Seeing Potential Beyond Performance
What do we actually see when we call someone promising? A strong grade, a confident contribution, a polished presentation? These are useful signals, but they tell us relatively little about how a person got there or what they might achieve with a different kind of support.
A friend and I recently talked about the core memories we carry of teachers telling us we couldn’t. Mine comes from the year I spent in high school theater. A teacher repeatedly assigned me male roles (I did not want) and insisted that I dress as a man in every play. I was humilated for a year.
One day before rehearsal, I was sitting with friends, talking about what we wanted to do after graduation. I said I wanted to go to college. The teacher overheard and said aloud that I would never get into a college.
That moment taught me something lasting about who I did not want to be. I never wanted to speak to anyone else that way. I still think about sending that teacher a letter of where I am now - professor with tenure, happy in my job and home - and how her words and actions were inapprpriate (something I dare not say at 15 years old). That would be all, signed Dr. Elizabeth Napier.
As an educator, I carry that lesson into how I think about students and their futures. A teacher’s words can stay with someone long after the class has ended.
In later years, I have encountered teachers and mentors who inspire and support my work, and others who tore it down while publiclly shaming me for failure to deliver to their expectation. I have learned that both exist in the world. As loud as the negative comments can be, I try to block out that noise and turn up the volume of those cheerleaders.
There is room in that support for honest advice. Someone can believe in our potential and still help us see where we need to improve. Dismissing what we might become offers us very little to work with.
Adam Grant’s Hidden Potential offers a useful starting point. He asks us to consider the distance someone has traveled alongside the level they have reached. His emphasis on character skills, motivation and access to opportunity broadens the conversation beyond cognitive ability. For those of us who teach, it raises a practical question: are we creating opportunities for students whose potential we have yet to recognize?
Paying attention to progress
As an educator, I wonder what we might learn by looking more closely at a student’s trajectory. A cumulative GPA compresses several years into one number. That number matters, yet it can obscure substantial improvement. A student who struggled initially and gradually learned how to engage with difficult material has a story worth understanding.
This is an argument for reading achievement in context. Alongside grades, we could ask what changed between an early attempt and a later one. Did the student reconsider an assumption? Seek help? Use a suggestion thoughtfully? These questions draw attention to learning that a final score alone may leave unexplained.
They also make the teacher’s role more visible. An invitation to revise, or a conversation that helps a student identify where they are stuck, can give someone a practical way forward. Motivation becomes easier to act on when there is an opportunity to practice and someone willing to help.
Think about a person who helped you develop. What did they notice that you had not yet recognized in yourself?
Support that helps us improve
Grant’s distinction between cheerleaders, critics and coaches offers a way to think about the support we need. Encouragement can help us keep going. Coaching adds a practical next step. The people who support us may offer both, taking our aspirations seriously enough to help us work toward them.
Grant suggests asking for advice about future improvement. A question such as “What is one thing I could do better next time?” gives the conversation a clear direction. For a student preparing a presentation, that could lead to a specific suggestion about explaining the evidence.
For educators, the same question is worth asking about our teaching. It invites a response we can work with. It also makes improvement something we participate in, rather than something we expect only from students.
Of course, trying a different approach can feel awkward. Grant’s discussion of discomfort is useful here: familiar ways of working can become comfortable enough that we stop examining them. Yet discomfort alone tells us very little about whether learning is happening.
Learning that reaches beyond the individual
This brings us to another question: what happens to everyone else in the room when one person contributes?
In his writing on teams, Grant highlights the importance of sharing knowledge and helping others develop. Individual expertise becomes more useful when people can draw on it together. A confident speaker may have something valuable to offer, but so may the person who has been quietly considering a different explanation.
In a classroom, we could make more space for those contributions by asking students to write briefly before discussion or explain how a peer’s idea changed their thinking. We might pay attention to the student who asks a clarifying question that others were hesitant to raise. That contribution can deepen the whole group’s understanding, even when it does not look like an impressive answer.
I cannot change what that theater teacher said. I can be thoughtful about the words I use and the opportunities I offer. Seeing potential requires patience with what is unfinished, including the student whose next step is not yet clear.
For me, that leaves a practical question for teaching: when a student leaves the room, have we helped them see a next step they can take? And have we given them a chance to help someone else find theirs?
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