Forget About People’s Potential, Focus On This Instead
How do you rate someone’s potential? Potential to do or be what exactly? What if the person is struggling in their current job? Do they have potential? Maybe they do but in a different job? Depending on why they are struggling, they may have that potential even in their current job.
Most people asked to fill in the nine-box grid or similar performance management tool, take the current performance, and project it forward. If someone performs today, they have potential. If someone struggles, they don’t have potential.
Unfortunately, this thinking makes the nine-box nonsensical as you rate current performance on both axes and project your worldview into it. You do not measure the potential of the person you are rating.
Yet, how you rate someone’s potential will have a massive impact on their career within the company. If you rate them as having high potential, they will get more training, more opportunities, and bigger paychecks. If you rate them as having low potential, they won’t get the same opportunities. It will impact their lives. It will create a self-fulfilling prophecy. All this potential harm and you are just guessing.
Mindset and investing in people
Fixed mindset leaders live in a world where abilities are fixed. Some people are superior to others. And therefore, they need to keep affirming that they are between the superior ones. Their ego takes precedence over the good of the organization. They don’t want to be surrounded by great people. They want to be surrounded by less skilled people who will acknowledge the leader’s greatness.
Growth mindset leaders have the opposite approach. They want to keep learning and growing, which means surrounding themselves with people they can learn from. They want to build great teams. They want to hire people who will help them become better.
“Fixed mindset managers are focused on talent. Since they don’t believe all people have potential, they focus almost entirely on getting the talent from outside the organization.”
Fixed mindset managers are focused on talent. Since they don’t believe all people have potential, they focus almost entirely on getting the talent from outside the organization. Why waste time trying to develop people when you know in your heart that it would take a lot of effort and they would never reach the level of the talented employees you can bring from the outside anyway? These managers are also more likely to ignore the improved performance of those they already declared as low-performing.
Not everyone can be a crucial player in the team. Some are better than others. However, that doesn’t mean they should be treated better. Everyone should get an equitable opportunity to do their best and to improve.
When they decide to leave one day, anyone from the team should be able to say, “I have learned a lot here. I have contributed to the best of my abilities. I have grown a lot, and I have become a better person.” They may not get the promotion they desired as there was someone better suited on the team, but if they can get it elsewhere, you have still done a good job as their manager.
The problem with potential
There is a problem with potential. The way most of us see potential is to measure the current ability we have and project it into the future. That is a fixed mindset approach. There is no way this approach can work for growth mindset individuals.
“Potential is the ability to develop and grow over time. How can you measure where effort and learning can take a person? You can’t. Everyone has the potential to become more than they are today.”
The problem is that the definition of potential is rather fuzzy. You can find many definitions, but none of them is particularly helpful. Buckingham and Goodall, in their book Nine Lies About Work, use the definition from Harvard Business Review. “High potentials consistently and significantly outperform their peer groups in a variety of settings and circumstances. While achieving these superior levels of performance, they exhibit behaviors that reflect their companies’ culture and values in an exemplary manner. Moreover, they show a strong capacity to grow and succeed throughout their careers within an organization—more quickly and effectively than their peer groups do.”
Let’s analyze the definition above. “High potentials consistently and significantly outperform their peer groups,” meaning that if you in your current role don’t outperform others, you are not high potential. “…in variety of settings and circumstances,” how should I know? If I’m your manager, I see how you perform on my team and my project. I have no idea how you would work in other settings and circumstances. To continue with the definition, “…they exhibit behaviors that reflect their companies’ culture and values.” I agree, though, how do I rate this? I might have a list of official company values. However, rating whether someone is strong in teamwork or customer focus depends mostly on what I believe that behavior means. It has a loose relation to what you actually do. “…they show a strong capacity to grow and succeed throughout their careers within an organization—more quickly and effectively than their peer groups do.” So now, I guess we are talking about cognitive abilities. To rate you on these, I should ask you to take an IQ test or use a similar tool to measure your cognitive abilities. No one does that in the real world.
