Our Hidden Potential To Become Better Versions Of Ourselves

Loved co-hosting a book party at the home of Samantha Boardman to celebrate Adam Grant 's new book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. I love all of his books, but I particularly love this one, and not just because I founded a tech company devoted to behavior change. It’s a book that’s truly made for the current moment.

The book, as Adam puts it, is about “getting better at getting better” — and not just getting better at any skill you’re developing (like diving, writing, public speaking). It’s also about getting better at getting better as people, fulfilling our drive for self-discovery, self-knowledge, and becoming better versions of ourselves – more generous, more empathetic, more giving.

“This book is not about ambition,” Adam writes. “It’s about aspiration. As the philosopher Agnes Callard highlights, ambition is the outcome you want to attain. Aspiration is the person you hope to become. The question is not how much money you earn, how many fancy titles you land, or how many awards you accumulate. Those status symbols are poor proxies for progress. What counts is not how hard you work but how much you grow.”

What I love about the book is that it's built into the idea of potential and growth and becoming is that we’re all works in progress. That truth — that growth and evolving include failures, missteps, imperfections, and saying or doing the wrong thing – requires allowing us to learn from our mistakes, and it’s in short supply right now. It’s clear that our culture – driven by social media – doesn’t give people the room they need to, as Adam puts it, “improve at improving.”

That allowance for our basic humanity is how we grow and evolve not just individually but collectively. It’s not antithetical to accountability, but essential to it. The author and activist bell hooks beautifully captured how these two ideas fit together: “how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”

In the book, Adam describes the difference between personality and character. “Personality is not your destiny—it’s your tendency,” he writes. “Character skills enable you to transcend that tendency to be true to your principles…The true test of character is whether you manage to stand by those values when the deck is stacked against you.” And, I would add, how much you stand by others when they’re attempting in good faith to grow and evolve themselves.

One of my favorite metaphors in the book is the idea of scaffolding, which Adam describes as “a temporary support structure that enables us to scale heights we couldn’t reach on our own. It helps us build the resilience to overcome obstacles that threaten to overwhelm us and limit our growth.” And, he adds, scaffolding generally comes from other people.

So in thinking about how we can unlock our own potential to become better versions of ourselves, how can we be the scaffolding to help others do the same, and reorient our culture to one that celebrates this quality, instead of suppressing it? As Adam writes, “The most meaningful growth is not building our careers—it’s building our character. Success is more than reaching our goals—it’s living our values. There’s no higher value than aspiring to be better tomorrow than we are today.”