Great leaders see hidden potential in people.
And they create the conditions for those with undiscovered talents to soar.
So, they go about creating opportunities, setting challenges, investing in skill development and training, providing resources, offering critical feedback, and establishing the support these team members need to thrive.
Surprisingly, what these high-potential team members need most to prosper is oftenignored by leaders.
In many instances, leaders do the very opposite of what these team members need to reach their highest potential. They give them more urgency, more tasks, and more opportunities than is best for them.
Because high-potential team members are typically more capable than their peers, leaders often load them up with responsibilities, assignments, and new challenges.
Unfortunately, this is actually a recipe for stalling their growth.
The most powerful condition leaders can create for those with the highest potential is more space and time to explore and experiment, not less.
Those with yet unrealized talents need the space to think through and reflect on what they are experiencing. They need leaders to trust them with the unstructured time essential for learning and incorporating the insights they gather.
It’s not that leaders shouldn’t create opportunities, challenges, and resources for their development. It’s that too many assignments and learning opportunities get in the way of their progress.
Potential is not the same thing as capacity.
People with high potential aren’t limited by effort or motivation. But they are constrained by integrating what they experience and learn. Space and time allow that integration to occur.
Insight and growth for high-potential team members happen between tasks, not during them. Execution relies upon known and repeatable patterns. Potential shows up when someone must reconfigure those patterns.
When schedules are saturated with tasks, team members can still perform, but they stop evolving. Busyness may sustain output, but it is space and time that enable transformation.
High-potential team members are most often operating at the edge of their learning and understanding. They need the time, trust, and space to avoid defaulting to their existing strengths and repeating what already works.
The best leaders set the conditions that allow them to learn and grow. This includes the time to reflect and the space to experiment.
Whereas pressure reveals capacity, space expands it.
