But it wasn’t necessarily because people were suddenly working harder.

The lesson here is layered. The progress we normally chalk up to working harder may actually be due to working smarter. Cognitive skills aren’t sufficient for learning, but they’re necessary. Basic literacy makes it possible to leverage character skills more effectively—to be proactive in learning more and learning faster. Prosperity rises as people become more capable of absorbing new ideas and filtering out old ones.

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?

Filtering Goal Ego Growth Absorbing Approach Reactive Rubber Clay Proactive Teflon Sponge Learning is more likely when people are reactive and growth oriented. Responding with an eye toward improvement makes people moldable, like clay.

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.

When they have helpful input, people are often reluctant to share it. We even hesitate to tell friends they have food in their teeth. We’re confusing politeness with kindness. 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. I don’t want to embarrass you, but I realized it would be a lot more embarrassing if no one told you about the broccoli sprouting from your gums.

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.

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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.

What’s the one thing I can do better?

Being a sponge is not only a proactive skill—it’s a prosocial skill. Done right, it’s not just about soaking up nutrients that help us grow. It’s also about releasing nutrients to help others grow.

The Imperfectionists Finding the Sweet Spot between Flawed and Flawless There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in —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.

The more you grow, the better you know which flaws are acceptable.

In an increasingly competitive world, kids face growing pressure from parents to be perfect and harsh criticism when they fall short. They learn to judge their worth by the absence of inadequacies. Every flaw is a blow to their self-esteem. I’ve lived it myself.

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.

The skills and inclinations that drive people to the top of their high school or college class may not serve them so well after they graduate.

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.

If perfectionism were a medication, the label would alert us to common side effects. Warning: may cause stunted growth. Perfectionism traps us in a spiral of tunnel vision and error avoidance: it prevents us from seeing larger problems and limits us to mastering increasingly narrow skills.

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.

Wabi sabi is a character skill. It gives you the discipline to shift your attention from impossible ideals to achievable standards—and then adjust those standards over time. But finding beauty in imperfection is often easier said than done.

Do your best is the wrong cure for perfectionism. It leaves the target too ambiguous to channel effort and gauge momentum. You’re not sure what you’re aiming for or whether you’ve made meaningful progress. The ideal foil for perfectionism is an objective that’s precise and challenging. It focuses your attention on the most important actions and tells you when enough is enough.

If I didn’t do my best, I still felt frustrated. When divers tell him they had a bad day, Eric likes to ask two questions: Did you make yourself better today? Did you make someone else better today? If the answer to either question is yes, it was a good day.

Expectations tend to rise with accomplishment. The better you’re performing, the more you demand of yourself and the less you notice incremental gains. Appreciating progress depends on remembering how your past self would see your current achievements. If you knew five years ago what you’d accomplish now, how proud would you have been?

Beating yourself up doesn’t make you stronger—it leaves you bruised. Being kind to yourself isn’t about ignoring your weaknesses. It’s about giving yourself permission to learn from your disappointments. We grow by embracing our shortcomings, not by punishing them. Make it feel wrong.

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People judge your potential from your best moments, not your worst. What if you gave yourself the same grace?

Pivoting is a popular concept in Silicon Valley, where it’s often said that done is better than perfect. To rapidly iterate and improve, entrepreneurs and engineers are advised to build a minimum viable product. But excellence is a higher standard: for me, that means aiming for a minimum lovable product.

Identifying which imperfections to fix doesn’t have to be a last-minute scramble.

Striving for social approval comes with a cost: across 105 studies with over 70,000 people, valuing extrinsic goals like popularity and appearance over intrinsic goals like growth and connection predicted lower well-being. Seeking validation is a bottomless pit: the craving for status is never satisfied. But if an external assessment serves as a tool for growth, it may be worth using.

Ultimately, excellence is more than meeting other people’s expectations. It’s also about living up to your own standards. After all, it’s impossible to please everyone. The question is whether you’re letting down the right people. It’s better to disappoint others than to disappoint yourself.

