by Adam Grant
A dozen years earlier, after Beth Traynham took the CPA exam, she approached Skender to warn him about her disappointing performance. She told him she was sure she flunked the entire exam, but Skender knew better. He promised: “If you didn’t pass, I’ll pay your mortgage.” Skender was right again—and he wasn’t just right about Beth. That spring, the silver and bronze medalists on the CPA exam in North Carolina were also his students. Skender’s students earned the top three scores of all 3,396 CPA candidates who took the exam. It was the first time in North Carolina that any school had swept the medals, and although accounting was a male-dominated field, all three of Skender’s medalists were women. In total, Skender has had more than forty different students win CPA medals by placing in the top three in the state. He has also demonstrated a knack for identifying future teachers: more than three dozen students have followed in his footsteps into university teaching. How does he know talent when he sees it?
It may sound like pure intuition, but C. J. Skender’s skill in recognizing potential has rigorous science behind it. Spotting and cultivating talent are essential skills in just about every industry; it’s difficult to overstate the value of surrounding ourselves with stars. As with networking and collaboration, when it comes to discovering the potential in others, reciprocity styles shape our approaches and effectiveness. In this chapter, I want to show you how givers succeed by recognizing potential in others. Along with tracing Skender’s techniques, we’ll take a look at how talent scouts identify world-class athletes, why people end up overinvesting in low-potential candidates, and what top musicians say about their first teachers. But the best place to start is the military, where psychologists have spent three decades investigating what it takes to identify the most talented cadets.
Star Search
In the early 1980s, a psychologist named Dov Eden published the first in a series of extraordinary results. He could tell which soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would become top performers before they ever started training.
Eden is a physically slight but psychologically intense man who grew up in the United States. After finishing his doctorate, he immigrated to Israel and began conducting research with the IDF. In one study, he examined comprehensive assessments of nearly a thousand soldiers who were about to arrive for training with their platoons. He had their aptitude test scores, evaluations during basic training, and appraisals from previous commanders. Using this information alone, which was gathered before the beginning of training for their current roles, Eden was able to identify a group of high-potential trainees who would emerge as stars.
Over the next eleven weeks, the trainees took tests measuring their expertise in combat tactics, maps, and standard operating procedures. They also demonstrated their skill in operating a weapon, which was evaluated by experts. Sure enough, the candidates Eden spotted as high-potentials at the outset did significantly better than their peers over the next three months: they scored 9 percent higher on the expertise tests and 10 percent higher on the weapons evaluation. What information did Eden use to identify the high-potentials? If you were a platoon leader in the IDF, what characteristics would you value above all others in your soldiers?
It’s helpful to know that Eden drew his inspiration from a classic study led by the Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal, who teamed up with Lenore Jacobson, the principal of an elementary school in San Francisco. In eighteen different classrooms, students from kindergarten through fifth grade took a Harvard cognitive ability test. The test objectively measured students’ verbal and reasoning skills, which are known to be critical to learning and problem solving. Rosenthal and Jacobson shared the test results with the teachers: approximately 20 percent of the students had shown the potential for intellectual blooming, or spurting. Although they might not look different today, their test results suggested that these bloomers would show “unusual intellectual gains” over the course of the school year.
The Harvard test was discerning: when the students took the cognitive ability test a year later, the bloomers improved more than the rest of the students. The bloomers gained an average of twelve IQ points, compared with average gains of only eight points for their classmates. The bloomers outgained their peers by roughly fifteen IQ points in first grade and ten IQ points in second grade. Two years later, the bloomers were still outgaining their classmates. The intelligence test was successful in identifying high-potential students: the bloomers got smarter—and at a faster rate—than their classmates.
Based on these results, intelligence seems like a strong contender as the key differentiating factor for the high-potential students. But it wasn’t—at least not in the beginning. Why not?
The students labeled as bloomers didn’t actually score higher on the Harvard intelligence test. Rosenthal chose them at random.
The study was designed to find out what happened to students when teachers believed they had high potential. 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.”
Yet the bloomers became smarter than their peers, in both verbal and reasoning ability. Some students who were randomly labeled as bloomers achieved more than 50 percent intelligence gains in a single year. The ability advantage to the bloomers held up when the students had their intelligence tested at the end of the year by separate examiners who weren’t aware that the experiment had occurred, let alone which students were identified as bloomers. And the students labeled as bloomers continued to show gains after two years, even when they were being taught by entirely different teachers who didn’t know which students had been labeled as bloomers. Why?
