Why you need to know this: if you have ever watched a confident colleague be labelled high potential ahead of a stronger one, or you sit on a panel that judges potential yourself, this briefing explains what those judgements are made from, whose personality they favour, and what predicts who will actually do well.
A rating of potential is a forecast of how somebody will perform in a job they have never done. Definitions vary widely (Silzer & Church, 2009), one consensus model counts self-promotion as part of it (Dries & Pepermans, 2012), and people prefer the promise of being good to a record of having been good (Tormala, Jia & Norton, 2012). With no direct evidence of the future, judges look at what they can see.
Confidence. Overconfident people were seen as more competent and given more influence in MBA teams beyond their actual accuracy (Anderson, Brion, Moore & Kennedy, 2012) and kept that standing when their real results were revealed (Kennedy, Anderson & Moore, 2013). Confidence raised judgements of leadership potential at every level of competence tested (Ronay et al., 2019).
Talk and type. People who speak more are picked as leaders, whether or not they are right (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009; MacLaren et al., 2020). Extraversion predicts being picked more than doing well (Judge, Bono, Ilies & Gerhardt, 2002), and the picture of a leader still looks more like a man (Koenig, Eagly, Mitchell & Ristikari, 2011).
Current performance. Across sales workers in 131 firms, the best sellers were promoted but were not the best managers, and collaboration, which predicted good management, was not consistently rewarded (Benson, Li & Shue, 2019).
Personality on both sides. Narcissism and psychopathy help people get picked, not lead (Grijalva et al., 2015; Landay, Harms & Credé, 2019). Women described their own performance about 13 points lower, on a scale of 0 to 100, than equally performing men (Exley & Kessler, 2022), and in a retail chain of 29,809 management-track staff, women received higher performance ratings and lower potential ratings, accounting for about half the promotion gap, and then outperformed the men (Benson, Li & Shue, 2026).
What predicts doing well. Steadiness and trust (Härtel, Hoch & Back, 2025), altruism and self-discipline, which did not help people get picked (Baker et al., 2026), and collaboration and humility as colleagues see them (Owens, Johnson & Mitchell, 2013). All are slower to show than confidence.
What changes it. If you are judged, let the record speak before you do, and seek input from people who have watched you work. If you judge, weigh the evidence behind a claim rather than its force. If you run the organisation, define potential for a role, hear from people below and beside the candidate, and check whether those rated high go on to outperform.