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When George Lucas originally wrote the script to the billion-dollar Star Wars franchise, the most iconic line in movie history—“May the Force be with you”—was not in it. Instead, the earliest versions read, “May the Force of others be with you.” Why start a book on the science of potential with an arcane piece of movie history? ... Because I believe that hidden in this tiny line lies both the problem undergirding our broken pursuit of potential as a society and the secret to exponentially increasing our success, well-being, and happiness. Our society has become overly focused on the “power of one alone” versus “the power of one made stronger by others.” Of course, Hollywood glorifies individual superstars; where else are the streets literally paved with their names? But when we adopt this script in our companies and schools, focusing only on individual achievement and eliminating “others” from the equation, our true power remains hidden. But what is hidden can be revealed. Three years ago, as I was researching the hidden connections that underlie success and human potential, I had a breakthrough. I became a father. When my son, Leo, came into the world, he was quite literally helpless. He couldn’t even roll over by himself. But, as he got older, he became more capable. And with each new skill he picked up, like any good positive psychology researcher would, I found myself praising him, saying, “Leo, you did that all by yourself! I’m proud of you.” And after a while, Leo began parroting it back to me in a soft but proud voice: “All by myself.” That’s when I realized: First as children, then as adults in the workplace, we are conditioned to disproportionately value things we accomplish on our own. As a father, if I stopped my praise and guidance there, my son might come to view independent achievement as the ultimate test of our mettle. But in reality, it is not. There is a whole other level. … The people who rise to the top are not those who try to do everything all by themselves, but, rather, those who can ask others for help and rally others to grow. Parents who support a balanced, connected approach to pursuing success for their children are rewarded for their persistence, while parents who urge individual achievement at the cost of connection find themselves unprepared for their child’s burnout or loneliness. We spend the first 22 years of our lives being judged and praised for our individual attributes and what we can achieve alone, when, for the rest of our lives, our success is almost entirely interconnected with that of others. Over the past decade, I have worked with nearly half of the Fortune 100 companies and traveled to more than 50 countries to learn how people everywhere approach the concepts of success, happiness, and human potential. One thing I’ve found to be true almost everywhere is that the vast majority of companies, schools, and organizations measure and reward “high performance” in terms of individual metrics such as sales numbers, résumé accolades, and test scores. The problem with this approach is that it is predicated on a belief we thought science had fully confirmed: that we live in a world of “survival of the fittest.” It teaches us that success is a zero-sum game; that those with the best grades, or the most impressive résumé, or the highest point score, will be the ONLY ones to prosper. The formula is simple: Be better and smarter and more creative than everyone else, and you will be successful. But this formula is inaccurate. Thanks to groundbreaking new research you will read about in this book, we now know that achieving our highest potential is not about survival of the fittest; it is survival of the best fit. In other words, success is not just about how creative or smart or driven you are, but how well you are able to connect with, contribute to, and benefit from the ecosystem of people around you. It isn’t just how highly rated your college or workplace is, but how well you fit in there. It isn’t just how many points you score, but how well you complement the skills of the team. We often think if we can just work harder, faster, and smarter, then we’ll achieve our highest potential. But scientifically in the modern world, the biggest impediment to our success and realizing our potential is not lack of productivity, hard work, or intelligence; it is the way in which we pursue it. The pursuit of potential must not be a lonely road. The conclusion of a decade of research is clear: It’s not faster alone; it’s better together. … By creating hypercompetitive environments in which only individual achievements are celebrated, companies and schools are leaving enormous amounts of talent, productivity, and creativity on the table. Overemphasizing the individual and removing others from the equation places a “soft cap” on our potential, an artificial limit on what we can achieve. But the good news is that I call this a soft cap for a reason: Because it can be lifted. Because when we work to help others achieve success, we not only raise the performance of the group, we exponentially increase our own potential. This is what I describe later in this book as a Virtuous Cycle—a positive feedback loop whereby making others better leads to more resources, energy, and experiences that make you better, fueling the cycle again. Thus, making others better takes your success to the next level. SMALL POTENTIAL is the limited success you can achieve alone. BIG POTENTIAL is the success you can achieve only in a Virtuous Cycle with others. … We can no longer be content competing for the scraps of Small Potential; we must seek new frontiers of human potential and invite others to follow. A challenging world demands that we put “the force of others” back into our formula.

