Have you ever looked at where you are in your career and wondered whether your results or current position really reflect what you are capable of? Perhaps you have been passed over (again) for a role, your career seems to have plateaued, or you’ve reached a season where your effort and hard work aren’t generating the progress you expected or deserve.
Those moments can be discouraging because results are tangible. The title we hold, the promotion we did not receive, the project that struggled, or the opportunity that never materialized. The real danger to you is that, over time, you turn those results into conclusions about yourself that just aren’t true.
That is why I keep coming back to this reminder: You’re better than you think you are!
In this short video, I share the story of runner Ryan Smith and a breakthrough that caused me to reflect on potential, confidence, opportunity, and what leaders can do to help people discover capabilities that may not yet be obvious. (This also resonated personally for me.)
Watch my video: You Are Better Than You Think You Are
Ryan made a comment after his race that stayed with me: “I felt like my results didn’t reflect what I was capable of.” Rather than repeat his story here, I want to explore the leadership question behind it: How often do we mistake current performance for future potential?
Performance Is a Snapshot, Not a Ceiling
There’s an important distinction between performance and potential. Performance tells us how someone is doing today under a particular set of circumstances, with a particular amount of experience, confidence, support, responsibility, and opportunity. Potential asks a different question: What could this person become?
Good leaders need to pay attention to both. If we evaluate people only by what they are producing today, we can easily overlook someone whose capability has not yet had the right opportunity to emerge.
The quiet employee may have leadership ability that has never been tested. Someone in STEM may actually have strong business-development instincts beyond their credentials and technical abilities but has never been invited into an important client conversation. An emerging manager may be capable of considerably more responsibility but has not yet been trusted with it.
This doesn’t mean ignoring current performance or assuming everyone is capable of everything. Standards still matter. What it does mean is recognizing that current results are influenced by more than raw ability. Experience, confidence, opportunity, coaching, environment, and even the expectations of those around us can all affect what someone is able to demonstrate and achieve.
Sometimes people don’t need another course or another piece of advice. They need an opportunity to find out what they can do and what happens when limitations are removed and they step out of their comfort zone.
When Confidence Has Not Caught Up With Competence
Another challenge is that competence and confidence don’t generally develop at the same pace. Some people project tremendous confidence before they have developed the ability to support it. Others have already developed considerable capability but continue to underestimate themselves.
The latter group can easily be overlooked. They may wait until they feel completely ready before accepting a larger assignment, pursuing an important client, applying for a role, raising their hand and putting forward an idea, or having a difficult conversation. Meanwhile, someone with greater confidence but less capability may step forward first.
This is one reason confidence often develops through experience rather than before it. We discover what we can do by taking on responsibilities that require more from us, learning what works, making mistakes, receiving feedback, adjusting, and trying again.
As leaders, we can help people navigate that gap. Sometimes a simple statement such as, “I think you are ready for this,” or “I believe in you – give it a shot,” gives someone enough confidence to step into an opportunity they may otherwise have avoided.
Are You Becoming Someone Else’s Ceiling?
This may be the more important leadership question.
Have you formed an opinion about someone that they have since outgrown?
Maybe it’s an employee who struggled several years ago, and you still view them through that experience. Maybe someone lacks polish and sophistication, so their judgment is underestimated. Perhaps a quiet employee receives fewer opportunities because another person is more vocal and asserts themselves for what they want.
Early impressions can easily become permanent labels if we don’t intentionally revisit them.
Leadership requires us to keep looking at people with fresh eyes. One of our greatest responsibilities is to notice capability that may not yet be fully visible and create opportunities for that capability to develop.
That doesn’t mean handing someone responsibility they are clearly unprepared for and hoping for the best. The best stretch opportunities combine challenge with support. Give people enough responsibility that they need to grow, while also providing access to coaching, feedback, guidance, and the freedom to learn and maybe even fail forward.
Sometimes people discover what they are capable of because someone else believed in them before they fully believed in themselves.
Potential Still Has to Become Capability
There is an important caution in the message “You are better than you think you are.” It should never become an excuse for wishful thinking or self-deception.
Potential alone accomplishes very little. Belief does not replace preparation, confidence does not replace competence, and ambition does not replace discipline.
The value of believing you are capable of more is that it should change what you are willing to do. It may cause you to accept a challenging assignment, work hard, develop a skill you’ve been avoiding, ask for candid feedback, pursue a larger opportunity, or practice something until you become genuinely better at it.
Belief helps us step forward. Discipline helps us become capable of succeeding once we do.
The same principle applies when developing others. Encouragement is important, but encouragement without development can become empty praise. If we genuinely believe that someone is capable of more, we should help them gain the experience, feedback (or at Kison Group we like to call it “feedforward”), and responsibilities that allow that potential to become a demonstrated capability.
Growth Reflections and Actions
As you think about your own development and the people you lead, here are a few practical actions to consider:
- Take on something that stretches you.Look for an assignment, responsibility, conversation, or project that requires you to operate beyond what is already comfortable.
- Reflect on what the experience is teaching you.Ask what worked, what did not, what surprised you, and what you would do differently next time. Experience becomes more valuable when we stop long enough to learn from it.
- Seek candid feedback. Ask trusted people, or what I call Truth Speakers,what they see as your strengths and weaknesses and where they believe you need to grow. We all have blind spots, and sometimes others see capability or limitations that we cannot yet see ourselves.
- Give someone else room to grow.Who on your team may be capable of more than their current responsibilities allow them to demonstrate? What opportunity could you provide that stretches them while still giving them the support needed to succeed?
As you consider those questions, ask yourself one more: Where might my current results be underrepresenting my true capability, and what am I prepared to do next to find out?
Past results matter because they teach us, but they should not permanently define what comes next. Great leadership is not simply about getting the best performance from people today. It is also about helping people become capable of more tomorrow.
Sometimes that begins by seeing possibility before everyone else can see it.
Remember, you’re likely better than you think you are!
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