I recently reviewed Adam Grant’s latest book, Think Again, about the value of taking a second (or third) look at what you’ve thought before. This book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, takes a look at achievement. Grant’s talent consists of looking at research bringing its relevance into our lives. Read this book and pass it on.
From the blurb on Bookshop.org, Admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.
He shows that progress depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn. Growth is not about the genius you possess—it’s about the character you develop. Grant explores how to build the character skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked.
Curious about Grant’s thoughts about character? I should add in this context that Barry Diller in his podcast interview with Guy Kawasaki that I referenced recently observed that tech leaders tended to be so pragmatic as to be amoral, perhaps even lacking character. Check out this list:
Build Character Skills
1. Unleash hidden potential through character skills. They strive to make themselves and others smarter.
2. Don’t be afraid to try a new style.
3. Seek discomfort.
4. Increase your absorptive capacity.
5. Seek advice, not feedback.
6. Strive for excellence, not perfection.
7. Turn practice into play.
8. Turn the daily grind into a source for daily joy.
9. Teach what you want to learn.
10. Build confidence by coaching others.
11. Open doors for people who are underrated and overlooked.
12. Choose leaders based on prosocial skills.
I also offer some of the highlighted notes from my reading:
That motivation wasn’t innate, it tended to begin with a coach or teacher who made learning fun.
What look like differences in natural ability are often differences in opportunity and motivation.
This book is not about ambition. It’s about aspiration. Aspiration is the person you hope to become.
Proactive: How often did they take initiative to ask questions, volunteer answers, seek information from… Think about how surprising that is if you want to project the earning potential of fourth graders. And although many people see those behaviors as innate, they were taught in kindergarten.
Character is more than just having principles. It’s a learned capacity to live by your principles.
Character skills do more than help you perform at your peak—They propel you to higher peaks. As the Nobel laureate economist James Heckman concluded in a review of the research, character skills predict and produce success in life.
They weren’t worried about being the smartest player in the room—they were aiming to make the room smarter.
Character is the capacity to prioritize your values over instincts.
There is just one small problem with learning styles—they’re a myth.
Procrastination is a common problem whenever you are pushing yourself past your comfort zone.
Writing is more that a tool for communication—it is a tool for learning.
In the words of the great psychologist, Ted Lasso, “If you’re comfortable, you’re doin’ it wrong.”
Becker and Woessmann argued that the engine for the Protestant Reformation wasn’t work ethic as much as literacy.
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?
Being polite is withholding feedback in order to make someone feel good today. Being kind is being candid about how they can get better tomorrow.
It’s easy to get people to be cheerleaders or critics. It’s harder to get them to be coaches.
Instead of seeking feedback, you’re better off asking for advice.
When speaking—Open with a personal story, it humanizes you.
In a meta-analysis, the correlation between perfectionism and performance at work was zero.
The people who go on to become masters of their fields often start out with imperfect transcripts at school.
Perfectionists tend to get three things wrong: 1. They obsess about details that don’t matter; 2. They avoid unfamiliar situations and difficult tasks that might lead to failure; 3. They berate themselves for making mistakes, which makes it harder to learn from them.
According to legend, a young man 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 weeds and raked leaves until the garden was pristine. As he reviewed his flawless work, he realized that something was missing. He walked over to a cherry tree and shook it until a few flower petals fell to the ground. By finding beauty in imperfection, he proved that he was ready to become a master.
Wabi-sabi is the art of honoring beauty in imperfection. It’s about accepting that flaws are inevitable—and recognizing they don’t stop something from being sublime.
Extensive evidence shows that it’s having high personal standards and not pursuing perfection that fuels growth.
Elite musicians are rarely driven by obsessive compulsion. They’re usually fueled by what psychologists call harmonious passion. Harmonious passion is taking joy in a process rather than feeling pressure to achieve an outcome.
Chetty’s team discovered that one of the advantages kids got in wealthy families was more exposure to innovators in their homes and neighborhoods. They had more guides available to provide a compass and drop pins. They got to dream bigger, aim higher, and travel farther.
Students who did better didn’t have better teachers, they just had the same teacher for two years in a row.
A culture of opportunity only succeeds when students are motivated to take advantage of those opportunities.
Teams—collective intelligence depends less on people’s cognitive skills and more on their prosocial skills.
When they have prosocial skills, team members are able to bring out the best in one another.