Aspiring to stay green is a commitment to continued growth, to staying unfinished. An apple that isn’t ripe is not fully formed—it’s incomplete and imperfect. That’s what makes it beautiful.

One: Scaffolding generally comes from other people.

When our circumstances threaten to overpower us, instead of only looking inward, we can turn outward to mentors, teachers, coaches, role models, or peers.

Two: Scaffolding is tailored to the obstacle in your path.

Three: Scaffolding comes at a pivotal point in time.

Four: Scaffolding is temporary.

Too often, it feels like our mistakes pile up, while our accomplishments disappear. With the right support at the right moments, we can overcome obstacles to growth.

Transforming the Daily Grind Infusing Passion into Practice It is neither work nor play, purpose nor purposelessness that satisfies us. It is the dance between. —Bernard De Koven

When the Royal Academy of Music decided that Evelyn was lacking in ability, they weren’t wrong. Technically, she didn’t have an ear for music—she couldn’t really hear it at all. The world’s first and finest solo percussionist is profoundly deaf.

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.

Deliberate practice is the structured repetition of a task to improve performance based on clear goals and immediate feedback.

Research demonstrates that people who are obsessed with their work put in longer hours yet fail to perform any better than their peers. They’re more likely to fall victim to both physical and emotional exhaustion. The monotony of deliberate practice puts them at risk for burnout—and for boreout.

Whereas burnout is the emotional exhaustion that accumulates when you’re overloaded, boreout is the emotional deadening you feel when you’re under-stimulated. Although it takes deliberate practice to achieve greater things, we shouldn’t drill so hard that we drive the joy out of the activity and turn it into an obsessive slog.

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Harmonious passion is taking joy in a process rather than feeling pressure to achieve an outcome. You’re no longer practicing under the specter of should. I should be studying. I’m supposed to practice. You’re drawn into a web of want. I feel like studying. I’m excited to practice. That makes it easier to find flow: you slip quickly into the zone of total absorption, where the world melts away and you become one with your instrument. Instead of controlling your life, practicing enriches your life.

The question is how to build the scaffolding to bring that passion into practice. My favorite answer is called deliberate play.

Deliberate play is a structured activity that’s designed to make skill development enjoyable. It blends elements of deliberate practice and free play. Like free play, deliberate play is fun, but it’s structured for learning and mastery along with recreation. It’s built to break complex tasks into simpler parts so you can hone a specific skill.

An allergy nurse started introducing herself as Nurse Quick Shot, which immediately put her young patients at ease. She let them time her, and when they came back for their next visit, they would ask for Nurse Quick Shot and challenge her to beat her previous time.

The scaffolding for deliberate play is often set up by a teacher or coach, but it’s possible to make real strides on your own. If you want to improve your sight reading at the piano, you could challenge yourself to see how many notes you get right on new pieces and track your progress week by week. If you’re a Scrabble player hoping to improve your anagram aptitude, you can practice drawing random sets of tiles and see how many words you can spell in a minute.

Deliberate play has become especially popular in sports. Extensive evidence shows that athletes who specialize early in a single sport tend to peak quickly and then flame out. Pounding the pavement from a young age puts them at greater risk for both physical and mental health challenges. With deliberate play, it’s easier to sustain enjoyment and achieve greater things.

In sports, deliberate play is typically organized around a subcomponent of a performance or match. In tennis, for example, you might hone your serving skills by challenging yourself to see how many consecutive serves you can make. Success might be defeating an opponent, outdoing yourself, or beating the clock. You’re not counting your hours; you’re tracking your improvement. Your score is not a symbol of victory; it’s a gauge of progress.

By fueling harmonious passion, deliberate play can prevent boreout and burnout. Although it might sound similar to gamification, deliberate play is fundamentally different. Gamification is often a gimmick—an attempt to add bells and whistles to a tedious task. The aim is to offer a dopamine rush that distracts from boredom or staves off exhaustion. Sure, a leaderboard might motivate you to push through the pain, but it’s not enough to trick you into liking a routine you hate.[*] In deliberate play, you actually redesign the task itself to make it both motivating and developmental. The best example I’ve seen was dreamed up by a basketball trainer.

