If you are reading this the chances are you think not. In a recent presentation I discussed the concept of potential with the group. Potential can be defined as Inherent capacity for growth or learning.
I displayed a picture of sunflower seeds and a picture of sunflowers.
‘Which are you', I asked the group (who had an average age of 50)
'Both' they replied.
‘No I am not accepting that,’ I answered …after a silence I continued, ’I think you are all flowers - with different qualities of bloom!’
Well, the participants didn’t like that! At the age of fifty they still saw themselves as seeds.
To bring out my point more I displayed two photos .a picture of a baby and one of a handsome 40 something (who looked a lot like me!)
‘Ok, but who has more potential?’ I asked.
‘The baby!’ was the unanimous cry .’Good’ I thought (because in my thinking the baby equated to the seeds).
So I continued, ‘who has more talent?’
Well this left them a bit stunned. But they succumbed to accepting that perhaps I had more talent, albeit in a more limited scope than the way we had defined potential.
The fact is that by the time we hit our twenties, our brains have created deep seated channels of thinking. Opportunity areas of potential have been cut off ( I still think there is a musician in me but taking up an instrument now will be so much more difficult than if I had done it as a seven year old. If you don’t agree with me, sample the difficulty and frustration of trying to compete with a youngster on the Playstation.
However, challenge the youngsters to a different contest based on specialist subjects and it’s a different story.
A first hand experience of this can be seen in the world of golf. My son has a text book swing and the potential to be a scratch golfer. In every respect his swing and ball striking is superior to mine. However, he has not developed his mental approach. His ability to mentally recover from bad luck, a bad hole or even a bad shot is inferior to mine. The result? My handicap remains lower than his. Does it matter that in some ways my son has not maximised this golfing potential. It seems to matter more to me than to him! He is happy hitting a golf ball as far as he can. He is not concerned about attaining stretch goals in this area. He is happy…so does it matter? Well in this case I don’t think so.
Looking at the world of work, the term maximising potential should perhaps be replaced by optimising talent. Our seeds of potential have metaphorically germinated. Not all grew, but our resultant flowers are our talents. These must be used carefully, tendered, fed, watered and displayed in the right place. Place them in a hostile environment or starve them and they soon wither. They must be used, or just as described in the Parable of the Talents, they will be lost
Leaders must get much more adept at understanding the range of talents at their disposal and how best they should be used.
Leadership Factory can help leaders in a number of ways. Here is a brief list
Look after your sunflowers...yours and your teams...give us a call for an exploratory meeting to discuss further.