Mark: Most of us believe greatness is reserved for the gifted—the child prodigies, the natural talents. But what if the single biggest predictor of success isn't talent at all, but how well you handle being awkward and uncomfortable? That's the provocative idea we're exploring today. Michelle: That’s a bold claim. It basically throws out the whole idea of being a "natural." I feel like we're constantly searching for that one thing we're "meant to do," the thing that comes easily. You're saying we should be looking for the thing that feels hard? Mark: Exactly. And it’s the central argument in a phenomenal book that’s been topping the bestseller lists, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant. Michelle: Ah, Adam Grant. I know his work. He’s not just some motivational guru, right? He’s a serious academic. Mark: He is. He's a top organizational psychologist at the Wharton School, and his entire career is about digging into the science of what makes people and teams excel. This book isn't about rah-rah inspiration; it's about the systems and skills that unlock potential. Michelle: I like that. A system for growth. And it seems like his starting point isn't about finding the 'best' people, but about how anyone can get better. I heard the book kicks off with an incredible story about a chess team from Harlem? Mark: It does, and it perfectly sets the stage for his first major idea. It’s a story that redefines what we think of as talent.

Mark: So, picture the National Junior High Chess Championships in 1991. The scene is dominated by elite private schools like Dalton, with their expensive coaches and long-established chess programs. And then you have the Raging Rooks. Michelle: The Raging Rooks. What a name. Mark: They were a team of eight middle schoolers from a junior high in Harlem. Most of them had only been playing chess for a couple of years. Their coach, a young Jamaican chess master named Maurice Ashley, said it himself: "We didn’t have any stars on our team." They were the ultimate underdogs. Michelle: Okay, so this is a classic David vs. Goliath setup. I'm hooked. What happened? Mark: They started upsetting teams ranked way higher than them. But the real drama came in the final round. They were up against their rivals from Dalton. The team captain, Kasaun Henry, was playing Dalton’s top player. It all came down to this one match. Kasaun had made a blunder earlier in the tournament and was still shaken. One of his teammates had broken down in tears after a loss. The pressure was immense. Michelle: Oh, my gosh. I can feel the tension. Mark: Kasaun, this kid from Harlem, sits down and, in a stunning match, he defeats Dalton's best player. With that win, and other top teams faltering, the Raging Rooks tied for first place. They became national champions. Michelle: Wow. That’s a movie right there. But it begs the question, especially with something like chess which feels like a pure brainpower sport. How much of that is just opportunity versus raw, innate intelligence? Mark: That is the exact question Grant wants us to ask. The Raging Rooks prove his first major point: greatness is more made than born. He argues that talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. What looked like a difference in "natural ability" between the Dalton kids and the Harlem kids was actually a difference in resources, coaching, and experience. Michelle: So character skills are what bridge that gap. Mark: Precisely. And one of the most important character skills is the courage to embrace discomfort. Grant tells another amazing story about the comedian Steve Martin. For years, Martin was bombing on stage. He was a good performer, but his jokes weren't landing. Michelle: I can’t imagine Steve Martin bombing. He’s a legend. Mark: In his early days, he did. And the reason was, he was a great mimic but a terrified writer. He found writing his own material excruciatingly difficult and awkward. So he avoided it. He just used and adapted other people's material. His career was completely stuck. Michelle: That’s so relatable. We all avoid the things we’re bad at. It’s uncomfortable to fail. Mark: But he finally realized he had to confront it. He took a job as a writer for a variety show, forcing himself into that uncomfortable space. He wrote and wrote, and he kept performing at night, slowly getting better. That’s how he developed his unique, absurdist voice. He had to become a creature of discomfort to unlock his potential. Michelle: I get embracing discomfort, but the idea of 'learning styles' is so ingrained in our culture. I’ve always been told I'm a 'visual learner.' Is Grant saying that's a myth? Mark: He is. And the research he cites is pretty conclusive. A major review of decades of studies found no evidence that tailoring teaching to a student's preferred style improves learning. Grant's point is that the way you like to learn is what makes you comfortable, but it isn’t necessarily how you learn best. Sticking only to your strengths means you never develop your weaknesses. Michelle: Huh. So I should probably stop telling people I can only learn from infographics. Mark: It might be time. The goal is to get better at getting better, and that often means doing the very thing that feels unnatural. But of course, you can't just will yourself to be uncomfortable all the time. You'd burn out. Michelle: Right. So what supports you through that process? Mark: And that's where the second big idea comes in. Developing these character skills is hard. You need support structures, or what Grant calls 'scaffolding.'