Passion for one task can lead us to neglect the less exciting ones on our plate.

“There is no boring in our workouts.” He set up the scaffolding to make the hardest parts of practice easier—to help Curry make more progress while relying less on sheer discipline.

The downside of competing against others is that you can win without improving.

It turns out that taking breaks has at least three benefits. First, time away from practice helps to sustain harmonious passion.

Second, breaks unlock fresh ideas.

Third, breaks deepen learning.

Under harmonious passion, it’s easier to recognize that rest is a supply of fuel. We take regular reprieves to maintain energy and avoid burnout.

Relaxing is not a waste of time—it’s an investment in well-being. Breaks are not a distraction—they’re a chance to reset attention and incubate ideas. Play is not a frivolous activity—it’s a source of joy and a path to mastery.

Evelyn says. Deliberate play taught her that “the real outcome is her enjoyment.” Without enjoyment, potential stays hidden.

Getting Unstuck The Roundabout Path to Forward Progress Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. —George Eliot

One of the most frustrating parts of honing a skill is getting stuck. Instead of continuing to improve, you start to stagnate. It feels as if you’ve reached the upper bound of your mental or physical capacities. Since stagnation marks the end of growth, it seems to spell the beginning of decline. My best days are behind me. It’s all downhill from here. Surgeons expect to stagnate and decline as their eyesight and reflexes deteriorate. Scientists prepare to stagnate and decline as their neurons die. Athletes inevitably stagnate and decline as their strength and speed wane. Or at least that’s what we assume. But the reality is less linear—and more uplifting.

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.

When we reach a dead end, to move forward, we may have to head back down the mountain. Once we’ve retreated far enough, we can find another way—a path that will allow us to build the momentum needed to reach the peak.

and switch routes. But the truth is we’re often afraid to go backward. We see slowing down as losing ground, backing up as giving up, and rerouting as veering off course. We worry that when we step back, we’ll lose our footing altogether. This means we stay exactly where we are—steady but stuck. We need to embrace the discomfort of getting lost.

It turns out that if you’re taking a new road, the best experts are often the worst guides. There are at least two reasons why experts struggle to give good directions to beginners. One is the distance they’ve traveled—they’ve come too far to remember what it’s like being in your shoes. It’s called the curse of knowledge: the more you know, the harder it is for you to fathom what it’s like to not know. As cognitive scientist Sian Beilock summarizes it, “As you get better and better at what you do, your ability to communicate your understanding or to help others learn that skill often gets worse and worse.”

It’s often said that those who can’t do, teach. It would be more accurate to say that those who can do, can’t teach the basics. A great deal of expert knowledge is tacit—it’s implicit, not explicit. The further you progress toward mastery, the less conscious awareness you often have of the fundamentals.

ball.” Experts often have an intuitive understanding of a route, but they struggle to articulate all the steps to take. Their brain dump is partially filled with garbage.

Just as it’s unwise to seek rudimentary instruction from the most eminent experts, it’s a mistake to rely on a single guide. No one else knows your exact journey. But if you collect directions from multiple guides, they can sometimes combine to reveal routes you didn’t see. The more uncertain the path and the higher the peak, the greater the range of guides you’ll need. The challenge is to piece the various tips together into a route that works for you.

The point of engaging guides isn’t to blindly follow their leads. It’s to chart possible paths to explore together. To do that, you have to make their implicit knowledge explicit. Being a sponge starts with seeking their advice—but instead of asking to pick their brain, you ask them to retrace their route. The goal is to get your guides to drop pins—the key landmarks and turning points from their climbs. To jog their memories of paths long forgotten, you might inquire about the crossroads they faced. Those could be skills they sought out, advice they took or ignored, or changes they made. It can also help to tell them about the roads you’ve taken so far. As they learn about your prior paths and current location, they may begin to notice avenues for progress that they didn’t think to point out originally. The pins you gather won’t form an accurate map. Some won’t apply to you—one pin might lead you across a stream, and your bicycle makes for a terrible boat. Some may no longer apply at all—they’ll take you to a road that’s closed. You may end up doing plenty of loops before you find the right path. And your guides are likely to be unaware of bridges that have only recently been built.

