What Is Your Full Potential — with Adam Grant and Oprah

So Adam, I am graduating in May of 2026. I really, really resonated when you were discussing imposter syndrome. I recently did an internship and I felt like I had imposter syndrome every day. What advice can you give me graduating? Like what do I do? Where do I start? Like, how do I not feel like the most anxious person in the room at all times?

Hi everyone. I'm so delighted to be with you here on the Oprah Podcast, where one of my goals is um to bring you ideas that can allow you to grow and imagine a new vision for your life. I've always had the the deepest belief in the power of our human potential. And I'm always searching for ways to do better and be better and live more fully, to open myself to possibility and my guest today is one of the foremost leaders

Thank you. Oprah, I'm so honored to be here and I think it's safe to say that your potential is not hidden.

Ha ha ha. Thank you, but it made me think about what is my hidden potential. Yes, it did. It made me think think about that. Maybe there are things that I have not, you know, uh acknowledged or absorbed or been open to. Certainly did. Open me up. Yes, it did.

All right. I can't wait to see where that goes.

I ca m I can't wait to see where it goes. Now you wrote in the book for everyone who you said in this book that for everyone who has ever felt underrated or overlooked. Um but it's not just for underdogs, you said. Long shots and late bloomers. It's all about how we can make sure that we get a chance in schools and teams and workplaces. And so what was going on with you that you knew that this is the book that the culture needed in this moment?

I think I just saw a lot of people underestimate others and also underestimate themselves. And I think there's there's nothing sadder than than watching motivation and talent get wasted and squandered. And I think we still live in a world where people judge themselves and other people by how good they are at something when they start. And so if you you pick up a skill and you say, Well, I didn't master that right away, I guess it's not for me. And I think that's a huge mistake.

I saw this demonstrated so powerfully when you were I saw you speaking and you had used the example of diving. Yes, you wanna share that story?

I was so bad at diving Oprah. I think I I don't know if you could see it in the video, but

You were in the beginning, you were not so good.

I was horrifying

Yeah.

Uh I walked like Frankenstein. I could hardly jump. Yeah. Uh I couldn't touch my toes without pinning my knees.

I I probably should have quit based on my early failures. I was the worst diver in my whole school, but I'd already been cut from basketball and soccer and I was I was running out of options. And I was so lucky to have a coach, Eric Best, who saw more potential in me than I saw in myself. And Eric said, I will never cut a diver who wants to be here.

Wow, isn't that powerful?

So powerful and he told me on my very first it was the first day of practice. Uh I thought it was a tryout. And he said, I will put as much effort into this as you do. And I believe that if you pour yourself into this, you could be a state finalist by the time you graduate from high school.

Wow. And

And uh made it junior year a year early and uh ended up on the All American list and making the junior Olympic nationals twice.

And you also write that growth requires much more than a mindset. It begins with character skills. You say character is often confused with personality, but they're not the same. Please explain.

They are not the same.

They're not the same thing.

So personality is is your default instinct. It's your tendency for how you naturally would think, feel, or act in a situation. Caracter is a set of skills that you develop for overriding those personality traits. So I'm a shy introvert from a personality perspective, but I love sharing knowledge. I really enjoy teaching. I've even come to like public speaking.

Yeah, but that doesn't happen unless you actually do it. Yeah, you the way you get to be a better diver is that you dive every day. The way you get to be a better speaker is you act actually step into it and do it. So whatever the thing is that makes you uncomfortable, and that is the character that allows you to do that, not just your personality.

is. And I think for for so long I was frozen by my my personality. Uh so afraid of public speaking, I was also afraid of heights. So diving was not a good choice.

Yeah.

And I I remember I remember standing on the diving board one day, I would usually just stand there shaking for five or ten minutes and One day I was supposed to do a particularly hard dive with multiple flips and twists. And I just I couldn't I couldn't imagine doing it. I thought I was gonna cartwheel and break an eardrum or just end up in a terrible belly flop or backsmack. And I stood frozen on the board for forty five minutes.

Oh that was s that's such a key, key, key, key, key element for everybody.

'Cause the only way to gain confidence is the actually doing it. And you're thinking that you're waiting just like the and and and and you're using this as as a beautiful story and metaphor, but the waiting and the waiting and the waiting You were waiting'cause you're thinking you're gonna get the confidence to take the leap, but the only way to get the confidence is actually taking the leap. I just think that is invaluable.

Well, it's it's certainly been powerful for me and I I think it it tracks with a lot of the the research in psychology, which sa says that for most of us, um, confidence is the result of making progress and achieving growth. It's not something that you have to marshal before.

