The Research Behind Greatness
Spotting and Stoking Potential in Ourselves and Those Who Matter Most
THE PROBLEM
We are habituated only to see past performance.
At the height of World War II, the most glamorous woman in Hollywood walked into a room of Navy brass with a breakthrough that could stop the enemy from jamming Allied torpedoes. The room saw a pretty face and sent her away. Her name was Hedy Lamarr — and the "frequency hopping" they waved off became the backbone of WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth. They were looking right at her. They just couldn't see her.
We've been taught to look for greatness in the obvious — fancy degrees, impressive résumés, big titles, familiar faces. We tell ourselves we'll know it when we see it. But if you'll know it when you see it, you've already seen it before — and if you only back what you've seen before, you stay constrained to where you've been.
For two decades of executive search, interviewing thousands of candidates for the most consequential roles, one lesson held: greatness rarely looks like what we expect. The question isn't how to go find it. It's how to see it in the people already in front of you — and how many Hedy Lamarrs are sitting in your organization right now, waiting to be seen.
Our intuition can spot future potential.
For two decades, my job was to spot the talent others missed — a retained executive recruiter reading thousands of candidates for the most consequential roles in the country. That practitioner's instinct became a research question. In my doctoral work, The Role of Intuition in the Hiring Process, I've interviewed the CEOs, CHROs, and executive recruiters whose careers depend on reading talent — and used grounded theory to map how their intuition actually works.
The finding: it isn't a magic trick. It's a sensemaking process — one that can be made both defensible and teachable. The best talent spotters don't choose between gut and evidence; they blend intuitive pattern recognition with disciplined judgment, moving past "I'll know it when I see it" to a practice they can repeat and pass on. Across the interviews, that practice resolves into an iterative cycle:
Legendary talent spotters look for things other miss.
Five patterns are emerging from the grounded-theory interviews with the people who spot talent for a living.
This is active doctoral research — qualitative findings from interviews now, with quantitative validation to come.
A feeling before a thought
Evaluators register a pull toward a candidate before they can explain it. The body reads the pattern before the mind can name it.
Read the system, not just the person
Intuition is strongest when the evaluator deeply understands the culture the candidate will land in — and weakest when they don't.
Charisma creates false positives
The most common way good evaluators get fooled: mistaking polish and presence for potential.
Intuition is not bias
Experts insist they differ: intuition is subconscious, emergent, hard to name; bias is immediate, visual, and surface-level.
More teachable than anyone admits
Evaluators first say intuition can't be taught — then describe building it through reflection, pattern exposure, and honest review of their misses.
Three key shifts you can make today.
Greatness isn't something you hire. It's something you hone.
Change your lens
Evaluate people by where they could go, not only where they've been.
Change their story
Help them rewrite who they believe they are, and the strengths they've been hiding.
Change the stakes
Give real stretch: assignments, decisions, and roles that let them rise.
Greatness lives in the alchemy of everyday heroes, not the rock stars.
We chase rock stars — the high achiever, the agile learner, the team energizer — and each shines on one thing while going blind elsewhere. But underneath nearly every "two-trick pony" are nine behaviors that predict who can grow: High Achievers, Agile Learners and Team Energizers.
Where the families overlap, latent talent becomes leadership: hunger + inspiration makes a Catalyst; hunger + adaptability makes an Innovator; inspiration + adaptability makes a Mentor.
Spotting Potential in Action
A closer look at how leaders recognize the patterns that predict potential — and who to back, promote, and bet on.
Spotting and Stoking Greatness
In this provocative and empowering keynote, bestselling author, and Good Morning America’s Career Expert Laura Gassner Otting draws on two decades of experience advising leaders from the corner office to the Oval Office. With insights from stewarding thousands of people during career transition and organizational disruption, she reveals a fresh framework for spotting, stoking, and scaling human greatness—right now, in the teams you already have.
Let’s stop managing tasks, and start unleashing greatness. In others. And in ourselves.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
THE REPORT
The Limitless Leader Report
The data behind why your best people stay — and why they leave.
THE BOOK
Greatness
The book on spotting and stoking the potential already on your team.
ADVISORY
Executive Coaching
Build the muscle of spotting and stoking potential across your team.