There’s a name for that feeling: it’s called languishing. 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. You may not be depressed or burned out, but you definitely feel blah. Every day starts with a case of the Mondays. You’re muddling through the moments, watching your weeks go by in shades of gray.[*]

A digression doesn’t have to be a diversion. It can be a source of energy.

Of all the factors that have been studied, the strongest known force in daily motivation is a sense of progress. You can’t always find motivation by staring harder at the thing that isn’t working. Sometimes you can build momentum by taking a detour to a new destination. A detour is a route off your main road that you take to refuel. You’re not taking a break; you’re not sitting still, idling. You’re temporarily veering off course, but you’re still in motion. You’re advancing toward a different goal.

What looks like a big breakthrough is usually the accumulation of small wins.[*]

Defying Gravity The Art of Flying by Our Bootstraps I believe in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I believe it is possible. I saw this guy do it once in Cirque du Soleil. —Stephen Colbert

When the odds are against us, focusing beyond ourselves is what launches us off the ground.

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.

Bootstrapping is using your existing resources to pull yourself out of a sticky situation.

Teaching is a surprisingly powerful method of learning.

Teaching others can build our competence. But it’s coaching others that elevates our confidence. When we encourage others to overcome obstacles, it can help us find our own motivation.

I’ve come to think of this as the coach effect. We’re more confident in our ability to surmount struggles after guiding others through them.

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through sharing the very knowledge that we want to acquire. The coach effect captures how we can marshal motivation by offering the encouragement to others that we need for ourselves. By reminding us of the tools we already possess, coaching others raises our expectations of ourselves.

receiver. Receiving is passive—if you’re always the one being coached, it puts you in the position of depending on others for guidance. Giving is active—coaching others reminds you that you have something to offer. It convinces you that your bootstraps are strong enough to support you. You’ve already seen them support others.

The expectations people hold of us often become self-fulfilling prophecies. When others believe in our potential, they give us a ladder. They elevate our aspirations and enable us to reach higher peaks. Dozens of experiments show that at work, when leaders hold high expectations, employees generally work harder, learn more, and perform better. In schools, when teachers set high expectations, students get smarter and earn higher grades—especially if they start out with disadvantages.

Being doubted by novices is a challenge. It fires you up. They’re clueless, so you don’t internalize their low expectations—but you don’t ignore them either. You become driven to defy them. I’ll show you. The doubts that threaten to crush your confidence can become crucibles that fortify it. You feel like an underdog who can beat the odds.[*]

It’s more important to be good ancestors than dutiful descendants. Too many people spend their lives being custodians of the past instead of stewards of the future. We worry about making our parents proud when we should be focused on making our children proud. The responsibility of each generation is not to please our predecessors—it’s to improve conditions for our successors.

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It’s possible to confront obstacles alone. Yet we reach the greatest heights when we attach our bootstraps to other people’s boots. If multiple credible supporters believe in us, it’s probably time to believe them. If ignorant naysayers don’t believe in us, it might be time to prove them wrong. And when our faith falters, it’s worth remembering what we’re fighting for.

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Every Child Gets Ahead Designing Schools to Bring Out the Best in Students Just as Michelangelo thought there was an angel locked inside every piece of marble, I think there is a brilliant child locked inside every student. —Marva Collins

In Finnish schools, a popular mantra is “We can’t afford to waste a brain.” This ethos makes their educational culture distinct. They know that the key to nurturing hidden potential is not to invest in students who show early signs of high ability. It’s to invest in every student regardless of apparent ability.

and underlying assumptions. Practices are the daily routines that reflect and reinforce values. Values are shared principles around what’s important and desirable—what should be rewarded versus what should be punished. Underlying assumptions are deeply held, often taken-for-granted beliefs about how the world works. Our assumptions shape our values, which in turn drive our practices.