Yeah. Yeah. This is what I want to know, Adam. I mean, I was just talking to my producer uh y you know, earlier about you, and I was saying, I remember that, you know, Adam's first books, they were really good and people really liked them and responded. And now you're considered literally one of the great thought leaders. Of our time.

The irony of you asking me that question is not lost on me. I don't know. I th I I definitely wonder that often. Uh I think I mean, this is a great this is a great way to activate my inner imposter syndrome. Right, of saying, What am I doing here? Do I belong in this room? And I think I think it's something I feel a responsibility to try to earn every day. Uh a door opened and I felt like, okay, I should walk through it and then try to open it for other people. And I think of all the things that

In the beginning when that door opened, you were like nervous speaking in front of people.

Extremely. Yeah. Yeah. And the yeah, and the the feedback made it clear that everyone could see my anxiety and they were absorbing it from me.

Yes, that's what happens, yeah.

And I just I think like you were alluding to earlier, um, I just kept running little experiments and saying, okay, that didn't work. What if I try this?

Well how can I do this better?

What can I change? And I I figure, you know what? These critics have already crucified me. Why don't I enlist them as my coaches?

That's so brilliant, really. That is

Some of them were really helpful.

Really? I I found that too when I was, you know, f first starting out, you know, uh that uh I some of the criticism that I received was actually I was thinking, oh yeah, he's right. I do talk too much. Oh he's right, I'm not listening enough. Oh he's right. So I would learn from criticism that was not just mean spirited, you know?

How did you decide which critiques to listen to and which ones to discard?

Because some th some crit critics were just out to as people would say today get clickbait or g make a headline or to say, Oh, you know, everybody thinks she's so popular, I'm gonna take her down. You could feel the energy of that. You could also feel the energy of somebody who um was literally just s telling you what they saw and what they experienced. And so I learned from it, you know, when somebody is t speaking the truth.

It's

The reason why it's so hard to get people to tell the truth now is because there's so few people who are acting out of character. and not just acting out of their personality and their ego. So it's really hard when you don't have grounded principles of your character, where you just operating on personality, which you talk a lot about in this book, and you say that the true test of character is whether you manage to stand by your values when the deck is stacked against you.

I think for me, I've I've found it really helpful to think about well, who am I representing? And who do I want to be proud of me?

Mm.

I think most people answer that question by thinking about their parents or their grandparents or, you know, some some group of people who paved the way for them. And I think that can be motivating, but I also think that that it's sometimes constraining. Mm-hmm. That people feel a lot of pressure from their parents to live up to to their expectations.

I never had that.

You never felt that.

No, I didn't feel like I no, I but'cause I came from a very different background. But no, but as you were asking the question I'm thinking, well who would that be for myself? I don't know.

Well, I think uh I've I've found it really powerful to shift the lens and say, you know, it's it's really not It's not it's not that important to think about being a good descendant. It's important to be a good ancestor. And so I'm not that worried about making my parents proud. I want to make my kids proud. And I want to be, you know, instead of being a custodian of the past, I want to be a good steward of the future. And to do that, I have to stand by my principles when they're tested.

And so that has been your guiding principle of what would my kids say, what would my kids think? How would I how am I doing this for my kids? But before you had kids, you had values and you had character. So what w what who were you who were you doing it for then?

I I think the first time I remember thinking about it was I don't want to represent my students well. I don't want to embarrass them and have them say, wait a minute, I took a class from that guy.

Hmm. Do you ever ask, I want to represent myself well. Do you ever do it for yourself?

Yeah, sometimes, but it it feels a little self centered to think about it that way. Really? And I I don't attach the same meaning to it that I do when it's for somebody else. You?

I get that. I get that. But I'm I'm now I'm gonna live with that. Who am I doing it for? What am I doing it for? I've always thought I was doing it for my myself. Maybe I'm thinking about something else. Maybe I'm thinking about what other people would think if I didn't, you know? So you write when writing about leaders, you say, we mistake confidence for competence.

Uh I the Babel effect is the bane of my existence as an organizational psychologist. It's where the person who talks the most in a meeting is the most likely to get elevated to a leadership role. Because people look to that person and they say, Wow, like they they had a lot to say and they had a lot of confidence and therefore they must be reliable. Um and in fact it's often the person not who talks the most, but rather listens best. That's best equipped to lead the room.

Absolutely. And you learned that for yourself, how?

Oh, I think I learned that by watching a lot of leaders uh get promoted to their own level of incompetence. Uh I'm sure you know it is the Peter principle.

