CHAPTER 5

LIFTING SIGHTS TOWARD POTENTIAL

“I see greatness in you.”

Let’s say that you walk into work tomorrow, like any other day, with a project or a particular issue on your mind. But after you settle into your desk, someone you respect takes you aside, makes you feel as if you are the most important item of the day, and speaks sincerely about your potential. What if this person were also your boss? How might you feel about yourself and your ability to succeed? Would your confidence grow? How about your loyalty?

If a boss, colleague, coach, relative, or friend has reached out in such a way, I bet you recall that conversation and replay it from time to time. It may have changed what you thought was possible for yourself. It informed your choices or decisions, and what risks you felt equipped to take. When we’ve been lucky enough to have these conversations in our own lives—when someone has shined a light on our own potential—then that illustrates how meaningful that person is in a personal way.

Recognizing another’s potential—sincerely, specifically, and altruistically—is one of the most powerful and inspiring conversations we can have. Certainly these exchanges play a large role in inspirational leadership in general. As such, they can be part of a larger Inspire Path conversation. To clarify, conveying potential is not about pumping someone up to get that person to do something. It’s not about manipulating or pandering. We do not share this to get anything in return, though we often are rewarded with loyalty and commitment. Conversations about potential have the impact they do because we offer them with Chapter 3’s NATO—no attachment to the outcome for us. We simply want to benefit the other person.

We know that feedback is important to growth in any setting, especially at work. But conversations about potential aren’t the same as positive feedback, though there can be an overlap. Positive feedback—which is provided to encourage certain behavior—is given around a particular work area or function. Conversations about potential are primarily about the person, not the job—and they aren’t directive. We’re putting our thoughts out there, and the other person can choose what to do with them.

At their core, potential conversations are about what’s possible. They lift people’s heads out of their day-to-day routine to see something larger in themselves. They allow people to connect dots and recognize themes. They are a pure form of connection. They honor someone else by acknowledging what you see within that person.

A conversation about potential:

Acknowledges someone’s strengths

Shows people what they’re capable of

Honors a success

Helps people see what you believe is possible for them from your vantage point

Conversations about potential can exist one-to-one or one-to-many. A good organizational vision communicates potential. Visions lift organizations up and show them what’s possible. They encourage the collective to see an organization’s strengths and greatness. Visions tell us that we can achieve more because we’re capable of being more.

Consider these examples of potential-oriented visions. The airline JetBlue’s vision is “Inspiring Humanity.” It states, “In the air and on the ground, we’re committed to bettering the lives of our customers, crew-members, and communities—and inspiring others to do the same.”¹ Bettering lives is a lofty vision for a for-profit corporation. It takes people out of their day-to-day functional jobs and orients them toward a larger purpose. In 2012, Volvo made a groundbreaking vision statement with a literally lifesaving purpose: to have zero deaths in its automobiles by 2020.² It was bold, risky, and meaningful. You can imagine how coalescing that kind of vision can be as traffic accidents have the potential to affect everyone, including every employee at Volvo.

But visions that communicate potential don’t need to be as grand. Ford Motor Company united behind “One Ford” to become the automotive powerhouse it is today. That may not sound all that inspiring at first. But remember, in 2008 the carmaker faced the worst-ever financial loss in its 105-year history, and was plagued by divisional infighting, falling sales, and a lackluster product line. Then-CEO Alan Mulally realized this vision by bringing Ford back as “One Ford,” ultimately becoming one of the most successful and admired car companies in the world.³

These are visions on a corporate scale, but visions also exist on an individual scale. We have visions for ourselves. As you no doubt know from times when someone has called out your potential, these conversations don’t have to be lengthy or even involved. A quick, off-the-cuff exchange can be resonant and meaningful. In my own life, most of them were exactly that: someone took me aside for a brief moment to spotlight something positive about me. Short, sweet, and very, very powerful.

SO WHAT’S SO POWERFUL ABOUT SEEING POTENTIAL?

In the mid-1960s, a psychologist named Robert Rosenthal and an elementary school principal named Lenore Jacobson got together to research a curious question: What impact do teacher expectations have on student performance? They decided to conduct a study of California elementary school students to find out. At the beginning of the school year, they had students take an IQ test but kept the results secret. Then they told the teachers that some students (regardless of actual IQ) were “intellectual bloomers” and thus, were academically superior to their classmates. The teachers spent the school year teaching all of the students in a routine classroom setting. At the end of the study, the researchers had all the students retake the same IQ test. They found that these faux “intellectual bloomers” scored significantly higher on the retake than their peers—regardless of their actual IQ at the start. It turns out that students will rise or fall based on the expectations that authority figures have of them.⁴ The researchers called this the Pygmalion effect.

