{"id":712,"date":"2015-10-21T18:37:45","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T23:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepurposeinst.wpengine.com\/?p=712"},"modified":"2019-06-18T15:56:36","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T20:56:36","slug":"seeing-the-seeds-of-greatness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/seeing-the-seeds-of-greatness\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing the Seeds of Greatness"},"content":{"rendered":"

“We all have more potential than meets the unappreciative eye.”\u2013Tal Ben-Shahar
\n<\/em>
\nThink of your innate potential as a tiny little seed buried deep within.\u00a0 It needs light.\u00a0 It needs water.\u00a0 It needs nourishment in order to flourish.\u00a0 But before any of that can happen, it needs to be seen.\u00a0 Someone has to acknowledge that the seed exists and recognize its potential to grow into something beautiful.\u00a0\u00a0 Without that awareness, there\u2019s little chance that it will ever be attended to and will likely wither and die.<\/p>\n

When you reflect on the people who have helped you to realize your potential, I bet they were able to see the seed in you.\u00a0 They probably shined a bright light on it so you couldn\u2019t miss it.\u00a0 They probably also set some very high expectations for what they believed you could accomplish if you put your mind to it.<\/p>\n

Roy Spence did that for me\u2026well, to be honest, he does that for just about everyone he meets.\u00a0 He sees their strength and their passion and makes them believe that they can (and should) create a beautiful life doing what they were born to do.<\/p>\n

Great parents do that with their children.
\nGreat teachers do that with their students.
\nGreat managers do that with their employees.<\/p>\n

There was a fascinating study conducted by Robert Rosenthal (The Pygmalion Effect) that examined the impact of telling teachers that certain children in their classroom were tested and deemed \u2018academic bloomers\u2019 (in fact, they were no different than any of the other children).\u00a0 After a year of the teachers believing that certain students were innately gifted–and having operated with those high expectations all year long–the study found that those children had improved significantly in all subject areas and had even increased their IQ scores (a supposedly fixed assessment of one\u2019s intellectual capabilities).\u00a0 Those teachers were \u2018tricked\u2019 into seeing the potential of those children, they believed in their abilities, they set expectations accordingly and the reality for those children changed for the better.<\/p>\n

They repeated this study in organizations \u2013 telling managers that certain (randomly selected) employees were deemed high-achievers and, again, after a year of being \u2018seen\u2019 as high-achievers, those individuals were outperforming their colleagues and thriving in their roles.<\/p>\n

The lesson: \u00a0There\u2019s potential waiting to be unlocked in everyone.\u00a0 If you look for it, you\u2019ll find it. You\u2019ll actually be responsible for helping to create it.<\/p>\n

What if we all intentionally set about looking for the strengths, for the good, for the potential in the people we come in contact with?\u00a0 Imagine what those high expectations could create. \u00a0Seeing the seeds of greatness in someone and setting high expectations in relation to those strengths \u2013 that\u2019s when true potential has a shot at being realized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“We all have more potential than meets the unappreciative eye.”\u2013Tal Ben-Shahar Think of your innate potential as a tiny little seed buried deep within.\u00a0 It needs light.\u00a0 It needs water.\u00a0 It needs nourishment in order to flourish.\u00a0 But before any of that can happen, it needs to be seen.\u00a0 Someone has to acknowledge that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":709,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18,10,16,17,19],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose","tag-innate-potential","tag-purpose","tag-tal-ben-shahar","tag-the-pygmalion-effect","tag-true-potential"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}