Oh yes, Lord.

It's it's so frustrating to watch. You're good at a job, you get promoted. You're good at the next job, you get promoted, and at some point you're not good at it anymore and you get stuck there. And I do not think that organizations ought to run that way, but too many of them do.

Yeah, and and also most people don't have the courage to say and are not gonna say, Well, you know what? I was really, really good here. And now I'm um I'm out of my league.

This is not the right place for me.

This is not the right place for me. We need to take a quick break. Adam writes about the remarkable man who changed the face of chess while inspiring young men along the way. We'll meet him next. A warm welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. I'm with organizational psychologist and best-selling author, Adam Grant. We're talking about his latest book, Hidden Potential.

It's it's an extraordinary story on so many levels. So you have a group of poor racial minorities from Yeah. Who are gonna play chess and they don't have any of the advantages of the elite private schools that they're competing against. Right. They don't have the world class teachers.

And he wrote a book called Move by Move. Yes.

Great book about decision.

And off the yeah, on and off the chessboard. So joining us from his home in Florida, Maurice Ashley, coach of the Raging Rooks, and the first. Black Grandmaster in chess history. What a pleasure to meet you. I read you fell in love with chess when you were what, fourteen? After you moved from Jamaica to Brooklyn. What was it about the game that hooked you?

Well, first of all it's an honor to be with two of my most inspiring uh people in the world. Adam is such an amazing person, and Adam, your book is fantastic. And Oprah, I've been waiting twenty six years for this interview, so

You shouldn't call me, for goodness sakes. For goodness sakes. Maurice, what the?

Oh.

Oh my gosh. Maurice, you should have told him. He would have listened this would've happened much sooner.

I didn't know he had that kind of pull.

No.

I've I've I've even emulated your hairstyle. Come on.

Yeah, yeah. You didn't know he had all that hidden potential, that's the thing. Yes.

Well, it it really is a pleasure. To answer your question, chess is magical. It really just is. It's been around for fifteen hundred years. It's nothing I had to do to be attracted to it because it is that. The pieces themselves are epic. Uh they're mythical, if you will. People fall in love with chess because of those first of all the way the pieces look. You've got come on, kings, queens, bishops, knights, rooks and pawns. It's a it's a example of

And I...

I became enraptured by the right.

Yeah.

read that Maurice that you had to learn the con concept of to become be. What does that mean to you?

Well, that was a big lesson I learned later in my journey when a grandmaster, his name is Alexander Shavalov, had witnessed me losing a big game as I was trying to get the title of Grandmaster. And he said that to me. He said after watching me really fumble and be nervous in a critical moment, he said, in order to become a grandmaster, you have to first be a grandmaster.

Wow.

You know, that sounds like Yoda talking to you at first. dawned on me that this makes so much sense. What I had been doing is pursuing the goal of trying to get those points that give you the Grandmaster title. You have to win X number of games, get this number of rating points. But the truth is that the journey is what gives value to the destination. And it's the process that really matters. And if you start

Wow, I just love that. So what do you want people to know, Maurice, about your book, Move by Move, the Life Lessons On and Off the Chessboard, about what chess has taught you. What is what do you think is the fundamental

Yeah.

greatest lesson you've learned that is a metaphor for all of us to take.

There's so many lessons from chess. I mean, it is a game of metaphors. It's not just about checkmating other people. But it is about growth. It is about, as I mentioned, respecting the journey. Yes. Respecting uh the character building qualities that you get along the way. And big lessons like listening to your opponent. I mean your opponent is your greatest teacher. When they're whipping you on the chessboard, you're getting lessons in real time.

And being able to offer it to children who wouldn't ordinarily be exposed to it, that's gotta be one of the great joys of your life.

It's kind of curious because I stumbled on that in life. It wasn't something that I had decided I wanted to do. It was actually someone who came to me and said, you know I think you'll make a great teacher. And I I wasn't sure on that, but uh the pay was good, so I decided to do it. And then I found myself. completely wrapped up in their growth and what I could offer them. And kids are like sponges. If you show them that respect, they're ready to learn. They want to be great.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much, Maurice. We finally met. It happened. It happened because it happened. And and this was the right time. how society evaluates potential today, Adam.

I think the the basic challenge that most people run into is they judge potential based on ability instead of motivation. So they look at your your starting skill level and they think, Okay, that's the main driver of where you're gonna go. But we know from extensive evidence that's not true. I I love the study that Benjamin Bloom did.

Yes.