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To discover and develop the potential in each of their students, teachers make a fundamental assumption that education should be tailored to individuals.

Students who made significant progress didn’t have better teachers. They just happened to have the same teacher for two years in a row. The practice is called looping. Instead of staying in the same grade and teaching new students each year, teachers move up a grade with their students.

Finland loves to loop, and I was unprepared for how far they take it. It’s common for Finnish elementary schoolers to have the same teacher for multiple grades—not just two years in a row, but up to six straight years. Instead of just specializing in their subjects, teachers also get to specialize in their students. 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.

Alabama and West Virginia have raised high school graduation rates by intervening early to support freshmen whose grades have suffered in the transition from middle school to high school.

That love of learning flourishes in an environment designed for students to discover and develop their individual interests.

In Finnish early education, students spend most of their time in play. Mondays might be dedicated to games and field trips; Fridays may be for songs and activity stations. Tim watched kindergartners go from playing board games in the morning to building dams in the afternoon, and from singing in a circle to doing the activity of their choice. Some chose to make forts; others dove into arts and crafts.

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

refrain among Finnish teachers captures it nicely: “The work of a child is to play.”

Sure enough, dozens of studies have found that deliberate play is more effective than direct instruction in teaching students some cognitive skills as well as character skills like discipline and determination.

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

They told me that although experiential learning programs are a start, there’s another key ingredient for intrinsic motivation. “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.

Reading is a gateway to opportunity: it opens the door for children to keep learning. But books face increasingly stiff competition from TV, video games, and social media.

Interest is amplified when we have the opportunity to choose what we learn and share it with others. Intrinsic motivation is contagious. When students talk about the books that light up their imaginations, it crystallizes why they love them—and gives others the chance to catch that enthusiasm.

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

Their deepest underlying assumption may be that the tradeoff between doing well and being well is a false choice.

Mining for Gold Unearthing Collective Intelligence in Teams Some other eyes will look around, and find the things I’ve never found. —Malvina Reynolds

When we face complex and pressing problems, we know we can’t solve them alone. We assume our most important decision is to assemble the most knowledgeable people. Once we’ve found the right experts, we put our future in their hands.

Maximizing group intelligence is about more than enlisting individual experts—and it involves more than merely bringing people together to solve a problem. Unlocking the hidden potential in groups requires leadership practices, team processes, and systems that harness the capabilities and contributions of all their members. The best teams aren’t the ones with the best thinkers. They’re the teams that unearth and use the best thinking from everyone.

The best teams have the most team players—people who excel at collaborating with others.

Being a team player is not about singing “Kumbaya.” It’s not about getting along all the time and ensuring everyone’s cooperation. It’s about figuring out what the group needs and enlisting everyone’s contribution.

Unleashing hidden potential is about more than having the best pieces—it’s about having the best glue.

What really makes a difference is whether people recognize that they need one another to succeed on an important mission. That’s what enables them to bond around a common identity and stick together to achieve their collective goals.

Leaders play an important role in establishing cohesion. They have the authority to turn independent individuals into an interdependent team. But all too often, when it comes time to decide who takes the helm, we fail to consider the glue factor. When we select leaders, we don’t usually pick the person with the strongest leadership skills. We frequently choose the person who talks the most.

But when people are already determined, we don’t need a leader to bark commands. Research demonstrates that when organizations have cultures that prize results above relationships, if they have a leader who puts people first, they actually achieve greater performance gains. When everyone is scrambling to make a rapid rescue, you want someone in charge who cares about everyone.

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

With a team of sponges, the best leader is not the person who talks the most, but the one who listens best.

