Aren’t We All High Potential?
In the past my answer would have been hell no! Some people are just smarter than others and do better than others in the same way that some people are short and some people are tall. During these ‘hell no’ years I was a sucker for accepting and believing what I was told about individual potential. If a person told me they had high potential I believed them. If someone told me they had low potential I believed them too. And let’s not even get started on what some people say about others. I believed far too much of that nonsense too.
Seeing The Change
Somewhere along the way something changed my view about everyone’s potential. Spending thousands of hours talking to hundreds of people about work, life, and careers had a big hand in this change. I can’t pin down an exact ‘light bulb over the head’ moment but there was a definite switch in my thinking. Within all of the stories I’d heard, at some point it dawned on me that no one has higher potential than anyone else. And, once I’d seen this I couldn’t un-see it. Things would never go back to the way they were.
I did my best to ignore the new evidence at first. How could everyone have the same high potential in a world with so much inequality in achievement whichever way we turn? So many outward signs of successful lives and careers screamed that some people have it and other people don’t. The outside world is quick to show the very clear and very real differences between who can and who can’t.
But appearances can be very deceptive.
My granny – and seemingly most of our grannies for that matter – said not to judge books by their covers but we do so nonetheless. Our grannies were right. Look beneath the surface and the evidence for high potential keeps coming back. Keeps showing and repeating itself in all kinds of different and unexpected ways. As I continued to go below the surface I found people who refused to sit easily within the categories the outside world was so quick to place them in.
Being The Change
The beating heart of even the most minor supporting role we can play in other people’s experience of work, life, and careers, is to leave them feeling better about making their own choices. To be a partner and a confidant to someone until they are more comfortable – and are able to think more comfortably – even during times of stress. If you can do this for just one person, you will be realising not just the higher potential in them but the higher potential in yourself too. I really believe this, the same way I now believe no one has more potential than anyone else.
Ask yourself if you really believe deep down it’s impossible for someone, anyone, to improve their lot or get better at something. Sometimes all we have to do is listen to another person talking about what they do – or what they would like to do more of – to see signs of high potential, however small.
You don’t have to be a coach, a manager, or anything else to put deeper listening into practice either. All you really have to do is genuinely spend time with someone and let the idea of higher potential resonate with you. Here’s a good test… Ask yourself about the potential of the last person you spoke to or the next person you meet. What stands out about that person? What might the higher potential for that person be? (especially if they had a little more time, space, and encouragement).
Leading The Change
As it so often does, experience gave my head a wobble and showed me a more realistic way to think about everyone’s potential. Which of us could really reliably pick the 10 year-old destined to do great things in later life? Who can do this again from within a group of adults? Who among us goes on to fulfil and develop their true potential? Read any individual success story and you’ll find a person who doubted themselves, and was usually doubted by others time and again. What you will also hear is the voice of someone who refused to accept a lower definition of their potential.
Experience taught me to look for potential in everyone because it is so much more likely to be there than be absent. It’s not only more accurate to do this, it feels better for both sides too – for the looker and the lookee there are benefits.
We all have the potential to improve ourselves, improve where we are, or where we are going. If meeting and talking with so many people about work, life, and careers has taught me anything, it’s this… Every single one of us has high potential.