I like this definition quite a lot. However, as I showed you, I still find it difficult to use when measuring someone’s potential. Because that is what you want to do, reliably measure. If you can’t measure it and are asked to judge someone’s potential, then it is just guesswork. You are projecting your views and biases onto someone else. It is difficult to rate someone’s performance reliably, and it is utterly impossible to rate their potential or future performance. You are not an oracle.
Another problem with this definition of potential is that you will most likely not recognize yourself in it. You get a feeling that by that definition, you are not a high-potential, yet you should judge whether others are. Tricky. You may excel at some activities that you enjoy, but you are not excelling at everything under any conditions, which this definition implies. Moreover, everyone’s performance is always a combination of their ability, effort, and attitude, as well as the environment and the team around them.
“Everyone’s performance is always a combination of their ability, effort, and attitude, as well as the environment and the team around them.”
Boris Groysberg and his team examined more than a thousand high-performing analysts on Wall Street. They found out that most of these stars didn’t fare particularly well when changing companies. Their performance and success declined. The conclusion is that their former excellence was tied to their employer’s resources, culture, colleagues, and networks. You may have high-potential employees stuck in a role or on a team that doesn’t allow them to shine. So you rate them wrongly as low potentials and rob them of any chance of excelling. And vice versa.
There is no scientific evidence that would point to the existence of a generic potential available only in select people. Instead, there is enough evidence coming from neurology that says our brains keep growing and developing throughout our lives. New synapses pop up all the time, and even though our brains are unique, they all have something in common. We all have the capacity to learn. We can all get better at something, but not at everything. We all have potential. And it is nonsensical to try to measure it.
“We all have potential. And it is nonsensical to try to measure it.”
As Buckingham and Goodall write, the attempts to rate people as high potential and low potential create a divide within the company and lead to wasted resources. It is also profoundly immoral. Branding someone as having low potential makes them an underclass that deserves less than the high potential. And yet, you keep saying you are hiring only the best. You hired the best and then branded them as low potential. How can you sleep at night knowing that you are hurting others this way?
How do you identify high potentials?
The best employees have an exponentially bigger impact on the company’s success than average employees. The more skill-based the work, the bigger the difference in performance.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Seymour Adler, and Robert B. Kaiser talk about ways to assess high potentials. They talk about three predictors of future performance. First, it is the ability to do the job and cognitive ability. Second, social skills, including the ability to manage yourself and others. Third, drive, a will to work hard and do whatever it takes to achieve the goals. But once again, how do you reliably assess those? Considering the amount of time and effort that needs to go into it, it is highly impractical for regular review of all your employees.
Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, Andrew Roscoe, and Kentaro Aramaki claim that a vast majority of leadership development programs focused on future potential leaders are unsuccessful. They see the same problem in figuring out who the real potentials are. Ultimately, Fernández-Aráoz and colleagues came up with a set of predictors that they believe helps identify the high potential in leadership.
The first is the right motivation and commitment to excel in big collective goals. Unfortunately, this one is very contextual and not easy to measure. The other predictors are curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination. Again, not that easy to measure, but at least relatively easy to see.
Claudio Fernández-Aráoz then summarizes these four qualities that show potential in his article in Harvard Business Review. Curiosity is having a need and interest in seeking out new experiences, knowledge, and feedback. It leads to a willingness to change and learn. Insight is the ability to gather and make sense of information, and it is tied to general cognitive abilities. Engagement is knowing how to use emotion and logic to communicate a compelling vision and connect with people. You could call it emotional intelligence. Determination is then the ability to deal with adverse circumstances, accomplish challenging goals, and bounce back from adversity. You can call it resilience, perseverance, or grit. This is the closest you ever get to identifying high potentials.
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“If you need to talk about potential, then forget any traits and attributes related to the actual performance today, and consider attitude as the only criterion.”
