Do You Realize Your Potential?

Be honest: Talking about yourself for hours on end can be pretty darn enjoyable. As for talking about yourself for hours on end while another person not only listens but also takes notes? That's downright thrilling! During a recent visit to the offices of the Generative Leadership Group Inc., a consulting firm based in Somerville, New Jersey, I spent an entire day indulging in this thrill.

In 1999, GLG partnered with the British company Potentia International to bring Potentia's unique "profiling" system to North America. The Potentia System, as the methodology is known, is designed to help people answer major career questions: What type of work will allow me to make the greatest contribution? Which career path fits best with my values and aspirations? How can I grow as a person by developing my latent abilities? What kind of work will give me the most pleasure, unleash the most energy, and feel like fun?

These are, of course, the questions at the heart of the career choices being made by tens of millions of people around the world. The new economy's promise was that rank-and-file employees would have a wider range of choices than ever before about the kinds of companies they could work at, the kinds of work they could do inside those companies, and the kinds of experiences they could have during their career journey.

True, many of those workers are now more concerned with simply hanging on to their jobs than finding their true calling. And many of their colleagues, pink slip in hand, are wondering if it's worth taking a gig at Starbucks to pay the rent until they find their next real job. But the dream of the "perfect" job dies hard, and many disillusioned workers are using the current shakeout to reevaluate just what it was they had wanted to do before the lure of stock-option riches clouded their perspective.

With all these choices comes the responsibility to make decisions -- hence the Potentia System. Of course, such questions matter to more than the people answering them; they also matter to the companies that those people work for. In the competition for talent, holding on to great people is just as important as attracting them in the first place. And one crucial part of holding on to people is helping them feel like they're learning, growing, succeeding -- realizing their potential. So it's no wonder that Potentia can count among its clients a long list of well-known companies, including BP Amoco, Agilent Technologies, and Nortel Networks.

According to Adrian Savage, who cofounded Potentia in 1990 with Richard Scriven, people are happiest when their work corresponds with their values and challenges them to fulfill their potential. Indeed, Potentia's focus on potential -- right down to its name -- is what sets it apart from other firms that provide employee-assessment services. "We help people explore the possibilities that are open for their future," says Savage, 54. "Most often, the possibilities that we're aware of for our future are founded on our past. We know about them because we've already done them, or we've done part of them. But what about the things that you might enjoy and be successful at, but that you've never come into contact with?"

Kimm Hershberger, who leads Nortel's alliance strategy and business-innovation team, was profiled in September 1999. "The profile was focused on looking forward," says Hershberger, 33. "It wasn't the fill-in-the-20-boxes-and-we'll-tell-you-if-you-meet-the-leadership-standards-for-today type of approach." Hershberger's "values profiling" affirmed that in working for Nortel, she is in the right place at the right time. "I thrive on extreme learning, and on feeling like I have an impact and a sense of integrity," she says. "And true to my generation, I have trouble with hierarchy and rules. Nortel is a good match: You don't have to be a certain age or a certain level to step up to leadership."

One reason for looking forward, Savage argues, is that ability is less a matter of innate talent than of habit, circumstance, and motivation. And those things can be changed. "It isn't mere political correctness to say that we all have huge amounts of potential," he says. "We can all do most things pretty well. The difference between people lies in the access that they have to their potential. In all walks of life, people in difficult and unusual circumstances -- for example, people in war -- do amazing things that they didn't know they could do. It's not that they couldn't have done those things before. It's just that nothing in their lives had ever called for those skills in the past."