That was fifty years ago, and surely things have changed, right? Actually, this phenomenon has been replicated by research many times over in the years since.⁵ The Pygmalion effect’s ramifications go far beyond academic settings. How people in authority view us becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: We rise or fall to their expectations. The cause is twofold. First, the authority figure treats us differently in subtle and unsubtle ways—perhaps giving us special attention and communicating with us like we’re smart—which changes how we think and behave. Second, when we learn that we are thought of highly, we change our behavior to meet that expectation.

A bevy of research in management has emerged based on this principle, across industries and fields.⁶ All leaders, whether in the classroom or the boardroom, have tremendous power simply by being in positions of authority. They possess the ability to influence how others view themselves. When you call out people’s greatness, the recipients see the greatness too.

Communicating potential is also meaningful because it reminds us of our strengths. Gallup conducted a voluminous amount of research around the impact of using our strengths at work. According to the findings, when people use their strengths at work, doing what they do best every day, they are six times as likely to be engaged and three times as likely to say they have an excellent quality of life.⁷ This makes sense. When we tap into our strengths we are using our innate talents, and that feels fun and rewarding. If you’ve ever been in a position of not using your strengths every day (which Gallup says is the situation with half of Americans) then you know what drudgery work can be.

Luckily, for many people with professional jobs, there are ways to incorporate your strengths into your work. When we identify another’s potential, we are generally in a discussion around strengths. We are highlighting an inherent talent that can be featured and grown. It’s so easy to forget what our strengths are—assuming we ever really knew—that having someone we respect validate our strengths is inspirational. I remember taking a strengths-assessment in the midst of building my last company. The results said that my top strength was creativity. I thought I had filled out the test wrong! It took a trusted colleague to help me recognize my own creative strength. (And here I am today writing books.)

Finally, when we highlight potential, we boost confidence. Confidence has an oversized impact on our effectiveness, and yet, we can’t just turn it on like a switch. (The more we try, the more it backfires.) When someone we respect—and who may even be in a position of authority—tells us what she believes we can do, we will borrow that person’s confidence in us. We may not have all the confidence required, but it only takes a little to begin tackling the challenges that will allow our own confidence to grow.

When I first contemplated becoming an entrepreneur, I was twenty-eight and had no idea how to run a company. At that point, I had a whopping four years of professional experience after graduate school. I might have easily been talked out of it. But then I told a colleague whom I admired and valued what I was considering. He told me that I had to do it. He said that I possessed an unusual ability to figure things out for myself, and that he thought I would figure this out too. I’d never identified that quality in myself, and his belief in me spoke volumes. It allowed me to see myself as he saw me. His insights fortified me.

This is the reason that pointing out potential can be so meaningful. When we take the time to do it, we are helping to create a virtuous cycle where people can do more, because they believe they can. In my experience, most people don’t have conversations about potential because they’re not thinking about it. With so many urgent conversations having to happen, a meandering compliment session may seem irrelevant or over the top. As a younger manager, it wouldn’t have dawned on me to do this, I’ll admit. But today I’m a much different leader and person. We have the power to unlock the potential in others; we simply have to think about it—whether friend-to-friend, colleague-to-colleague, or boss-to-employee.

SUPERBOSSES AND SUPER POTENTIAL

Anyone can call out someone’s potential, and it can be inspiring. I bet if a near-stranger came up to you after seeing you talk at a meeting and praised your strengths, you’d be affected. You’d certainly get a little skip in your step (assuming the person wasn’t creepy, of course).

But as the Pygmalion effect shows us, when we combine authority with recognizing potential, then we get something even more powerful. Leaders who focus on potential are the ones people clamor to work for. They create the visionary organizations that possess an energetic momentum.

In his book, Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, Dartmouth Management Professor Sydney Finkelstein examines how exceptional leaders cultivate talent.⁸ Finkelstein set out to understand a pattern: In any given industry, many of the top leaders have at one time worked for the same person. These “superbosses” are preternaturally able to hone and develop talent that spreads throughout the industry and establishes new successful ventures. He cites leaders such as Ralph Lauren, Mary Kay Ash, George Lucas, and Lorne Michaels, as well as several less widely known leaders who are nonetheless famous in their industries.

