PDF Summary:Hidden Potential, by Adam Grant

Many people think that to accomplish something truly great, you must be one of a few “gifted” geniuses born with extraordinary talent. However, psychologist Adam Grant argues that the world’s top performers weren’t extraordinary geniuses from birth; rather, they built their skills over time using the right techniques. By employing these techniques, you too can become the type of person who achieves wildly ambitious goals.

In this guide, you’ll learn why you have to practice in a way that’s both fun and uncomfortable to maximize your personal growth. Additionally, you’ll discover three ways to tap into your potential by connecting with the right people. In our commentary, we’ll supplement Grant’s advice for how to reach your full potential with ideas from books on personal growth like Peak and The Motivation Myth. We’ll also expand on Grant’s information about the potential of organizations with tips from management books like Rework and No Rules Rules.

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How to Cure Perfectionism

If you’re a perfectionist, ignoring flaws in your work so you can focus on the areas that matter most is easier said than done. On a practical level, how do you unlearn perfectionist tendencies?

First, understand where perfectionist tendencies come from. In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown argues that perfectionists aren’t trying to create perfect work for its own sake; rather, they primarily want to control other people’s perceptions of them. They fear the shame that comes with being judged as flawed or incompetent, so they try to hide all their flaws. When they inevitably fail, they end up shaming themselves—as Grant describes.

In Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff contends that the key to ridding yourself of this fear and shame is to be mindful of your negative emotions as they arise. Paying attention to the pain instead of trying to push it away allows you to take a step back and rationally challenge the false belief causing the pain. Once you realize that people won’t all condemn you for your flaws—because nobody is perfect—your shameful feelings can dissipate.

Soothing yourself this way will likely make it easier for you to ignore the flaws in your work and focus on making it as good as possible. This will increase your odds of putting out truly groundbreaking work.

Discomfort #3: Proving Yourself Wrong

The third kind of discomfort you must overcome to stay focused on your goals is proving yourself wrong. Grant contends that to reach your full potential, you have to actively seek out errors in your thinking and identify aspects of your work that you could do better.

To do this, first take responsibility for your own growth, advises Grant. Many people don’t bother trying to learn how to improve—when they want to do something, they wait for someone else to show them how to do it. If you want to tap into your potential, this isn’t good enough. Aim to educate yourself rather than passively accept whatever information you happen to encounter.

(Shortform note: In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson contends that generally, when you choose the challenges you want to tackle, you feel empowered to overcome them. But when you’re dealing with problems against your will, you feel helpless and hopeless. By this logic, taking responsibility for your personal growth—as Grant recommends—will give you the confidence to persist through uncomfortable obstacles that would otherwise leave you paralyzed by fear.)

To further discover how to improve at a task, become comfortable with humility, recommends Grant. Even when someone is actively trying to get better, they’ll often make the mistake of reflexively denying or ignoring information that challenges their ego. Learning that you’re totally wrong about something can be uncomfortable and embarrassing, but it’s a necessary step if you want to grow.

(Shortform note: In Principles, Ray Dalio argues that when your ego is preventing you from recognizing valuable information, it becomes obvious in your physiology. For instance, your chest may tighten, or your heart might start racing. This is because defending your ego is a purely emotional reaction: To protect you from the pain of feeling stupid or incompetent, your subconscious takes over and causes you to react defensively and impulsively. Training yourself to notice these physiological warning signs and calm yourself down may help you avoid making rash, foolish decisions.)

According to Grant, the best way to prove yourself wrong is by getting advice from experts who know more than you about what you’re trying to do—a strategy we’ll discuss in the next section.

How Other People Can Tap Into Your Potential

So far, we’ve explored various ways that fun yet uncomfortable training can fuel your personal growth. That said, however you optimize your training, reaching your full potential is much more difficult when you try to do it alone. Grant explains that other people can assist your personal growth by giving you guidance, inspiring a sense of purpose in you, and working with you as a team. Let’s explore these three benefits in more detail.

Benefit #1: Guidance

Grant notes that your ability to teach yourself has limits. Often, you’ll need guidance from others, especially if you’re trying to learn to do something complex where “success” is subjective, like composing a symphony or starting a political career.

To ensure that the advice you receive will actually help you, choose your guides carefully. Find someone who knows what they’re talking about, is familiar enough with you and your work to give an accurate assessment, and truly wants you to succeed. Otherwise, you could end up with bad advice, advice that doesn’t fit you, or advice that isn’t intended to be helpful.