And I was so surprised when I first read this that they didn't stand out from a nobility perspective, even in their own school, their own neighborhood, or their own family. They weren't even the most talented kid typically in their household. But when they did stand out, it was not because of unusual ability, it was because of unusual motivation.

I just love that. Talking about teachers, we have Molly who's joining us on Zoom from Mount Vernon School in Atlanta. Molly is the head of kindergarten to fifth grade. I just oh my gosh, when the minds are so ripe. Woo woo woo. I hear every teacher in your school system just read hidden potential. Is that correct?

That is great. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm thrilled to speak on the impact that Hen Patidal has had on me as an educator. but also as a mom of three. Um, the impact of the book started at the end of last year, where our pet of school, Christy Lundstrom, asked all 278 faculty and staff at Mount Vernon to read Hidden Potential. as a part of our summer plus learning.

Did you know this was going on?

Yeah. And after all the teachers read the book over the summer, we reflected how we can truly unlock potential using Adam's work. And we found themes that really help support what we believe about teaching and learning, but also help amplify some of those ideas too, as we are a school of inquiry, innovation, and impact.

Polly knows this book better than I do.

No, you're you're you're you're laying it out for us. Would do you have a question for Adam? You have'em right here.

Yes. Well, Adam, we also, um, because our teachers love the book so much, I also received a question um over the summer from a rising first grade parent. about your book. She actually quoted your book to me. And I told her, oh my goodness. We're actually doing an all school read on this book. And we normally do a parent book club. And we said and I asked her, what what do you think about having a lower school parent book club on your book? And she said, see you there.

Great question.

Well, first of all, let me just say it's a huge honor that you've applied so many principles from the book. And I feel like I need to rewrite part of it based on what I've heard just now. Uh so I I look forward to learning more about what you've been up to. I think to answer your question, I think the if I had to pick a top three, I would say number one, there's a practice in um in Denmark uh in schools that I love called Cake Time.

Has it allowed you all as the teachers and administrators to think differently or redefine what it means to be gifted or high potential? Has has has the book allowed you to see differently?

I think um we aligned with his work so much because we always believe that all kiddos have potential. And I think we always believe that it's our job to find that potential within kiddos, but it's also

I love you call'em kiddos. All the kiddos do. All the kiddos.

It's also our job as a school to create systems where that can happen. I'm thinking of uh we're a school of design thinking, so we like for kids to be able to solve real world problems by interviewing each other, building prototypes. getting feedback on their pro prototypes. So going back to Adam's idea of improving upon improving and that we're all on this journey together. And it's not the end goal we're really after. We're really after that

That that speaks to one other thing I would love to see happen in more schools, which is knowledge is not static. It's dynamic. And I've seen a couple of teachers challenge their students to go and rewrite a chapter of the textbook.

Wow. Molly, thank you for sharing that.

Thank you both.

Thanks, Molly. Quite an honor.

Time for a quick break. If you're learning as much as I am during this conversation, I invite you to share it with a friend or loved one. It may shift their mindset about what it means to reach their full potential. We're coming right back. Hi everybody. Welcome back to my conversation with one of the foremost thought leaders on finding meaning, motivation, and personal growth. The New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential, Adam Grant.

Congratulations.

That oh you cleaned I know you cleaned up for us. You cleaned up for us. I can see that, Frankie.

I had to. I mean if I was gonna be on a podcast with Oprah I had to have a clean room.

Yeah.

Oh well yeah, okay, okay. It's shining through. So what's your question for Adam?

Um, okay, so Adam, I am graduating in May of twenty twenty six. Um, I currently go to Lewis University with a f I have a focus in PR in advertising and I just wanna start off by saying I really, really resonated with what you were talking about when you were um discussing imposter syndrome. I actually recently did an internship with a place called Xeno Group and

Can you tap into this hidden potential and you know make it make it a reality for yourself is also the big question. So you know what he says about. about imposter syndrome is that it's an indication that you have the hidden potential. The fact that you're there and you're amongst all of these people Means you're supposed to be there and you just haven't tapped into it. Means you don't realize you're hidden. But I look, he wrote the book. I'll let him tell you.

I think I I think that's a great start. I think So so often when people feel like imposters, they believe their own self-doubt instead of the belief in them that other people have. And I I think that's it's such a paradox because you're saying on the one hand, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't believe in myself. And yet on the other hand, but I definitely know that I don't know what I'm doing. Um no, you don't. If if you doubt yourself, you should also j doubt your judgment of yourself.

Yes.

Who founded Span. Uh, she had gone from selling fax machines door to door to becoming an entrepreneur and starting her own company. And I asked her, how did you have the confidence to to do that? And she said, Well, I didn't I didn't have confidence in my knowledge and skill. I had confidence in my ability to learn.

