The Potential Principle : A Proven System for Closing the Gap Between How Good You Are and How Good You Could Be

"Bestselling author Mark Sanborn (The Fred Factor) shows readers how they can get better by discovering and pursuing their true potential. We all know how good we are, but none of us knows how good we could be. No matter what we've achieved so far, one thing is certain: we can still get better. In The Potential Principle, Mark Sanborn teaches readers how to improve by providing practical steps and revealing where to focus efforts. Getting better results from consistently using a small set of easily remembered tools, ones that prevent complacency, create improvement, and break through barriers. By identifying the four key areas in which improvement is possible--thinking, performing, learning, and reflecting--and applying the four tools of improvement in those areas--disrupt, refocus, engage, and expand--Sanborn reveals the secret for achieving breakthrough improvement in any area of life"--;Why you should improve. The Potential Principle ; Why get better? -- The path to improvement. The Potential Matrix ; Escalating performance: if you don't think you can keep getting better, you don't know jack ; Leveraged learning: how to go from waiting tables to NASA ; Deeper thinking: what you can learn from a famous sculpture ; Insightful introspection: how to enter the room with no door and accurate mirrors -- The means of improvement. Disrupt yourself: if you don't, something or somebody else will ; (re)Focus: the antidote to perpetual distraction ; Engage others: the keys to uncommon improvement ; Increasing capacity: the secret of the partially filled glass ; What matters: how a speech about hunting knife safety changed my life -- Appendix 1: Sixteen combinations of matrix and breakthrough improvement ; Appendix 2: The eight questions for making your best better. You may honestly be able to say (and have others say about you) that you are the absolute best in your field--the best athlete, scholar, CEO, parent, mathematician, teacher, mechanic . . . whatever it is that you fill out the “occupation” box with. But being the best at something only means you are better than everyone else. It doesn’t mean you are the best you. Your potential is higher than where you are right now.Leadership expert and international bestselling author of The Fred Factor and You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader, Mark Sanborn invites you to get better. Not better than others, but better than you! By learning to employ Sanborn’s uniquely designed “Potential Matrix” to specific areas of their lives, readers can gain the tools they need to see breakthrough improvements in places they previously thought had reached their maximum potential.Every day, you have the exciting opportunity to be better. To pursue your true potential. To make what you thought was your best, now second-best. And then the next day, start again. You can be better. Are you maximizing your potential? Learn how to close the gap between how good you are and how good you can be.