| Want to know how you can be a better: leader teammate spouse parent friend There’s one thing you can do for others, that almost no one else does. It’s a way to help others become the best version of themselves. A gift that keeps on giving. What is this gift? See their potential In a classic study by Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal, students from 18 different classrooms (ranging from Kindergarten to the fifth grade) took a cognitive ability test, which measured skills deemed critical to learning and problem solving. Afterwards, Rosenthal shared the test results with the teachers: Approximately 20 percent of the students showed potential for “unusual intellectual gains over the course of the school year.” Teachers naturally gave special attention to these ‘gifted’ students. When students took the test a year later, the ‘bloomers’ had indeed improved more than the others–their IQ points rose at greater rates, and two years later they were still outgaining classmates. Exactly what you’d expect, right? Except for one thing: The “high-potential” students didn’t actually score higher on the test. They were chosen at random. “The study was designed to find out what happened to students when teachers believed they had high potential,” writes Adam Grant in his book Give and Take. “Rosenthal randomly selected 20 percent of the students in each classroom to be labeled as bloomers, and the other 80 percent were a control group. “The bloomers weren’t any smarter than their peers–the difference ‘was in the mind of the teacher.’” In other words, says Grant, the belief of the teacher created “self-fulfilling prophecies.” This doesn’t just happen with children. Management researcher Brian McNatt analyzed seventeen separate studies of nearly 3,000 employees working in a wide variety of organizations. McNatt found that when managers saw and treated employees as having high potential, they bloomed—showing increased motivation and effort. At work, most company leaders try to identify people with high talent that they can then develop. But what if, instead, company leaders: assumed everyone had great potential focused on each persons’ strengths highlighted those strengths helped them develop and leverage those strengths Same thing goes if you’re a spouse. Or, a parent. Or, a friend. Ask yourself: What are my teammate’s (or spouse’s, or child’s, or friend’s) strengths? How can I help, encourage, and support them? Why not develop the habit of giving them sincere, authentic praise? Take time to answer these questions. Then, act upon them. Because you have the power to help others believe in themselves. But to do that, you have to believe in them, first. |
Talk soon,
Justin
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