“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.’ ”

To unearth the hidden potential in teams, instead of brainstorming, we’re better off shifting to a process called brainwriting. The initial steps are solo. You start by asking everyone to generate ideas separately. Next, you pool them and share them anonymously among the group. To preserve independent judgment, each member evaluates them on their own. Only then does the team come together to select and refine the most promising options. By developing and assessing ideas individually before choosing and elaborating them, teams can surface and advance possibilities that might not get attention otherwise.

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The brainwriting process makes sure that all ideas are brought to the table and all voices are brought into the conversation. Sure enough, there’s evidence that brainwriting is especially effective in groups that struggle to achieve collective intelligence.

Collective intelligence begins with individual creativity. But it doesn’t end there. Individuals produce a greater volume and variety of novel ideas when they work alone. That means that they come up with more brilliant ideas than groups—but also more terrible ideas than groups. It takes collective judgment to find the signal in the noise.

We normally call that a climate for voice and psychological safety. There’s evidence that just being looked at by the leader is enough to encourage people who lack status to speak up. But as I dug into Amy’s research, something caught my eye. The rescue leaders hadn’t just established a climate—they had built an unconventional system for making sure that ideas were carefully considered rather than dismissed. And it’s a system that I’ve seen unlock collective intelligence in all kinds of settings.

In most workplaces, opportunity exists on a ladder. The person immediately above you is in charge of decisions about your growth. Your direct boss sets your job description, vets your suggestions, and determines your readiness for promotion. If you can’t get your boss to hear you out, your proposal is toast. The system is simple. But it’s also stupid—it gives one individual far too much power to shut creativity down and shut people up. A single no is enough to kill an idea—or even stall a career.

Organizations can solve this problem with a different kind of hierarchy. A powerful alternative to a corporate ladder is a lattice. A physical lattice is a crisscrossing structure that looks like a checkerboard. In organizations, a lattice is an organizational chart with channels across levels and between teams. Rather than one path of reporting and responsibility from you to the people above you in the hierarchy, a lattice offers multiple paths to the top.

A lattice system isn’t a matrix organization. You’re not stuck with eight different bosses breathing down your neck like in Office Space. You don’t have multiple managers holding you back and shooting you down. The goal is to give you access to multiple leaders who are willing and able to help move you forward and lift you up.

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. Amy Edmondson’s research suggests that these implicit rules stop many people from speaking up and being heard. The purpose of a lattice system is to remove the punishment for going around and above the boss.

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.

Igor’s claw idea saved his plan B—and his idea for plan B helped save 33 lives. There’s no question that we should applaud the creative, heroic efforts from him and so many others. But let’s not forget the unsung heroes of this story: the leadership practices, team processes, and systems of opportunity that made it possible for people to speak up and be heard.

Diamonds in the Rough Discovering Uncut Gems in Job Interviews and College Admissions Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles … overcome while trying to succeed. —Booker T. Washington

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. We need to consider how steep their slope was, how far they’ve climbed, and how they’ve grown along the way. The test of a diamond in the rough is not whether it shines from the start, but how it responds to heat or pressure.

In schools and workplaces, selection systems are usually designed to detect excellence. That means people who are on their way to excellence rarely make the cut. We don’t pay enough attention to these people and their paths—which are often filled with speed bumps and roadblocks. When we fail to see hidden potential, along with shattering people’s dreams, we lose out on their contributions.

Evaluators end up making life-altering decisions for candidates who have been reduced to thin slices of information.

So, you need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience … and that experience reveals little about your potential.[*] The key question is not how long people have done a job. It’s how well they can learn to do a job.

It’s often said that talent sets the floor, but character sets the ceiling.

If natural talent determines where people start, learned character affects how far they go. But character skills aren’t always immediately apparent. If we don’t look beyond the surface, we risk missing the potential for brilliance beneath.

We all know that performance depends on more than ability—it’s also a function of degree of difficulty. How capable you appear to be is often a reflection of how hard your task is. The same Jeopardy! contestant will look smarter on the $200questionsthanthe$1,000 stumpers.