In more than two hundred interviews, Finkelstein found that superbosses hired talented people, but that was just the beginning. They also worked hands-on with their employees to help them accomplish things even larger than what the employees believed was possible. The superbosses communicated high expectations, and they certainly demanded a lot. But they also built up their teams by instilling “a sense of confidence and exceptionalism” in their people, who then rose to the challenge and beyond. Superbosses stayed connected with their people, helping them long after they left the company. For example, Lorne Michaels has produced dozens of shows for ex-Saturday Night Live cast members. The relationships clearly matter to superbosses, who become lifelong mentors and collaborators, helping to sow potential indefinitely.

Finkelstein described it to me this way: “Superbosses recognize potential. Many people I interviewed said that the leader saw something in them that they didn’t even know they had. I heard a story the other day of an executive who, when twenty-eight, was sent to Japan by his boss. He told his boss, ‘I’m not ready.’ The boss told him, ‘I’ll give you a safety net a couple of times, and I know you can do it or I wouldn’t ask you.’ He did it, and was successful, and looks back on it as a watershed moment.”

“When you have a boss who encourages your potential, and then you successfully conquer a big challenge, you feel as if there’s nothing you can’t do. It really is a career accelerator. Superbosses know this and foster it. Their default is to create opportunities.”⁹

In a similar vein, former Oracle executive Liz Wiseman’s book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter explores how certain leaders get so much from their people while others don’t.¹⁰ In her research, she discovered that leaders can be categorized as multipliers, who increase the intelligence of their teams, and diminishers, who underutilize their people and stifle creativity. Lots of us have worked with diminishers—micromanagers and generally bad bosses who leave us feeling drained. On the other hand, multipliers, Wiseman found, acknowledge a person’s “native genius”—not just what she does well, but also what she loves to do. Multipliers make smart people smarter, and ignite their strengths. They see and multiply potential.

It’s not an accident—multipliers make the effort. In an interview for the book, Wiseman explained it this way: “It struck me how deliberate multipliers are about how they lead. They had a meta process for management, or a cognition of why it’s a good approach. They weren’t just doing the work of leading, but were deliberate about their own approach to leadership. There wasn’t a single pattern for the leaders—some were more demanding, and others were more nurturing. But there was a planned and considered approach to how they worked.”¹¹

You may think that you have to be a name-brand leader or run a Fortune 500 company to be a multiplier or a superboss. Not at all. Organizations of all sizes and bents have leaders who invest in their people’s potential. I don’t run across them every day, but I do find them, and occasionally I’m lucky enough to work with them.

At the beginning of any coaching engagement, I put together a leadership assessment by speaking to numerous people who work with my client. The interviewees can be direct reports, board members, peers, or employees several levels down the chain. I’m looking to get an accurate picture of how my client shows up in a work setting, including strengths and areas for development. I’m also learning about the client’s presence, management approach, reputation, and leadership impact.

Asking people to give feedback on someone who may be their boss or even their boss’s boss can be a sensitive conversation. I’m always impressed by the candor that people bring to these discussions. The interviewees tell me a lot. Sometimes it seems they’ve been waiting for years for me to call and ask them! Most of the time, the feedback is fairly evenhanded—some positive, some critical—and in a professional tone that’s typical in a work environment.

But every once in a while I get a different reaction. Instead of listing the client’s strengths and weaknesses, the conversation will be dominated by what my client has done for the interviewee. More than providing feedback, the interviewee wants to acknowledge and thank the person. I recall one such interview process that blew me away. The feedback was about a client who had built a rapidly growing company. People were catching their breath from the change. Now, you might think you’d hear critiques about the leader being a hard driver. (I sure expected to.) Instead, I was regaled with tales of what a role model the leader was, and how people wanted to work harder for him. They talked about his integrity and values, and how he brought out the best in his people. A few participants actually said they loved him as a person, and compared the company to a family. Every single interviewee said he was the best boss they’d ever had.

Uh huh, I thought, I found one. Superboss. Multiplier. Potential communicator. Inspirer.

TO RECOGNIZE POTENTIAL: PUT THESE WORDS IN YOUR MOUTH

Calling out potential in others may feel somewhat foreign because many of us simply don’t do it. Hopefully (hint, hint) we have these conversations with our children and our loved ones and can consider how we’ve approached those. It can be awkward if you’re not already wired to talk this way. If you’re worried about coming across as over-the-top or insincere, don’t be. Sharing potential can be a quick conversation, as I mentioned above. It need only be authentic and delivered without expectation. We can weave these conversations easily into the daily course of our work and lives. We think these thoughts already; it’s only a matter of spitting them out.

Here are five straightforward ways to communicate potential in those around you. Of course there’s an unlimited number of ways to have these conversations, and I’m certainly not trying to suggest there’s a right or a wrong way to do it. Rather, I’m hoping to point out that getting these conversations started is not very difficult or formal. And frankly, sometimes the conversation only needs to be one comment sincerely given, either alone or in the middle of a larger Inspire Path conversation.