(Shortform note: Those who give unwise, unsuitable, or malicious advice may be particularly dangerous for people with codependent tendencies. In Codependent No More, Melody Beattie explains that people who are prone to codependency (that is, people who become obsessed with those around them and lose touch with themselves) consistently fail to trust their own judgment. As a result, they often fall into the trap of blindly trusting others to make decisions for them. If you have codependent tendencies, it’s especially important to second-guess those who tell you they know what’s good for you. Additionally, learn to trust yourself by reflecting on times in your life when you made good decisions.)

How to Ask for Guidance

The way you solicit advice matters, too, writes Grant. Don’t just ask people for general critiques. Most will either give you vague praise to spare your feelings or crush your spirit by bluntly telling you everything they dislike about your work. Instead, ask them to tell you what, specifically, you can do better. This simple request will focus the advice you receive into constructive feedback you can use to improve.

(Shortform note: In The Motivation Myth, Jeff Haden argues that you don’t necessarily need to directly talk to a mentor to learn from them the specific things you need to do better. Rather, simply studying their life and emulating them can help you achieve goals that are similar to theirs. For instance, if you want to follow in the footsteps of your favorite science fiction author, you can research their writing process and mimic it. This strategy also removes the risk of receiving unhelpful praise or demoralizing criticism from real-life mentors.)

Not All Guidance Applies to You

Even when you find a guide you can trust, you can’t just follow their instructions blindly. Grant explains that everyone is different, so when an expert offers advice that worked for them, it might not work for you. For example, an early riser sharing productivity tips may advise you to wake up at the break of dawn to work without distractions. But if you’re a night owl, waking up early might drain your energy, hindering your productivity rather than boosting it.

To solve this problem, gather advice from multiple experts, then experiment until you discover which of their tips work for you.

(Shortform note: In Tribe of Mentors, Tim Ferriss shares advice from philanthropist John Arnold, who also warns against blindly following advice from experts. Arnold takes this idea further, arguing that experts often find success using strategies that are exact opposites. For instance, some entrepreneurs succeed by tinkering with a single idea for years, while others succeed by giving up on many ideas and experimenting wildly until they find success. For this reason, Arnold believes that generally, advice isn’t very valuable. With this in mind, instead of spending the effort to gather advice from a wide range of experts, you might consider skipping this step and experimenting until you discover your own guiding philosophy.)

Benefit #2: Purpose

Another way that others can help you reach your full potential is by giving you a motivating sense of purpose, according to Grant. When you feel like someone else is relying on you to achieve something, you can reframe the situation in a way that gives you strength. Instead of second-guessing your skills and worrying about the possibility of failure, you resolve to try your best, no matter what. Ultimately, this will help you do better work. For example, an entrepreneur will find it easier to put their heart in their business if they believe doing so will help them provide enough money for their children to go to any college they want.

(Shortform note: When you’re working with the purpose of helping someone, make sure that you’re giving the gift of your work unconditionally. In The Courage to Be Disliked, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga warn that some people who work to help others are primarily trying to earn appreciation and approval in return. If they work hard and make sacrifices yet fail to receive appreciation, they feel cheated and become resentful. This habit can make it difficult to form mutually supportive relationships. For instance, imagine the entrepreneur in the previous example has children who want to live as “starving artists” instead of going to college. This may cause the entrepreneur to condemn their children as ungrateful, damaging their relationship.)

Furthermore, Grant contends that when someone doubts your ability to accomplish something, the desire to prove them wrong can also be a powerful source of motivation. As long as you don’t let them undermine your confidence, you’ll naturally put in more effort and perform better than if there hadn’t been naysayers at all.

(Shortform note: People with different personality types may require different motivational tactics to reach their goals. In Relentless, Tim Grover acknowledges that the angry desire to prove others wrong can be a powerful catalyst for focused effort. However, he suggests that those who don't respond well to anger or who find others' doubts demoralizing rather than motivating may find more success by cultivating inner calm. For people like this, intentionally maintaining a clear mind and gentle emotions is a more effective way to access a state of intense focus.)