Yet when we judge potential, we often focus on execution and ignore degree of difficulty. We inadvertently favor candidates who aced easy tasks and dismiss those who passed taxing trials. We don’t see the skills they’ve developed to overcome obstacles—especially the skills that don’t show up on a resume.

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. It seems that personal essays would give us a window into college applicants’ challenges, but students who have experienced extreme suffering are understandably distraught at the thought of advertising their trauma and marketing their pain. Meanwhile, those who have been lucky enough to avoid significant setbacks often feel pressure to exaggerate their own struggles. Ultimately, the key indicator of potential isn’t the severity of adversity people encounter—it’s how they react to it. That’s what a better selection system would assess.

Acing easy classes might give you higher odds of acceptance than doing reasonably well in hard classes.

Selection systems need to put performance in context.

We penalize people who rise after rocky starts when we should be rewarding them for the distance they’ve traveled.

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

In the science of interviewing, there’s a name for these kinds of demonstrations. They’re called work samples. A work sample is a snapshot of an applicant’s skills. Sometimes you can provide one by submitting a portfolio of your past work. Many colleges have those built into their admissions processes, inviting students to submit their creative portfolios. You can send in recordings if you’re a musician, scripts if you’re a screenwriter or playwright, and videos if you’re an actor, dancer, or magician.

Epilogue Going the Distance Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. —Langston Hughes

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Then I came across new evidence that people with bigger dreams go on to achieve greater things. When economists tracked thousands of people from birth until age 55, the aspirations they formed as adolescents foreshadowed how their adult lives would unfold. Young people with grander dreams went further in school and climbed higher at work. Even after accounting for a host of other factors—their cognitive skills, character skills, family income, and parents’ education, occupations, and aspirations—their own dreams made a unique contribution to how they progressed and who they became.

My success wouldn’t depend on my initial ability. It would depend on my ability and motivation to learn.

When I failed Harvard’s writing test, they hadn’t declared me a failure as a writer. They’d failed a tiny snapshot of my writing. They didn’t know me, so I set out to prove them wrong. I was determined to go from failing the test to acing the class.

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.” Scaffolding gives you the support you need to figure it out.

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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?

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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.

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.

The learning process isn’t finished when we acquire knowledge. It’s complete when we consistently apply that knowledge.

Unleash hidden potential through character skills. The people who grow the most aren’t the smartest people in the room. They’re the ones who strive to make themselves and others smarter. When opportunity doesn’t knock, look for ways to build a door—or climb through a window.

Seek discomfort. Instead of just striving to learn, aim to feel uncomfortable. Pursuing discomfort sets you on a faster path to growth. If you want to get it right, it has to first feel wrong.

Set a mistake budget. To encourage trial and error, set a goal for the minimum number of mistakes you want to make per day or per week. When you expect to stumble, you ruminate about it less—and improve more.

Ask for advice, not feedback. Feedback is backward-looking—it leads people to criticize you or cheer for you. Advice is forward-looking—it leads people to coach you. You can get your critics and cheerleaders to act more like coaches by asking a simple question: “What’s one thing I can do better next time?”

Be the coach you hope to have. Demonstrate that honesty is the highest expression of loyalty. Model effective coaching by being forthcoming in what you say and respectful in how you say it. Show people how easy it is to hear a hard truth from someone who believes in their potential and cares about their success.

Strive for excellence, not perfection. Progress comes from maintaining high standards, not eliminating every flaw. Practice wabi sabi, the art of honoring beauty in imperfection, by identifying some shortcomings that you can accept. Consider where you truly need the best and where you can settle for good enough. Mark your growth with Eric Best’s questions: Did you make yourself better today? Did you make someone else better today?

Be your own last judge. It’s better to disappoint others than to disappoint yourself. Before you release something into the world, assess whether it represents you well. If this was the only work people saw of yours, would you be proud of it?

Engage in mental time travel. When you’re struggling to appreciate your progress, consider how your past self would view your current achievements. If you knew five years ago what you’d accomplish now, how proud would you have been?