Most of us were taught early on in our childhoods about the Golden Rule. For anyone who’s forgotten, here’s a quick refresher; the Golden Rule is a guiding principle that suggests you treat people the way you wish to be treated. Dating back to the 1600s, the concept can be explained from the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, business, economics and found in nearly every religion and ethical tradition. But, what if that lesson could be taken one step further? What if instead, we treated others as they wish to be treated? Instead of the Golden Rule, we could call it the Golden-Golden Rule, or Golden Rule 2.0. The goal would be to ensure empathy is at the core of organizational policies and embedded into every interaction. We all believe that lending someone a helping hand is a good thing, but, what if we knew why someone needed our help in the first place? When we use the Golden-Golden Rule, we’re more likely to get to the root of the issue. We meet people where they’re at, emotionally, mentally, physically. Take the example of speaking with a child. We physically get down to their height so we can connect with them on their level. Simply put, when we apply the Golden-Golden Rule, we behave with more empathy. Now here’s a challenge: Can we embrace this practice in the workplace? For some CEOs, it just seems too warm and fuzzy. But, for others (like the most influential companies in the world) investing in warm and fuzzy is driven by cold, hard facts. When Google researchers and data scientists were asked to define what makes a team effective, they launched Project Aristotle, spending two years interviewing Googlers (their employees) and examining more than 250 attributes of 180 active Google teams. Do you think they found that doubling up on Rhodes Scholars and combining them with the fastest developers on the planet would be the key to the most effective teams? I’m sure the talent helped. But, the answer is surprisingly, an emphatic, “Nope!” Essentially, the data team discovered psychological safety was the most important trait of a high-performing team, and what Google researchers refer to as the “underpinning” of all the other dynamics that make up a successful group. Two key attributes of psychological safety specific to Googlers include, “conversational turn-taking” and “high emotional sensitivity.” According to Google’s data, individuals on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave, they’re more likely to harness the power of diverse ideas from their teammates, they bring in more revenue and they’re rated as effective twice as often by executives. The moral of this case study? The Golden-Golden Rule wins at work. If you want to apply this in your workplace, it will require effort, intention and practice. But, it won’t be as hard as you may think. Google already outlined one strategy—provide psychological safety and the ability to take risks, make mistakes and move on. Here are a few more practical applications to apply the Golden-Golden Rule at work. 1. Ask more questions. In our office, we have a giant gratitude wall (really—our application to Guinness World Records for Biggest Gratitude Wall in the World was just approved)! We’ve seen how one simple question can tell us so much about each other. We’ve learned who loves playing guitar and when someone is feeling homesick. There are plenty of notes about bacon and Starbucks but more importantly these posts give us a sense of what is going on with each other. Knowing more about people, and what motivates them, allows us to better understand what they need to thrive. 2. No job is too small. Tony Hsieh, founder and CEO of Zappos, now an Amazon company, has famously redesigned the customer-service experience with what appears to be principles reflected in the Golden-Golden Rule. Every person who joins Zappos must spend part of their first weeks answering customer-service calls. No one is exempt, including Tony himself. He and the chief execs get on the phones annually, mostly during peak times to put themselves into the shoes of the customer and to help them to understand the plight of their frontline workers. 3. Be mindful of work styles. The workforce is rapidly evolving and change can be stressful. Get to know your employees’ communication styles so you can connect with them in the place they are most comfortable. Some people work better when you meet in person while others prefer email or online collaboration tools. Remote workers continue to grow, making web-conferencing tools even more essential. Whenever possible, be flexible. Often, it’s good old-fashioned common sense that prevails. For proof, just look to Google’s big announcement about the findings from Project Aristotle. The headline reads, “After years of intensive analysis, Google found the key to good teamwork is being nice.”