If you need to talk about potential, forget any traits and attributes related to the actual performance today, and consider attitude the only criterion. You may also consider their cognitive ability or IQ, but don’t get stuck with it exclusively. People with higher IQs may have a higher cap on what they can achieve, but there is a zero guarantee that they ever get there. A claim that high cognitive ability equals high potential is false. What’s the point someone can get somewhere if they never even give it a try?
Fixed mindset people have the need to prove they are the smartest person in the room. And the only way to prove it is to be always right. And that means staying firmly in their comfort zone. No stretching. No trying something new. No growth.
Growth mindset people have the need to learn and keep trying new things. They feel smartest, not when they are right, but when they learn something new. Over time, this is a winning strategy. These people may fail more often, but they fail at more demanding tasks and, therefore, ultimately become more than they were in the past.
People show potential through a set of attitudes. The most obvious one is that they need to care and have the grit to do something about it. This also means that fast-tracking promotions of high performers won’t help them to accelerate their growth. Uncomfortable assignments and stretch projects are the way to get your high potential to the next level. Because of their curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination, high potentials will step up, take on the challenge, and will succeed and grow exponentially.
Forget potential. Focus on momentum instead.
When you change your mindset and realize that everyone has potential, it frees you to leave the future of your employees in their own hands. They all have the potential and talent to do something. It is a question of them wanting to do something about it. Those with a growth mindset will get there. Those with a fixed mindset won’t.
Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall introduce a different way to look at people rather than trying to judge their potential. They talk about momentum.
Momentum has two ingredients. First is mass, which is what the person carries with them wherever they go. It is their traits, wants, and aspirations. Second, is velocity. It is the way they apply their traits and aspirations in the real world. It is the direction they are heading, past performance, and skills acquired. These change over time and can be developed. Velocity describes what the person did, how well, and how quickly. As you know from physics, when you combine mass and velocity, you get momentum.
"Everyone has momentum. Everyone can learn. It is just a question of how fast and in which direction you go."
Talk about potential is misguided and depressing as it implies that someone can grow and someone can’t. When you change the conversation to talk about momentum, you get into the more positive and constructive territory. Everyone has momentum. Everyone can learn. It is just a question of how fast and in which direction you go. Momentum is also something that is not fixed. It changes with time and can be influenced.
When you talk to others about their momentum, you are helping them understand where they are at this moment and where they want to go. You can also help them understand what they will bring with them going forward, what they can change, what they can learn, and at what speed they want to go.
To sum it up
The whole focus on talent can be a double-edged sword. It is one thing to build a company culture that hires only the best talent available and pays the best money. It is another thing to put talented employees on such a high pedestal that it sends a message that you shouldn’t be here if you are not equally gifted. What does it lead to? It leads to people trying their best to be seen as talented. It means that people won’t be willing to admit mistakes or that they don’t know something. It leads to a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset leads to less risk-taking and less innovation. The almost religious fixation on talent can cause real harm to the organizational culture.
As I wrote in Why Your Leadership Development Model Doesn’t Work, stop sorting out talent even if you have limited resources. If you need to prioritize, forget about the one-way evaluation of potential and invest in those who invest in themselves. Do not waste your time with people who don’t care. Help those who are proactively helping themselves. As I wrote in Become Gritty To Succeed In Life, those who have grit, perseverance, and determination will have the biggest chance of success in life. They will give you the best return on your investment. They want to get somewhere and will go there even without you. You can help them to get there faster. You can increase their momentum.
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What are your thoughts on the topic? Do you believe that some people have potential while others don’t? How do you recognize someone has potential? Do you believe the concept of momentum makes sense?
Photo: geralt / Pixabay.com
Originally posted on my blog about management, leadership, communication, coaching, introversion, software development, and career The Geeky Leader or follow me on Facebook and Twitter: @GeekyLeader
Organisational Development (OD) Partner at Xero
3 个月Such an interesting post Tomas Kucera - do you have examples of how organisations are implementing the momentum instead of potential concept in a practical sense? Thanks!
Commercial Officer @ Road Development Agency | Real Estate Expert
11 个月Interesting! I like the post