Turn practice into play Turn the daily grind into a source of daily joy. To maintain harmonious passion, design practice around deliberate play. Set up fun skill-building challenges—like Evelyn Glennie learning to play a Bach piece on a snare drum, Steph Curry trying to score twenty-one points in a minute, or medical residents honing their nonverbal communication skills by using nonsense words in improv comedy games.

When you compete against yourself, the only way to win is to grow.

Don’t hold yourself hostage to a fixed routine. It’s possible to avoid burnout and boreout by introducing novelty and variety into your practice. You can alternate between different skills you’re practicing or switch up the tools and methods you use to learn those skills. Even small tweaks can make a big difference.

Be proactive about rest and recovery. Don’t wait until you’re burned out or bored out to take breaks—build them into your schedule. Taking time off helps to sustain harmonious passion, unlock fresh ideas, and deepen learning. Relaxing is not a waste of time; it’s an investment in well-being.

When you’re stuck, back up to move forward. When you hit a dead end, it might be time to turn around and find a new path. It feels like regressing, but it’s often the only way to find a route to progress.

Find a compass. You don’t need a map to start on a new route—you just need a compass to gauge whether you’re heading in the right direction. A good compass is a credible source that signals when you’re going off course.

Find a side gig. When you find yourself languishing, you can build momentum by taking a detour to a new destination. When you make progress in a side project or hobby, you rack up small wins, which remind you that forward movement is possible.

Teach what you want to learn. The best way to learn something is to teach it. You understand it better after you explain it—and you remember it better after you take the time to recall it. Like the Golden Thirteen, you can do this in groups, with each member teaching a distinct skill or slice of information.

Build confidence by coaching others. When you’re doubting your ability to overcome an obstacle, instead of seeking advice, try giving advice. Guiding others through a challenge reminds you that you have the resources you need to tackle it. The advice you give is usually the advice you need to take.

Be a good ancestor. When your faith falters, recall who you’re fighting for. Our deepest reserves of resilience come from knowing that other people are counting on us.

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.

Give students the freedom to explore and share their individual interests. The most important lesson to teach students is that learning is fun. When students get to select the activity stations, books, and projects that interest them, they’re more likely to develop intrinsic motivation. When they present on the topics they love, it reinforces their enthusiasm—and gives their classmates the chance to catch it.

Transform groups into teams. Collective intelligence depends on cohesion—aligning a team around shared responsibility for a meaningful mission. When people believe they need one another to succeed in reaching an important goal, they become more than the sum of their parts.

Choose leaders based on prosocial skills. Instead of promoting babblers and ball hogs, elevate people who put the mission above their ego—and prioritize team cohesion over personal glory. When teams are eager to contribute, the most effective leader is not the loudest talker, but the best listener.

Shift from brainstorming to brainwriting. For more balanced participation and better solutions, before you meet as a group, have people generate and evaluate ideas independently. Once all the ideas are on the table and all the voices are in the room, have the group select and refine the most promising possibilities.

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Replace the corporate ladder with a lattice system. Instead of leaving it up to a single boss to shoot down suggestions, give people multiple paths to speak up. If people can go to more than one leader, a single no can’t kill an idea—and a single yes can be enough to save it.

Eliminate requirements for credentials and experience. When evaluating others, beware of mistaking past accomplishments and experience for future potential. Background and talent determine where people start, but character skills shape how far they can climb.

Account for degree of difficulty. Struggles don’t necessarily reflect the absence of ability—often they reveal the presence of adversity. To account for the obstacles candidates have faced, put their performance in context by comparing them to peers in their school, major, and neighborhood.

Use trajectories in evaluations. It’s not enough to look at recent or average performance—the trajectory of performance over time matters more. An upward slope is a clue that candidates have overcome adversity.

Reimagine interviews to set candidates up to succeed. Instead of designing interviews to maximize stress, create opportunities for candidates to shine. Invite applicants to share what they love and showcase their strengths. Afterward, ask if they thought their performance represented them well—and if not, give them a do-over.

Redefine success. The most meaningful form of performance is progress. 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.