Mm good.

I thought that was such a great way to think differently about confidence that you don't have to believe in yourself today. You just have to believe in your ability to grow tomorrow.

And do you have that, Frankie?

I do. Um, I I like to think I'm I've a I'm a very confident person. I think it's just sometimes difficult for me to tap into that. Um, I try to speak it into existence. I'm I'm big in manifesting. Um so I I do believe that about myself, yes.

Okay. Well I think you need to go for it, girl.

Well I mean if Oprah's telling me to go for it, I think I'm gonna go for it.

You need to go for it. You need to go for it. Go for it. And tap into that hidden potential. Okay? Yeah. Thank you.

Well, thank you.

Thanks so much. Oh, thank you. And thanks for presenting such a clean room.

Uh of course. Of course, only for you.

Okay. Thanks again for joining the Oprah Podcast. Do you struggle with perfectionism? I hear that's something impacting a lot of women these days. Hey there, welcome back. I hope y'all will pick up a copy of Adam's book, Hidden Potential. It will help you see the potential within yourself. And if you know someone who needs to unlock their own hidden potential, send them the link to this episode. You say, Adam, we need to foster the will to accept

Well, I feel like as a recovering perfectionist, I'm still struggling with this one. But if I say it enough times, maybe I'll start to listen. I think the the challenge that most people face with perfectionism is you're always looking in the mirror. And if you do that the flaws are going to be magnificent. And I think what we need to get better at is saying, okay, flawlessness never exists. That's um it's an impossible standard.

And does that change with depending on where you are?

Very much so. I think a actually maybe this takes us back to something you asked about earlier. I think when I wrote my first two books. I was really aiming for sevens and eights. I couldn't believe that anyone would read anything I read.

That's right.

And then people read and I felt like I needed to raise the bar. And the great thing about raising that bar is my work got better and I learned a lot. The sad thing was I was more and more dissatisfied with my work because I felt like And with everything I achieved, the the expectations would rise. And the expectations actually rose faster than the achievements.

When I sat down and said, okay, let me rewind the clock and not judge myself by my standards today, but my standards of three and five years ago, I started to feel differently. My younger self would be blown away by the progress that I've made and the distance that I've traveled. And maybe I guess I guess you were on to something when you said you thought about making yourself proud.

Yeah.

I want to make my younger self proud.

I I I feel I feel like there's not enough attention paid and you do talk about it a lot in Hidden Potential, but there's not uh uh a enough attention paid to the distance we've traveled. Uh and I think so many peop people are focused on where you need to go, where you need to go.

Yeah, appreciating that progress is such an important skill. Oprah, how do you do this in your own life? Do you think about what your younger self would think of where you are now?

Oh, I think about it all the time. I literally have gone from Mississippi, rural Mississippi, to Montecito. So I you know I look in my own backyard every day and I am in awe, in amazement, in um what I've been able to achieve, what I've been able to accomplish, the blessings I've received, the steps that I had to take to get there. So yeah, I do I think about it a lot. It's hard it's hard not to think about it, you know.

And what what then keeps you motivated to say, Okay, but there is another mountain I want to climb?

Uh what keeps me motivated is bec okay, so now you're interviewing me. Uh so what keeps me motivated of course you are. Uh what keeps me motivated is understanding that as long as there is breath As long as you are here, there's opportunity for growth. that that's what we as human beings do. And that for me, a part of the calling

That's beautifully put. I think the yeah, the best way to learn is to teach.

Yeah.

You've always been a teacher.

Yeah, I've al I've always been a teacher and and the soul of myself. And all of those years every day on the show, what I really was doing was that was that was a that was a classroom for everybody. How do you want us to think differently about what potential could mean for all of us, not just what we see in other people, but what we see in ourselves? The writing of this book, you ended it.

I didn't know. I hoped. I hoped. I think The ultimate goal was to get people to stop counting themselves out and to stop counting other people out. And I think if even one person reads this book and says, you know what? I'm actually capable of more than I thought. And I'm gonna go pursue a goal that I said, nah, I could never do that. Or I'm gonna take on a challenge that I thought was beyond my reach, then it's well worth the time that I invested in in trying to write the book.

Well done, I'd say. We're gonna stop there because we could talk all day about hidden potential, about rising to our potential. Thank you, Adam Grant. Thank you for being who you are. Thank you for continuing to write these books that stimulate the way we think about and the way we see ourselves and the potential for living a better, higher life. Thank you so much.