Benefit #3: Teamwork

Finally, being on a team can help you reach your full potential, argues Grant. In a team that’s centered on a unifying goal, everyone can help the other members by teaching skills in their particular area of expertise. When you’re on a team like this, you not only learn from a variety of skilled people but also enhance your skills by teaching others. When you explain something to someone else, you re-examine and reinforce your understanding of it, leading to significant personal growth.

Similarly, teaching someone how to achieve something makes you feel more capable of achieving your own goals. When you successfully teach someone, it’s proof that you know what you’re doing, and internalizing this proof helps you feel more confident. Research even shows that giving encouraging advice is more motivating than receiving such encouragement from others.

The Positive Social Pressure of Teaching Others

In The Extended Mind, Annie Murphy also argues that people can enhance their learning by teaching others. She elaborates that this is because the prospect of teaching another person carries tremendous social pressure: You know that the quality of your teaching will determine whether the people you’re teaching will be impressed or think poorly of you. This drives you to more rigorously understand what you’re going to teach.

Murphy also concurs with Grant that teaching helps people feel more capable and confident. She explains that some nonprofit organizations are leveraging this fact to help struggling students build academic motivation: For instance, the Valued Youth Partnership assigns children at risk of dropping out of school to tutor younger children. When these struggling kids see that their academic work is helping someone, it strengthens their self-image, leading them to attend school more consistently and get better grades.

Generating Ideas Through Teamwork

In addition to increasing your skills and confidence, being on a team can help you generate better ideas, according to Grant. When teams put their heads together, they can come up with creative solutions to a wider variety of problems—at least in theory. Unfortunately, many teams try to do this by brainstorming in a group, which often causes people to avoid sharing their good ideas to protect themselves from negative judgment.

Instead of group brainstorming, Grant recommends something called "brainwriting." In this process, participants generate ideas for possible solutions independently. Then the team compiles a list of everyone’s ideas—without revealing who came up with each idea—and shares it for everyone to judge alone. After everyone’s had a chance to form an unbiased opinion, the team gathers to discuss the best ideas. This allows the team to judge everyone’s ideas on their objective merits, leading them to the best solutions.

Big Teams Hamper Creativity

In Quiet, Susan Cain also criticizes the traditional brainstorming process. She notes that the more people involved in a brainstorming session, the less effective it is. This makes sense when viewed with Grant’s logic: Since there are more people to judge your contributions, this increased pressure more strongly discourages people, especially introverts, from voicing their good ideas.

Cain would likely support Grant’s suggested process of brainwriting. She contends that for creativity to flourish, you need to be alone, and you need to be able to concentrate intensely. This implies that the most important step in Grant’s brainwriting process is independent idea generation. The other parts of the process are probably more flexible: If you skip the independent judgment stage and come together to discuss everybody’s ideas, you’ll likely still get significantly better results than traditional brainstorming.

How Organizations Can Tap Into Their Potential

So far, we've discussed how each of us can reach our full potential through smart practice and by connecting with others. We’ll conclude this guide by exploring what organizations can do to achieve more on a larger scale. Here are two tips that organizations can use to identify and utilize all their workers’ potential.

Tip #1: Encourage Good Ideas From Everyone in the Organization

Grant argues that if organizations want to achieve the best results, they need to encourage and empower all their employees to share their best ideas with workers who can act on them. In most organizations, however, this doesn’t happen. When an employee suggests a way to improve the organization, their boss will typically ignore it. Why? They may feel threatened by the idea that their subordinate could offer better ideas than them. Alternatively, they may worry that if the idea fails, they’ll be held responsible.

To fix this problem, Grant proposes a system where employees can freely share ideas with multiple leaders across the organization, increasing the odds that someone will approve and implement those ideas. In this system, even if many high-ranking managers reject your idea, all it takes is one “yes” to get your idea tested and implemented. Consequently, the organization acts on many more valuable ideas, allowing it to rapidly innovate and improve.

A More Extreme Philosophy: Bosses Can’t Say No

In No Rules Rules, Reed Hastings also advocates a workplace philosophy centered around empowering employees to pursue their ideas without unanimous top-down approval. However, Hastings' approach goes even further by giving employees the autonomy to work full-time pursuing whatever ideas they think are the most valuable to the company—even if all their bosses think those ideas will fail.