Teachers’ beliefs created self-fulfilling prophecies. When teachers believed their students were bloomers, they set high expectations for their success. As a result, the teachers engaged in more supportive behaviors that boosted the students’ confidence and enhanced their learning and development. Teachers communicated more warmly to the bloomers, gave them more challenging assignments, called on them more often, and provided them with more feedback. Many experiments have replicated these effects, showing that teacher expectations are especially important for improving the grades and intelligence test scores of low-achieving students and members of stigmatized minority groups. In a comprehensive review of the evidence, psychologists Lee Jussim and Kent Harber concluded, “Self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom are real.”
But we all know that children are impressionable in the early phases of intellectual development. When Dov Eden began his research at the IDF, he wondered whether these types of self-fulfilling prophecies could play out with more fully formed adults. He told some platoon leaders that he had reviewed aptitude test scores, evaluations during basic training, and appraisals from previous commanders, and that the “average command potential of your trainees is appreciably higher than the usual level . . . Therefore, you can expect unusual achievements from the trainees in your group.”
As in the elementary school study, Eden had selected these trainees as high-potentials at random. He was testing the effect of leaders believing that their trainees were high-potentials. Amazingly, the trainees randomly labeled as high-potentials did significantly better on expertise tests and weapons evaluations than the trainees who were not arbitrarily designated as high-potentials. Just like the teachers, when the platoon leaders believed in the trainees’ potential, they acted in ways that made this potential a reality. The platoon leaders who held high expectations of their trainees provided more help, career advice, and feedback to their trainees. When their trainees made mistakes, instead of assuming that they lacked ability, the platoon leaders saw opportunities for teaching and learning. The supportive behaviors of the platoon leaders boosted the confidence and ability of the trainees, enabling and encouraging them to achieve higher performance.
Some managers and teachers have already internalized this message. They see people as bloomers naturally, without ever being told. This is rarely the case for takers, who tend to place little trust in other people. Because they assume that most people are takers, they hold relatively low expectations for the potential of their peers and subordinates. Research shows that takers harbor doubts about others’ intentions, so they monitor vigilantly for information that others might harm them, treating others with suspicion and distrust. These low expectations trigger a vicious cycle, constraining the development and motivation of others. Even when takers are impressed by another person’s capabilities or motivation, they’re more likely to see this person as a threat, which means they’re less willing to support and develop him or her. As a result, takers frequently fail to engage in the types of supportive behaviors that are conducive to the confidence and development of their peers and subordinates.
Matchers are better equipped to inspire self-fulfilling prophecies. Because they value reciprocity, when a peer or subordinate demonstrates high potential, matchers respond in kind, going out of their way to support, encourage, and develop their promising colleagues and direct reports. But the matcher’s mistake lies in waiting for signs of high potential. Since matchers tend to play it safe, they often wait to offer support until they’ve seen evidence of promise. Consequently, they miss out on opportunities to develop people who don’t show a spark of talent or high potential at first.
Givers don’t wait for signs of potential. Because they tend to be trusting and optimistic about other people’s intentions, in their roles as leaders, managers, and mentors, givers are inclined to see the potential in everyone. By default, givers start by viewing people as bloomers. This is exactly what has enabled C. J. Skender to develop so many star students. He isn’t unusual in recognizing talented people; he simply starts by seeing everyone as talented and tries to bring out the best in them. In Skender’s mind, every student who walks into his classroom is a diamond in the rough—able and willing to be mined, cut, and polished. He sees potential where others don’t, which has set in motion a series of self-fulfilling prophecies.
Polishing the Diamond in the Rough
In 1985, a student of Skender’s named Marie Arcuri sat for the CPA exam. She wasn’t a good standardized test taker, and she didn’t pass the first time. A few days later, she received a letter in the mail from Skender. He wrote to every single student who had taken the exam, congratulating those who passed and encouraging those who didn’t. For the past quarter century, Marie has saved the letter:
Your husband, family, and friends love you because of the beautiful person you have made yourself—not because of a performance on an examination. Remember that . . . Focus on November. Concentrate on practice . . . I want what’s best for you. You WILL get through this thing, Marie. I write on my tests, “The primary purpose has already been served by your preparation for this exam” . . . Success doesn’t measure a human being, effort does.
