Unlocking Your Team’s Hidden Potential
Unlocking Your Team’s Hidden Potential
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant emphasizes that potential, much like the gradual improvement seen when learning to ride a bike, is a more reliable predictor of workplace success than past performance, urging leaders to focus on fostering growth in others.
How to Help Individuals Achieve Progress as a Group
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant argues that traditional group brainstorming stifles potential, advocating for individual idea generation followed by group evaluation to harness diverse perspectives and overcome self-limiting beliefs, ultimately enhancing team effectiveness and leadership.
Choose to Be a Coach
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant emphasizes that effective leaders balance encouragement and constructive criticism by acting as coaches, helping individuals recognize their strengths and weaknesses while fostering personal growth through self-awareness and feedback.
Give Effective Feedback
In a video lesson, organizational psychologist Adam Grant argues that separating praise from criticism and framing feedback as attainable growth goals enhances effectiveness, as the traditional "feedback sandwich" often dilutes the impact of constructive criticism.
Do’s and Don’ts for Addressing Underperformance
In this video lesson, organizational psychologist Adam Grant emphasizes the importance of timely feedback, framing it as actionable advice rather than criticism, and differentiating between types of failures to foster growth and development in direct reports.
Embrace the Power of Diversity
In a scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian, the protagonist urges the crowd to think for themselves, highlighting the irony of their uniformity, which organizational psychologist Adam Grant uses to emphasize the importance of hiring for culture contribution and diversity beyond mere similarities.
Hire for Growth Capabilities
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant advocates for prioritizing a candidate's ability to learn and grow over years of experience, suggesting that motivation and opportunity are better indicators of future success, and recommends structuring interviews to assess these qualities through relevant challenges.
Identify and Develop High-Potential Employees
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant emphasizes that high-potential team members can effectively alternate between abstract and concrete thinking, enabling them to envision innovative strategies while also addressing practical details, and suggests coaching techniques to enhance this dual-thinking capability.
Share Your Flaws to Spike Psychological Safety
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant emphasizes that leaders must establish psychological safety by openly criticizing themselves, as this encourages candid feedback and helps individuals reach their full potential, especially in environments where fear of judgment prevails.
Recognize and Break Patterns of Groupthink
Albert Einstein's warning against uniform thinking highlights the dangers of groupthink, which can stifle innovation and growth; organizational psychologist Adam Grant emphasizes the importance of diverse perspectives and strategies to counteract the HIPPO Effect in leadership.
No one is perfect at a task or skill the first time they attempt it, but luckily where someone starts doesn’t determine how far they can go with solid guidance and practice. According to organizational psychologist Adam Grant, we all have more potential than we realize. In this class, he discusses how leaders can (and should!) identify potential in their team members and then help them achieve it.
Learning Objectives
- Break up patterns of groupthink in favor of fresh perspectives.
- Model psychological safety while coaching others to reach their potential.
- Frame feedback productively so it’s positively received and beneficial.
- Focus your hiring process on the potential for culture contribution and learning.
- Identify and nurture those capable of both abstract and concrete thinking.