In Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, Adam Grant (Originals) presents evidence-based tools for unlocking the social, emotional, and behavioral skills essential to success. Grant's fifth book for adults, enhanced with stories from the fields of architecture, music, sports, and academics, is a guide to becoming the person the reader desires to be, no matter what natural talents they may or may not possess. The author is an acclaimed organizational psychologist whose own most meaningful accomplishments have come in areas where he started with "serious shortages of talent." When people judge potential, he explains, they make the mistake of focusing on starting points, the abilities that are immediately visible. Yet potential is not a matter of where they start but of how far they travel. In Grant's case, he went from being "the worst diver in my school to ranking among the best in the country."
Opening with the premise that character skills "predict and produce success in life," as economist James Heckman once put it, Grant shares the example of one of the world's oldest animals, the sea sponge, to demonstrate how the "capacity to absorb, filter, and adapt" is the type of skill that can catapult people to unexpected heights. It's never too late to strengthen one's character, Grant writes, and people can learn to become more determined, disciplined, and proactive with sustained practice and by constructing for themselves the right sort of scaffolding for support. Hidden Potential challenges fundamental assumptions about the capabilities and promise existing within everyone; fortunately, for underdogs and late bloomers everywhere, it offers realistic, actionable strategies for achieving one's aspirational goals. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer