There’s a reason why superheroes dominate pop culture. It’s exhilarating to imagine having the supernatural ability to take on any adversary, save the world from destruction, and restore the balance of good and evil, all while sporting an amazing supersuit, of course.

While we can’t seamlessly scale skyscrapers like Spiderman or soar from city to city like Superman, we do have unique superpowers to offer. Your superpower is your contribution—the role that you’re put on this Earth to fill. It’s what you do better than anyone else and tapping into it will not only help your team, but you’ll find your work more satisfying, too.

If you’ve ever found yourself thinking “What is my superpower?” this article will help you take a closer look and start to imagine what we can accomplish together if we tap into our unique superpowers. Keep reading till the end to find out what your superpower is!

Workplace Superpowers in Action

In one of our favorite Creative Confidence Series episodes, Sara Kalick, Former Vice President of SYPartners, and Suzanne Gibbs Howard, IDEO Partner & Founder and Dean of IDEO U, discuss superpowers at work—How do you activate individuals in teams? How do you see each individual for their strength? And how do you create teams and systems where those individuals can thrive? Below we’ll cover some of the key points she makes throughout her interview.

Superpowers is a tool SYPartners developed to help teams identify individual strengths—and the corresponding shadow side—and learn how to use them to be their best. IDEO U and SYPartners collaborated to create the online course From Superpowers to Great Teams to help build the conditions for teams to thrive. Listen to the episode for a quick exercise to help you find your own Superpowers, and check out highlights from the conversation here.

  

“When you understand who you are it helps you partner with others; you can cast teams in ways where you bring in a diversity of perspective that leads to innovative thinking.”

Why Is It Important to Find Your Superpowers At Work?

To build innovative solutions, companies have to move beyond hiring for the same kinds of pedigrees, and think about team building in terms of combinations of individual strengths. To provide a tool to help with that kind of thinking, SYPartners looked at the archetypes of effective leaders and pattern-mapped their attributes to come up with 21 different Superpowers. They range from empathy—a strong ability to understand client/user/team needs—to systems thinking—understanding all of the pieces of a process—to creative thinking, grit, and decisiveness, among others.

Though you might identify with more than one superpower, it helps to think about them in the context of your work, and specifically what you bring to your team. Superpowers also don’t necessarily conform to roles. There’s no reason someone in the finance department can’t have creativity for their superpower, or the team leader might have empathy. And though it might be easy to think of some strengths as more desirable or more reliable, they’re all valuable to a team—and that’s the whole point.

How to Cast and Activate Your Team's Superpowers

The concept might have a bit of a “woo-woo,” self-help vibe, but as Sara points out, really, it’s just good business. Companies need to create much more collaborative teams and think about diversity not just in terms of ethnicity, background, or gender, but also in terms of thought. Understanding what each employee brings makes it possible to stack a team with an array of strengths; after all, you wouldn’t want to build a team of three people with vision but only one with grit, or all empathy and no decisiveness.

Having a shared language also makes it possible for team members to learn more about how their colleagues’ strengths can be activated, and acknowledge each other’s best work.

As leaders, we can never say thank you enough.

How to Recognize the Shadow Side of Your Superpower

For every strength, there’s a corresponding weakness, something SYPartners refers to as "the shadow side" of your Superpower. If your Superpower is empathy, for example, your ability to consider everyone’s side or thinking can lead to delays in decision-making. Those who come naturally to systems thinking might focus so much on the process that they hold things up. Understanding your shadow side is just as important as being aware of your Superpower—and maybe even more important to figuring out how best to work with your team. If you’re a great devil’s advocate, how can you make sure your feedback pushes things forward without alienating your colleagues? Think about how you can activate them to push you to improve.

“Understanding your shadow side is just as important as being aware of your Superpower—and maybe even more important to figuring out how best to work with your team.”

Rethinking Modern Leadership Superpowers

After a quarter of a century in business, SYPartners has seen an evolution of what’s most important in leadership. Two decades ago, Sara says, CEOs focused on 10-year roadmaps and financial engineering, and resource optimization. That made sense when things weren’t moving as fast, but when disruption is constant like it is today, it’s time to flip the formula.

According to SYPartners, there are four essential capabilities for leadership:

1. Optimism—seeing, possessing, and framing it
2. Creativity—a maker’s mindset for everything a company does, not just products and services
3. Authentic Communication—for storytelling and activating others
4. Humanity—for creating mission-based team models.

It’s a set of qualities that most business schools and traditional training programs don’t focus on, but it’s a far more human-centered way of thinking about leadership. Everyone needs to be a great coach and constantly cultivate the individuals around them. Superpowers are one tool to make that process a little easier. 

5 Common Workplace Superpowers

• Empathy as a Superpower: Empathizers have remarkable powers of perception when it comes to other people. With antennae up, they pick up on the needs and emotions around them, even when no one is saying anything.

• Systems Thinking as a Superpower: Systems Thinkers are fearless about the unknown. They travel to the outer edges of a problem, then work their way back to reveal all the parts and how they connect. They can see the forest and the trees—and even the underground root system.

• Creative Thinking as a Superpower: Creative Thinkers relish the sight of a blank piece of paper. That's because they can see what's not yet real. And then make it real.

• Grit as a Superpower: People with Grit have extraordinary levels of endurance, tenacity, and focus. They are the quiet engine of the team—able to keep pushing themselves and the work until it is truly done. They pace themselves for the long haul, ignoring momentary setbacks and the lure of procrastination.

• Decisiveness as a Superpower: Deciders have the strength to make trade-offs that bring clarity and conviction to other team members. With confidence and speed, they break down the choices, weigh each one, and make the call.

 

Suzanne’s superpower is Systems Thinking. Systems Thinkers are fearless about the unknown. They travel to the outer edges of a problem, then work their way back to reveal all the parts and how they connect. They can see the forest and the trees—and even the underground root system.

Sara’s superpower is Empathy. Empathizers have remarkable powers of perception when it comes to other people. With antennae up, they pick up on the needs and emotions around them, even when no one is saying anything.

Unlock Your Team's True Potential with IDEO U

Discovering your personal superpower is just the first step. The real magic happens when you harness the unique strengths of an entire team. Ready to take your collaboration to the next level? Enroll in From Superpowers to Great Teams, an IDEO U course that equips you with the tools to build thriving, high-performing teams where each individual’s superpower shines. Start now and learn how to turn individual strengths into collective success!

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