Book Review: “Big Potential”

Book: Big Potential by Shawn Achor
Reviewer: Bobby Powers

My Thoughts: 9 of 10
I had the chance to hear Shawn Achor speak at a conference two years ago, and I was enthralled. He packs more insights per minute into his speeches than anyone I've ever heard, and his books are no different. I loved The Happiness Advantage years ago, so I knew I had to check out Achor's newest book, Big Potential. In this book, Achor explains that our society has a flawed way of thinking about competition, stress, praise, and leadership. He has a lot of data to back up his assertions, including research he conducted at Harvard. Big Potential is one of the most inspiring books I've read in a while, and it's packed with advice you can build a career on.

What I Learned from the Book

All our lives, we're praised for individual achievements. From standing up on our own as babies to getting the highest score on the math test in high school, we're encouraged to think about success as an individual achievement. But that's not actually how the world works. The best products are often created by teams with complementary strengths--not reclusive inventors working alone in a basement. Individual ability will only take you so far, and if you want to unlock landmark success in any field, you'll need to get the most out of your team and find ways to uplift each other.

Selected Quotes and Ideas from the Book

Our Society's Obsession with Competition

"When any resource--be it acceptance to the most prestigious university, an interview with a top-ranking company, or a spot on the best athletic team--is limited, we are taught that we have to compete in order to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the pack. And yet, my research shows that this isn't actually the case."
"[W]hen we help others become better, we can actually increase the available opportunities, instead of vying for them."
"Our society has become overly focused on the 'power of one alone' versus 'the power of one made stronger by others.'"
"Overemphasizing the individual and removing others from the equation places a 'soft cap' on our potential, an artificial limit on what we can achieve. But the good news is that I call this a soft cap for a reason: Because it can be lifted. Because when we work to help others achieve success, we not only raise the performance of the group, we exponentially increase our own potential."
"Let me state this very clearly: This book is not an argument against competition in business. I do not believe competition is bad. In fact, competition, when set up properly, can dramatically hone our potential, as well as provide joy and energy...Big Potential is about gaining a competitive advantage not by limiting others' success rates, but by raising them."

Big Potential

Small Potential = The limited success you can achieve alone
Big Potential = The success you can achieve only in a Virtuous Cycle with others
"[O]ur greatest successes don't exist in isolation. As the research begins to emerge, we seem to be learning that almost every attribute of your potential—from intelligence to creativity to leadership to personality and engagement—is interconnected with others."
"No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you're playing a solo game, you'll always lose out to a team." -Reid Hoffman
"If found that social connection was, hands down, the greatest predictor of thriving both personally and academically at Harvard. It was the strongest predictor of emotional well-being and optimism, the greatest buffer against depression, and it also predicted how much stress one felt in the face of exams and academic competition. And it turns out, once someone leaves college, it becomes one of the greatest predictors of long-term performance in their careers. The evidence seemed to suggest a wild conclusion: Success at Harvard was less about the individual attributes of a student and more about how they fit in with the culture and with their peers. Or, put another way, the potential to succeed at Harvard had less to do with 'survival of the fittest' and more to do with 'survival of the best fit.'"
"This path [to Big Potential] consists of five stages, what I call the SEEDS of Big Potential:
- SURROUND yourself with a Star System of Positive Influencers.
- EXPAND your power by helping others lead from every seat.
- ENHANCE your resources by becoming a Prism of Praise.
- DEFEND the system against negative attacks.
- SUSTAIN the gains by fueling the Virtuous Cycle."

Awesome sketch by Jill Gough

SURROUND yourself with a Star System of Positive Influencers

"The height of your potential is predicted by the people who surround you."
"The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team." -John Wooden
"The conclusion of a decade of my work is clear. You can be a superstar; you just can't be one alone. What you need is a star system: a constellation of positive, authentic influencers who support each other, reinforce each other, and make each other better."
"We need to stop asking 'How many points did you score?' and start asking 'How did you help your team win?'"
"Whereas negative influencers sap your energy, positive people actually provide energy when you are low, which helps you more effectively solve problems, deal with challenges, and work toward your goals."
Shawn Achor suggests surrounding yourself with a mix of three types of Positive Influencers:
- "Pillars are those who are a rock for you in tough times."
- "Bridges are connectors to new people or resources outside of your existing ecosystem."
- "Extenders are Positive Influencers who push you out of your comfort zone."

EXPAND your power by helping others lead from every seat

"Your time and energy are finite, but the demands on them are infinite. You simply cannot meet those demands unless you EXPAND responsibility and the work of leadership to everyone who has a stake in the mission."
"If we want small potential we should leave leadership in the hands of the 'leaders.' If we want Big Potential we must inspire and enable others to lead from every seat."
"To sustain change, we must reward and reinforce people's efforts to create change...When people see the fruits of their efforts, it creates a positive feedback loop whereby progress becomes a catalyst for even greater change."
"Are you helping to improve people's lives with your work, even on the smallest scale? Are you able to connect with people at a deeper level?"

ENHANCE your resources by becoming a Prism of Praise

"Some people treat praise like a limited commodity...Yet what so many fail to recognize is that praise is actually a renewable resource. Praise creates a Virtuous Cycle--the more you give, the more you enhance your own supply."
"Instead of praise misers, we need to become Praise Prisms...prisms do not merely absorb or deflect light. By shining it on others, they enhance it and make it more beautiful."
"Our response to praise is often to either deflect it, whether out of shyness or humility (for example, 'I just got lucky'), or absorb it, out of the misguided belief that it is in short supply. In both cases, the praise is stifled and the light is extinguished before it can have a chance to fully shine. We must find a way to take in the light of praise and refract that light outward."

DEFEND the system against negative attacks

"Contrary to what many people believe, emotions like sadness, fear, and anger do not obstruct the path to Big Potential. To the contrary: They are necessary and useful...The opposite of joy is not sadness; it is apathy, which is the loss of energy to pursue one's goals."
"We do not need to despair if we experience fear, anger, or sadness. In fact, they are crucial. They become problematic only when they become imbalanced--when our fear tips into paralysis, when our anger tips into rage, when our sadness tips into despair. The key is to DEFEND ourselves against the forces that conspire to push us over that edge."
"[W]e found that just a few minutes spent consuming negative news in the morning can affect the entire emotional trajectory of your day; our study revealed that individuals who watched just three minutes of negative news in the morning were 27 percent more likely to report their day as unhappy six to eight hours later--it was like taking a poison pill each morning that made all of your efforts, energies, and interactions throughout the day more toxic."
"By simply getting people to focus their brain for just ten minutes a week on the positives in their life, they were more invigorated, moved more, got more done, and, as a result, were able to leave work earlier."

SUSTAIN the gains by fueling the Virtuous Cycle

"Objects in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Without a positive force driving us to continue, we will slow down due to the friction of life and the unbalanced negative influences in our world."
"Meaning is that 'unbalanced force' that keeps us going, especially in busy or stressful times."
"Celebration is the oxygen of Big Potential. And if we want to sustain the gains we have achieved, we need to keep breathing it in. We need to remember that whatever seat we sit in, we have the power to create change worth celebrating. The more we celebrate, the more we enrich our lives with meaning. And the more meaning we have in our lives, the more there is to celebrate."