“I see ______ in you.”

Perhaps the simplest way to recognize potential in another person is to just say what you see in that person. It may be greatness, skillfulness, kindness, effectiveness, leadership, or a spot-on sense of humor. The list goes on. By stating what we see, we are externalizing what we’re already thinking. And remember, we all have those innate strengths that are too often forgotten. By drawing attention to them, we’re validating what makes another person exceptional to us.

Even better, there’s no way for the other person to reject this comment. It’s your perspective, plain and simple. You’re just putting it out there.

“You’re always good at ______.”

Most leaders do provide positive feedback to their teams, though not as often as they should. In general, this is around a point in time or a specific event. For example, “You ran that product launch very well.” Rarely do we elevate this conversation to underscore what talent is allowing the person to be successful. And potential feedback isn’t about behavior change; it’s offered as a gift with no attachments.

This type of conversation about potential helps people home in on what they consistently do well. That knowledge can take them into the realm of what’s possible. Let’s say a product manager is effective because she’s able to bring people together behind a common goal. She’s a mobilizer. Calling attention to this competency allows her to see her own contribution in a much broader way. If a leader tells her that then she can seek out opportunities to continue exploring those strengths, even if it means stretching out of product management to try new avenues.

“I’m proud of you for ______.”

This statement may feel a little off to some of you, and I understand why. Outside of our children and other close loved ones, we don’t often tell other people that we’re proud of them. There’s even an implied hierarchical line that may feel iffy to cross: It’s okay to tell people below us that we’re proud of them, but not anyone else. (No matter how senior someone is to you, however, I’ve found everyone appreciates hearing “I’m proud to work for you” or “I’m proud to work with you.”)

However, all of that is precisely why expressing pride can be meaningful and inspiring to another person. We don’t hear it very much. And when it’s offered with sincerity, communicating pride brings a sort of humanity to the conversation that stands out. It says, “I’m invested in you” in a deep way.

“I’ve observed how you’ve grown/progressed.”

In the forward momentum of our lives, we rarely look back to appreciate the hard work and growth we’ve achieved. That’s a shame, because seeing that progress teaches us about our abilities, strengths, and potential. When we call this out for another, we’re creating a space to honor that person’s journey. We’re pausing to bring color to the history a person has zipped through.

By offering this observation, we’re helping someone take ownership and value development and potential. It also shows that you’ve been bearing witness to another person’s path, which communicates investment.

“Let me share what I see is possible for you.”

This is about creating a vision. It works as well for a person as for an entire organization. It’s painting a picture of a future that the other person might not even know is possible. Storytelling can be particularly effective here, as a way to help the other person step inside of this vision and try it on for size. Again, it’s up to the others to do what they want to do with it. This conversation about possibility enlarges the other person’s perspective and shows what could be.

It’s probably obvious to you why this can be so inspiring: You invite the person to imagine an expanded reality. When we see the future for ourselves, all the baggage of our doubts, fears, and practicalities handcuffs it. When others share their vision for us, it’s not dragged down by any of that; it’s pure possibility. I’ve seen well-put conversations like this change lives almost overnight—moving someone from a place of stasis to a newly defined future.

“What would you do if anything were possible?

This powerful question is a different approach than the previous suggestions. We can tell people the potential we see, and we can also guide them to discover it on their own. As was just discussed, we approach our future handcuffed and limited. Fear is the heavy foot putting the brakes on our aspirations.

This question forces the other person to put aside his fear and engage in his own untethered vision. It doesn’t deny the fear; it sidesteps it. And when we can help another person think through his potential unrestricted, he can begin to separate possibilities from fear. Having used this question often in coaching, I’ve observed that more often than not, other people end up disavowing some of the fear that had been holding them back. By sampling the potential—turning it around in their minds and making it real—they are often willing to invest in themselves in newly committed ways.

POTENTIAL BOOSTS ON THE INSPIRE PATH

So now you have some “easy ins” to insert more conversations about potential into your world. You can make communicating potential part of any conversation where you want to connect and inspire. It may be part of a larger way that you want to show up as a leader, colleague, or friend. No matter, it’s a gift that requires little from you, but offers much to the recipient. As with any inspiring conversation, you never know where the impact ends. When our potential is called out and acknowledged, we tuck away the moment and pull it out when we need it—even decades later.

When we choose to externalize the possibilities that we see for others, we also change how they view themselves. We enlarge and expand perspective. We encourage and build confidence. Very often, we also make someone’s day. Pretty awesome result for saying what we already think.