Subtitled: The Science of Achieving Greater Things
Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist and professor at Wharton. He’s got several best-selling books under his belt, including this one which was published last year.
I’ve been thinking a lot about potential lately as I work with clients who feel their own potential is getting squashed. Sometimes it’s through a reorg or reduced responsibilities, or their career or skills have plateaued, or a million other reasons really. There’s this sense that they have so much more to contribute, but just aren’t sure how to tackle the obstacles in their way.
So as I’ve been exploring the topic, this book popped up and of course I had to dig right in!
Grant doesn’t spend much time defining potential, he dives right into how to unlock it. So really this book is all about how to learn and improve. Grant divides this into three sections:
- Building character skills
- Overcoming obstacles
- Building systems of opportunities
The first two sections are geared towards the individual, the last section is more for larger systems such as schools and businesses – which makes sense, since Grant is an organizational psychologist.
I love how he emphasizes character skills as a key element to learning and improving. And it’s way more than just exercising our ‘discipline.’ He shows us studies and gives us tips which help us address perfectionism, how be better sponges, to seek discomfort…. just to name a few character-building skills.
Then in the section about overcoming obstacles, he highlights the importance of having a support system – a scaffold as he calls it. And he includes coaches as an integral part of that support system! Whoop whoop! Support can come in many other forms as well – from turning practice into play to helping others as a way to help ourselves.
And in the systems section he recommends (with science to back it up) designing schools to set up success, leveraging collective intelligence in teams and how to uncover gems in job interviews and college apps.
For my last takeaway – I love his take on imposter syndrome. He sees it as a sign of hidden potential. When we experience it, we often see it as other people overestimating us, but it’s more likely that we are underestimating ourselves. They see our capacity for growth that we just can’t see yet.
Which reminds me of a quote from Maxwell Maltz: you can never outperform your own self-image.
So if you’re curious about improving your self-image, dig into Hidden Potential and let me know what your top takeaways are!