This system allows organizations to avoid the pitfalls that Grant describes: First, bosses don’t have the authority to completely shut down any ideas, even if their egos are threatened. Second, bosses don’t need to worry about being held responsible for their subordinates’ bad ideas because it’s widely understood that every employee is fully responsible for the success or failure of their own ideas. Hastings believes that managers should be relatively lenient when their subordinates fail—no one is right 100% of the time—but he asserts that employees should face consequences if they consistently invest in bad ideas.

Tip #2: Hire on the Basis of Potential, Not Superficial Success

Grant contends that when organizations are hiring, they often overlook the applicants with the most potential to help them achieve their goals. This happens for two reasons:

First, organizations typically place too much value on prestigious college degrees, which Grant suggests are poor predictors of future performance. Studies show that on a technical level, there are few differences between the work done by graduates of elite universities and the work done by graduates of less prestigious ones.

Furthermore, job postings that require college degrees exclude large segments of the workforce. Many people gain valuable, employable skills outside of college. For instance, they might learn directly from experts or teach themselves.

Second, Grant argues that organizations often make the mistake of judging candidates solely by their prior work experience: how long they’ve worked a similar job or how well they did at that job. However, this experience doesn’t necessarily translate to success in a new role—the years someone has worked don’t prove that they learned anything during that time. Additionally, you can only judge candidates by the quality of their past work if you’re hiring them for a job that requires those exact same skills. Often, organizations falsely assume that if an applicant did well in their previous job, they’ll similarly thrive in any job.

An Alternative System: Credential-Centered Hiring

In The End of Average, Todd Rose also criticizes employers for relying too much on fancy college degrees and past work experience, for many of the same reasons as Grant. To fix these issues, he suggests a systematic overhaul of our hiring practices: Instead of looking at degrees, employers should evaluate candidates based on what Rose calls "credentials." Credentials are certifications that prove someone has the skills and knowledge required to do a specific job. For example, instead of getting a generic business degree, a candidate could earn credentials in areas like accounting, data analysis, and project management.

According to Rose, an applicant's collection of earned credentials would paint a much more nuanced picture of their unique capabilities than if you were to judge them by their alma mater or work experience.

Workers could obtain credentials by passing exams or completing focused training courses on particular topics, as opposed to broad college programs. This specialized and personalized education system would help students only take classes that directly prepare them to thrive in the jobs they want.

How to Conduct Job Interviews That Unearth Potential

Grant explains how organizations can fix their flawed hiring practices by conducting job interviews that identify applicants’ true potential. Rather than judging candidates based on prestigious degrees or past work experience, learn enough about their background to assess the obstacles they’ve faced to get to where they are today. Candidates who push through hardship often develop skills that help them do great work but aren’t obvious on a résumé.

For example, imagine a candidate who grew up in a rural area with limited educational resources and taught themselves math and science from library books to earn a GED. This demonstrates exceptional self-motivation and proactivity—skills that would serve them well in any job.

(Shortform note: Although Grant recommends letting applicants’ unique backgrounds inform your hiring decisions, be careful about what types of information you solicit: In the US, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission forbids employers from asking questions that may lead to hiring discrimination. For example, it would be illegal to directly ask a candidate “Where are you originally from?”, as you could be accused of asking this question to discriminate against people from certain countries. Instead, ask how they learned the specific skills you’re looking for.)

Additionally, offer candidates the chance to demonstrate the skills they’ll need for the job during the interview process on a project that’s familiar and easily understandable. This way, you can witness firsthand if candidates have what it takes to thrive in your organization. For instance, if you’re hiring a business consultant, ask candidates to imagine what advice they would give to a friend who’s running a struggling barbershop.

(Shortform note: In Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson offer similar advice: They recommend paying top candidates to do a small project for your company—around 20 hours of work—before deciding whether to hire them full-time. This will provide a more complete picture of how a candidate will fit into your organization than even the most comprehensive interview.)

Finally, Grant recommends making your interview process as comfortable and accommodating as possible. Traditional job interviews feel like high-pressure examinations designed to expose candidates' weaknesses. This adversarial approach creates unnecessary stress that prevents candidates from demonstrating their full abilities. Instead, do whatever you can to make applicants feel relaxed.

(Shortform note: Consider keeping your workplace as comfortable and accommodating as possible after you’ve hired someone, at least for the first 100 days. According to Geoff Smart and Randy Street in Who, many new hires change their minds and either turn down a job they’ve already accepted or quit within their first few months. After 100 days, however, new hires have typically made enough of a commitment to your organization that they’ll stay without further encouragement.)