A money tree reaching it's full potential

Harness Potential

Have you heard the story about Napoleon’s dinner with the King of Siam? In the mid 1800’s, the King of Siam put on a lavish banquet for Napoleon and his generals, with the best of everything that the kingdom had to offer. No expense was spared, and the servants got everything perfect, down to the finest detail. The King of Siam was out to impress.

Napoleon was impressed, but it wasn’t the exotic foods, the enchanting aromas or the enticing entertainment that impressed him the most. It was the cutlery. The cutlery was forged from an extremely rare and precious metal that Napoleon had never seen before: aluminium. Napoleon had to have some, and is reputed to have paid the King of Siam a huge amount of gold for his aluminium cutlery set.

Nowadays, aluminium is everywhere. It’s one of the most abundant metals on the planet and it was also abundant in Napoleon’s day. What made the metal rare was that at the time, they didn’t have the technology to extract it from the earth (through a process of electrolysis). It has always been there, all they needed was a method to harness it.

It’s the same with people. The potential is there, we just need a way to harness the potential that already exists. That’s what great leaders do. Great leaders are able to get their people to see their own potential, and inspire them to give their best. Instead of electrolysis, great leaders use effective coaching methods to harness the potential in people (for more on coaching, check out this article on the four ways to lead).

NOTE : Thank you to Peter Daimandis for the Napoleon story, you can check it out in his TED Talk Abundance is our Future.

Mark Windust is an influential Thought Leader in the areas of Sales Strategy, Sales Leadership and Sales Performance. Since launching his consulting practice in 2007, Mark has worked with 1000's of business leaders, salespeople and entrepreneurs’ to help them transform their sales results.