Unlocking Your Hidden Potential
Achieving Greatness for Yourself and Your Organization
Adam Grant’s “Hidden Potential” is a fantastic exploration of how to unlock and maximize our latent abilities. The book challenges the conventional beliefs that greatness is a product of innate talent, but rather that your potential is determined by our willingness to grow, adapt, and persevere. The book focuses on the idea that everyone has hidden potential that can be developed through a combination of character skills, supportive structures, and systems designed to expand opportunities.
It’s a good read not only for personal improvement but also for building organizations and supporting others in their pursuit of greatness.
1. Character Skills
The book begins by redefining character, not as an inherent trait, but as a set of skills that can be cultivated over time. These character skills are crucial for unleashing hidden potential and overcoming life’s challenges.
Growth Over Fixed Mindset: The book emphasizes the importance of a growth mindset, where learning, improvement, and perseverance are prioritized over innate ability. Success is viewed as a journey rather than a destination, focusing on continuous effort rather than peak achievements alone.
Character as a Set of Skills: Character is our capacity to prioritize values over instincts:
“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.”
“Personality is not your destiny — it’s your tendency. Character skills enable you to transcend that tendency to be true to your principles.”
The specific character skills highlighted include:
- Grit: Resilience and determination to push through challenges and setbacks, maintaining the effort needed to achieve long-term goals.
- Adaptability: Flexibility in adjusting to new situations and challenges, with a willingness to grow and evolve.
- Proactivity: Taking the initiative to seek out opportunities and actively pursue knowledge and improvement.
- Embracing Discomfort: Stepping outside comfort zones, accepting mistakes as learning opportunities, and viewing discomfort as a catalyst for growth.
- Discipline: Maintaining focus and resisting distractions to achieve long-term goals, even when motivation wanes.
- Prosocial Behavior: Collaborating effectively with others, fostering positive interactions, and contributing to a supportive environment.
- Curiosity: A strong desire to explore, learn, and innovate, driving continuous personal growth.
- Purpose-Driven Motivation: Finding deeper meaning in one’s work, which drives sustained motivation and commitment.
The book also discusses the emotional aspect of character, highlighting that procrastination often stems from emotional avoidance rather than 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.”
2. Structures and Systems That Sustain Motivation
The second section of the book delves into the importance of creating structures and systems that help sustain motivation and drive growth.
Scaffolding for Growth: This concept introduces “scaffolding,” temporary support structures that help individuals overcome obstacles they cannot tackle alone. This support is essential for building resilience and momentum in personal and professional development. For example, Grant uses a “judging committee” as a form of scaffolding for his writing. When he finishes a draft of an article or book chapter, he sends it to a group of trusted colleagues for evaluation. This feedback acts as temporary scaffolding, helping him refine his work and push beyond his current limits.
Social Support: The role of social support is critical for sustained motivation and growth. Mentors, peers, and communities provide the guidance, motivation, and feedback necessary to unlock potential. For instance, Grant mentions the concept of “pop-up workshops,” where different people with complementary skills provide candid feedback on specific projects. This type of social support ensures individuals remain accountable and continue to improve.
“My first request isn’t for feedback or advice. It’s for a score. I ask [the judges] to independently rate my work on a scale from 0 to 10. Then I ask how I can get closer to 10.”
The book also highlights how studying with knowledgeable colleagues can accelerate growth. In the workplace, leaders who hold high expectations tend to inspire better performance from their employees, illustrating the power of social support in motivating individuals.
“Dozens of experiments show that at work, when leaders hold high expectations, employees generally work harder, learn more, and perform better.”
Peer support is also important for accountability — especially when we are working toward something bigger than ourselves:
“We find our deepest reserves of resolve when an entire group is relying on us.”
Learning Should Be Enjoyable: The book emphasizes that learning should be engaging and enjoyable to sustain long-term motivation. For example, the use of deliberate play in skill development makes learning activities both challenging and fun. This approach helps prevent burnout and supports continuous growth.
“In deliberate play, you actually redesign the task itself to make it both motivating and developmental.”
“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 book also highlights the importance of progress as a key motivator:
“Of all the factors that have been studied, the strongest known force in daily motivation is a sense of progress.”
And similarly advocates for a forward-looking mindset, suggesting that we should focus on improving conditions for the future rather than being custodians of the past:
“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.”
3. Building Systems to Expand Opportunities
In this last section, the book discusses how organizations and systems can be designed to help individuals and groups achieve their full potential.
Culture of Continuous Learning: This section emphasizes the importance of creating a culture that encourages continuous learning and the sharing of ideas. For example, using a “lattice system” in organizations, which allows employees to bypass traditional hierarchical structures. This system encourages employees to share ideas and speak up, removing barriers that often prevent people from contributing their best work.
“The purpose of a lattice system is to remove the punishment for going around and above the boss.”
Avoiding the Peter Principle: Organizational systems can inadvertently favor candidates who excel at easy tasks while ignoring those who overcome more challenging obstacles. To counter this, organizations should design systems that recognize and reward the degree of difficulty in achievements, ensuring that people are promoted based on their true potential rather than their ability to excel in low-risk scenarios.
“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.”
Rethinking Systems and Organizations: Finally, organizations should foster environments that encourage idea sharing, continuous learning, and the removal of barriers that prevent individuals from contributing their best. By creating systems that provide equal opportunities and foster motivation, organizations can unlock the hidden potential of their members.
“In organizational psychology, culture has three elements: practices, values, 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.”
An important consideration is the need for candid feedback within organizations to foster improvement:
“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.”
Importance of Motivation and Opportunity: Success often stems from differences in opportunity and motivation rather than talent alone. Systems that provide equal opportunities and encourage motivation are essential for unlocking potential.
“Potential is not a matter of where you start, but of how far you travel.”
Finally, the book challenges the pursuit of perfection, advocating for a focus on progress and overcoming obstacles:
“Success is not so much how close you come to perfection as how much you overcome along the way.”
