Hidden Potential: 6 Steps to Find and Develop Top Talent

Look around your workplace. Or your employee roster. Pick out the employees who you think are the best.

Then take a different look to find your hidden potential. Those are the people who don’t stand out right away, but they could lift a team, department or organization to the next level.

“I think of hidden potential as the capacity for growth. It’s invisible to you and maybe even invisible to the people around you,” said Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, professor at the Wharton School of Business, and author of Hidden Potential.

The best news: Your workplace is likely full of several, if not many, employees whose potential isn’t so obvious to them and those who work around them.

The Importance of Finding Hidden Potential

But finding and developing your hidden talent isn’t just a way to elevate deserving employees and fill critical roles. It can make an impact on culture, engagement and turnover.

Proof: Employees who’ve moved internally have a 64% chance of remaining with an organization after three years, according to LinkedIn data. Employees who haven’t moved internally only have a 45% chance of sticking around after three years.

So there are plenty of reasons to find your hidden potential. And according to Grant, who recently spoke at Workhuman Live, it probably isn’t as difficult as you might think.

Here are his six tactics to find and develop existing potential in your workforce that could be hiding in plain sight. You might want to pass these on to your front-line managers to help them identify some quiet superstars, too:

1. Look For Diamonds in the Rough

Sure, that’s the whole point of finding hidden potential: You discover the diamonds in the rough — the people who don’t shine as brightly when they’re buried in the not-so-shiny work.

The best way to find potential where it might not be obvious is to ask people to show you what they can do instead of asking them what they do.

“Instead of talking about skills, ask them to demonstrate skills,” Grant said.

More specifically, though, you’ll want to ask employees — and encourage managers to ask the same questions — about shortcuts and best practices they use to get their work done. Or, ask them what they did to exceed goals or come up with something new. That can help uncover great thinkers and innovators.

2. Recognize and Capitalize on Culture Carriers

This could be Grant’s most controversial — and profound — advice in the search for hidden potential. But he suggests you seek and embrace “disagreeable givers.”

Here’s what’s interesting: Any recognition data you keep probably won’t help you find the disagreeable givers. Why? They aren’t always the cheerful, let’s-get-along types who co-workers nominate for recognition.

“Don’t judge from their crusty exterior,” Grant said.

They tend to be devil’s advocates. They tell uncomfortable truths that make people and organizations think and usually rise up. They respectfully complain … and follow up with real solutions. They give tough love with great advice.

Culture carriers are essential for growth.

3. Normalize Safety in Difficult Conversations

Your culture carriers — those disagreeable givers — usually don’t have a problem with difficult conversations. They feel safe saying what they think. But many others don’t.

And that’s why it’s important to normalize safety in difficult conversations. Help employees recognize that it’s OK to give negative feedback and share alternative opinions.

Think like Grant, who said, “I take my job seriously, but I don’t take myself or my ego seriously.”

Two keys:

1. Be willing to criticize yourself. When leaders admit their shortcomings and/or mistakes, they show they can handle negative feedback as much as they can dish it. And employees will likely see that it’s OK — or even better — to speak up.
2. Retire the feedback sandwich. That’s one piece of negative feedback wedged between two pieces of positive feedback. People either focus too much on what’s wrong. Or they don’t even hear what’s bad while basking in the positive news! Instead, Grant said we should try this: “I want to talk about what’s going well and what’s not going so well. We can do two separate conversations, or we can do them together. What do you prefer?”

When employees are more comfortable speaking up and out, you’ll more likely see potential that had been hidden.

4. Turn Critics into Coaches

Critics at work often annoy us more than they benefit us. And to find hidden potential, you want to flip the switch on that.

Ask people (including the cranks and seemingly lazy whiners) for advice, which is forward-thinking, instead of feedback, which is backward-looking.

From this proactive approach, you will likely find some employees who might otherwise sit cross-armed in the back of the room to rise up the ranks.

5. Don’t Wait to Spot Confidence

“Most of us have the relationship between confidence and action backwards,” Grant said.

We think we need confidence to act. But, almost always, taking action creates confidence … and momentum and positive movement.

So you want to keep an eye out for the doers, the take-chargeers, the get-it-doneers who keep a low profile.

6. Celebrate Small Wins

You can’t get the big wins without the small steps along the way. You want to celebrate the successes you see and the accomplishments employees bring to you.

Recognize progress, not just perfection, and employees will be motivated to step up more often and share all of their potential.