Studies show that accountants are more likely to achieve their potential when they receive the type of encouragement that Skender provided. Several years ago, seventy-two new auditors joined a Big Four accounting firm. Half of the auditors were randomly assigned to receive information that they had high potential to succeed. The study was led by researcher Brian McNatt, who had a doctorate, two accounting degrees, a CPA certification, and five years of experience as an accountant and auditor. McNatt read the résumés of the auditors who were randomly assigned to believe in their potential. Then, he met with each of the auditors and informed them that they were hired after a highly competitive selection process, management had high expectations for their success, and they had the skills to overcome challenges and be successful. Three weeks later, McNatt sent them a letter reinforcing this message. For a full month, the auditors who received McNatt’s message earned higher performance ratings than the auditors in the control group, who never met with McNatt or received a letter from him. This was true even after controlling for the auditors’ intelligence test scores and college grades.
This is the effect that Skender’s letter had on Marie Arcuri. He encouraged her to believe in her potential and set high expectations for her to succeed. “He saw the best in his students, and still sees the best in his students,” Marie says. She took the exam again and passed two sections, leaving two more to go. Along the way, Skender continued encouraging her. “He wasn’t going to let me slack off one bit. He would call me and check in on my progress.” She passed the final section and earned her CPA in 1987, two years after she started taking the four sections of the exam. “The difference he made in my life [was in] making sure my priorities were in order, keeping me on track, and preventing me from throwing in the towel,” Marie explains. “I knew how much he’d invested in me, and I was not going to let him down.” Today, Marie owns two Lexus automobile dealerships. “The accounting background and the skills in reading financial statements have been valuable. But more than C. J. taught me material for my job, he built my character, my passion, and my determination. His commitment to making sure that I got through led me to realize that I’d rather be defined by perseverance than by whether or not I passed an exam.”
Skender’s approach contrasts with the basic model most companies follow when it comes to leadership development: identify high-potential people, and then provide them with the mentoring, support, and resources needed to grow to achieve their potential. To identify these high-potential future leaders, each year companies spend billions of dollars assessing and evaluating talent. Despite the popularity of this model, givers recognize that it is fatally flawed in one respect. The identification of talent may be the wrong place to start.
For many years, psychologists believed that in any domain, success depended on talent first and motivation second. To groom world-class athletes and musicians, experts looked for people with the right raw abilities, and then sought to motivate them. If you want to find people who can dunk like Michael Jordan or play piano like Beethoven, it’s only natural to start by screening candidates for leaping ability and an ear for music. But in recent years, psychologists have come to believe that this approach may be backward.
In the 1960s, a pioneering psychologist named Raymond Cattell developed an investment theory of intelligence. He proposed that interest is what drives people to invest their time and energy in developing particular skills and bases of knowledge. Today, we have compelling evidence that interest precedes the development of talent. It turns out that motivation is the reason that people develop talent in the first place.
In the 1980s, the psychologist Benjamin Bloom led a landmark study of world-class musicians, scientists, and athletes. Bloom’s team interviewed twenty-one concert pianists who were finalists in major international competitions. When the researchers began to dig into the eminent pianists’ early experiences with music, they discovered an unexpected absence of raw talent. The study showed that early on most of the star pianists seemed “special only when comparing one child with others in the family or neighborhood.” They didn’t stand out on a local, regional, or national level—and they didn’t win many early competitions.
When Bloom’s team interviewed the world-class pianists and their parents, they stumbled upon another surprise. The pianists didn’t start out learning from piano teachers who were experts. They typically took their first piano lessons with a teacher who lived nearby in their neighborhoods. In The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle writes that “From a scientific perspective, it was as if the researchers had traced the lineage of the world’s most beautiful swans back to a scruffy flock of barnyard chickens.” Over time, even without an expert teacher at the outset, the pianists managed to become the best musicians in the world. The pianists gained their advantage by practicing many more hours than their peers. As Malcolm Gladwell showed us in Outliers, research led by psychologist Anders Ericsson reveals that attaining expertise in a domain typically requires ten thousand hours of deliberate practice. But what motivates people to practice at such length in the first place? This is where givers often enter the picture.
When the pianists and their parents talked about their first piano teachers, they consistently focused on one theme: the teachers were caring, kind, and patient. The pianists looked forward to piano lessons because their first teachers made music interesting and fun. “The children had very positive experiences with their first lessons. They made contact with another adult, outside their home, who was warm, supportive, and loving,” Bloom’s team explains. The world-class pianists had their initial interest sparked by teachers who were givers. The teachers looked for ways to make piano lessons enjoyable, which served as an early catalyst for the intense practice necessary to develop expertise. “Exploring possibilities and engaging in a wide variety of musical activities took precedence” over factors such as “right or wrong or good or bad.”