“Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.” Brenda Ueland
The word “potential’ transcends multiple fields from physics to social sciences. When we consider potential in electrons we discuss in terms of energy. In neuroscience, we refer to action potential as nerve impulses and when we relate it to people we understand it as ‘unrealised ability’.
A very common exercise in science projects when we were growing up is to understand and measure elasticity by stretching and extending a spring and a rubber band, to become aware of its properties and differences. When we extend this to the world of human beings, can we say that human potential is the attribute of elasticity in all of us? The extent to which we are capable of stretching and extending ourselves differentiates our abilities to perform and grow?
If high potential is higher elasticity then the degree to which we are flexible, adaptable or resilient could possibly determine our unrealised ability.
Does ‘potential’ need an eco system to flourish?
Studies have established that ‘culture’ plays a strong role in nurturing potential. Cultures can empower or inhibit potential. An empowering culture provides freedom to ‘be’ that allows people to express their potential in diverse ways. To quote “The short answer is to give people more freedom, because the more freedom, respect and love that people have, the more natural they will be, which means they are going to be more curious.”
Nurturing a Culture of Curiosity
It is well known that curiosity plays a crucial role in the development of children and the success of parenting lies in encouraging them to discover and learn. As adults too, the internal desire to learn and to seek out new experiences leads to expansion of perspectives, a key to growth. Culture that promotes this desire to stay alive in curiosity helps people to be energetic and enthusiastic. A motivated life expands in its potential. Thwarted curiosity leads to apathy and disinterest and the commensurate affects of an unexamined life can be culturally far-reaching.
Allowing for Failure
The attribute of individual curiosity loses its significance without the freedom to experiment, fail and learn. High-potential organisations, teams or individuals are high on ideas – some that work and some that may not work.
Cultures driven by anxiety and fear stifle potential. The debate between the need to standardise and the need to innovate does not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Alternative thinking towards building the mindset of intrapreneurship, or entrepreneurial ability, and providing freedom to impact in different ways equally leverages potential.
Can potential be enhanced?
Having an orientation for mastery and striving for excellence in whatever we do pushes our boundaries in multiple directions. Depth can only be built when we expand our knowledge, our competence, our horizon of what is achievable. A desire for mastery provides the courage of conviction to challenge oneself at the next paradigm. While skills are more easily teachable, performance and learning models need to fuel this passion and orientation to inspire people to outperform.
Being open to change has far reaching impact on our abilities. When we expand our mindset triggered by an internal motivation to evolve or to adapt to changing contexts, our potential for facing new challenges enhances. A positive attitude embraces change and creates opportunities through extended ways.
However when we are uncomfortable or fear change, our limiting beliefs contract our opportunities to extend. Our sphere of influence and realisation of our potential thus narrows and we exist in predictable spaces of performance. Injecting challenges periodically through creative means and nudging people out of their comfort zone at work helps in creating mindset shifts.
The generational context
In a young country like India, with a large workforce pillared on the youth and a future driven by young leaders, the conversation on potential is even more significant today. Learning and experience cycles are getting crunched in a complex, fast-paced, dynamic environment.
Young leaders need to be emotionally mature and collaborative to lead teams and inspire as role models. Both experience and wisdom have to be inculcated at a young age to manage this transition. It is therefore critical for organisations to identify potential, spot talent early and work towards developing the youth for tomorrow.
If we consider the pyramid as inverted, the higher order skills need to be addressed much earlier to sensitise the workforce. Young adults are more malleable than experienced adults; hence cultural, performance and learning factors need to address the generational context and capability needs.
The questions that we are led to, in order to manage workforce of the future: What do we reframe? What do we renew? What do we realign?
The Reframe, Renew, Realign model is my proprietary approach for building generational competence. The competencies for the development of high potential youth in the generational context has been crafted after careful research and study of the drivers and motivation to succeed keeping environmental factors and future imperatives in perspective.
Understanding multi-generational workplaces and being sensitive to generational orientation is part of an evolutionary process of workforce management.