Michelle: Scaffolding. Like on a building? Mark: Exactly like that. It’s a temporary support structure that lets you reach heights you couldn’t on your own. And he introduces this with one of the most bizarre and fascinating studies I've ever heard of. It involves the video game Tetris. Michelle: Wait, Tetris? The game with the falling blocks? How on earth does that relate to motivation? Mark: Psychologists were studying how to build resilience. They’d show people distressing film clips to induce flashbacks, like a mini-trauma. They found that if participants played a few rounds of Tetris shortly after seeing the clips, they experienced about half the number of disturbing flashbacks over the next week. Michelle: You’re kidding. That’s wild! So the scaffolding here is… a video game? How does that even work? Mark: The theory is that Tetris is a highly visual-spatial task. It occupies the exact same channels in your brain that are trying to consolidate those traumatic visual memories. The game essentially acts as a cognitive blocker, a temporary mental shield that stops the intrusive images from cementing themselves. Michelle: So scaffolding can be a very specific, targeted intervention. It’s not just a pep talk. It’s a tool. That makes so much sense. But how does this apply to bigger, long-term goals, not just blocking a bad memory? Mark: That’s the perfect question. And it leads to the story of R.A. Dickey, the baseball pitcher. In 1996, Dickey was a top prospect, set to sign a huge contract. But during the physical, a doctor saw a picture of his elbow and said, "This kid doesn't have a UCL." He was missing the main ligament that pitchers use to throw a baseball. Michelle: Oh, no. His career was over before it started. Mark: It should have been. His signing bonus was slashed from nearly a million dollars to just $75,000. He spent years toiling in the minor leagues, a washed-up prospect. By age 31, he was sent down to the minors for what seemed like the last time. He was languishing, completely stuck. Michelle: I can’t even imagine that level of disappointment. What did he do? Mark: His coaches gave him a piece of advice that was his first piece of scaffolding. They told him to focus on his knuckleball. It’s a bizarre, unpredictable pitch that doesn’t rely on arm strength. It was his only shot. So he backed up. He completely abandoned the way he’d pitched his whole life and started over. Michelle: He had to become a beginner again at 31. That’s a huge ego hit. Mark: A massive one. And he was terrible at first. But he sought out other guides—a whole network of old, retired knuckleballers who became his mentors. They gave him tips, encouragement. Those were his scaffolds. He also took a detour. In the offseason, he decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro for charity. Michelle: A detour? Why? Mark: Grant argues that when we're languishing, sometimes the best way to feel progress is to make progress in a totally different domain. The small win of climbing that mountain gave him the confidence and fuel to keep going with baseball. Slowly, he mastered the knuckleball. At age 37, an age when most pitchers are long retired, R.A. Dickey won the Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in the league. Michelle: That is an unbelievable comeback story. So the 'scaffolding' for Dickey was the advice from other knuckleballers, the new goal of the knuckleball itself, and even the detour of climbing a mountain. It wasn't one thing, but a whole system of support. Mark: Exactly. He built an architecture of motivation around himself. But these individual stories, as powerful as they are, lead to Grant's final and most important point. Michelle: Let me guess. It feels like a huge part of the success for the Rooks and for Dickey depended on someone giving them a chance—a coach, a mentor. What if that chance never comes? Mark: You've hit on it. Individual character and scaffolding are vital, but they can only take you so far. The biggest leaps in potential come when we build systems of opportunity.

Mark: Grant argues that we focus too much on individuals "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps." He says we need to think more about the bootstraps themselves. And the story he uses to illustrate this is one of the most powerful I've ever read. It's about the "Golden Thirteen." Michelle: The Golden Thirteen. I’ve never heard of them. Mark: In 1944, during World War II, the U.S. Navy was deeply segregated. Under political pressure, they reluctantly agreed to let the first-ever group of Black men enter officer training. Sixteen men were chosen. They were sent to a segregated facility where instructors openly used racial slurs and told them they were destined to fail. Michelle: That’s horrifying. They were set up for failure from the very beginning. Mark: The system was designed for them to fail. They were given a full semester's curriculum—navigation, gunnery, naval law—and told to master it in just ten weeks. The environment was cutthroat. But these sixteen men made a pact. One of them, George Cooper, said, "We decided early in the game that we were all going to either sink or swim together." Michelle: So they rejected the system's premise of individual competition. Mark: Completely. They recognized that one of them was a lawyer, another was a chemist, another a math whiz. They started studying together every night, late into the morning. The lawyer would teach naval law to everyone. The chemist would teach the science. They built their own system of opportunity right under the noses of the people trying to tear them down. They became each other's tutors, coaches, and cheerleaders. Michelle: That gives me chills. They didn't just pull themselves up by their bootstraps; they wove the bootstraps for each other. Mark: That's a perfect way to put it. And when the final exams came, all sixteen men passed with flying colors. In fact, they achieved the highest average score in the history of the naval training program. The Navy was so suspicious they made them take the tests again. And they passed again. Thirteen of them were commissioned, becoming the Golden Thirteen. Michelle: That is an incredible story of defiance. So how does this apply to organizations today? How do we build these systems that find hidden potential? Mark: Grant offers some very practical ideas. He says we need to stop "mining for talent" and start "mining for gold," which means looking for potential in unexpected places. For example, instead of traditional brainstorming where the loudest voices dominate, he advocates for "brainwriting." Everyone writes down their ideas anonymously first, and then the group discusses them. It ensures every idea gets a fair hearing. Michelle: I love that. It takes the ego out of it. Mark: Another is to look at trajectory, not just achievement. In college admissions or hiring, instead of just looking at someone's GPA, he suggests looking at their "Grade Point Trajectory." Did their grades improve dramatically over time? That shows grit and an ability to learn. It rewards the distance someone has traveled, not just where they ended up. It's how you find a diamond in the rough like astronaut José Hernandez, who started as a migrant farmworker.

Mark: It's a powerful progression when you look at the whole book, isn't it? It starts with you and your character—learning to be a sponge, embracing discomfort. Then it's about the scaffolding you build around you to stay motivated. But ultimately, the biggest impact comes from the systems of opportunity we create for everyone. Michelle: It completely reframes the conversation. The question isn't 'Are you talented?' but 'How good are you at getting better?' and 'What systems are you in?' It makes you look at your own workplace, your kids' school, even your own family, completely differently. Mark: Exactly. It shifts the responsibility from just the individual to the collective. We all have a role to play in building environments where hidden potential can actually surface. Michelle: It’s a much more hopeful and, frankly, more accurate view of the world. Not everyone gets a lucky break, but we can design systems that create more of them. Mark: And we'd love to hear from our listeners. What's one small 'scaffold' you've used to get unstuck in your own life? Or have you seen a 'system of opportunity' in action at your work or in your community? Share your stories with us. We learn so much from hearing them. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.