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.

Everyone has unique strengths – those things that come effortlessly and naturally to you. From Superpowers to Great Teams, a new online class offered by IDEO U in partnership with SYPartners, guides learners through a discovery process to identify their unique strengths—called Superpowers—and learn to amplify them.

Drawing from the archetypes and attributes of effective leaders, these superpowers range from empathy—a strong ability to understand the needs of others—to systems building—understanding all of the pieces of a process—to creative thinking, grit, and decisiveness, among others. Tapping into your superpower will not only help you to bring your best self to work, it will allow you to create the conditions for the people around you to thrive. Knowing yourself and how you relate to others is key to building strong relationships, great teams, and thriving organizations.

Superpower: Cultural Compass

A Cultural Compass understands the organization’s DNA and has a finely tuned sense of what’s right and wrong. Which is why he or she knows when the team is going against its character. People can read the Compass—even just his or her body language—and see that something is off. And when the team seriously starts to lose its way, the Cultural Compass will gently but firmly ask questions until a new course is set.

Collaboration Tips

• The Cultural Compass may not be the loudest member of the team. But when you solicit his or her opinion, you will inevitably get a thoughtful response that makes you grateful you asked. So remember to ask.
• The truths raised by a Cultural Compass can sometimes be inconvenient ones, but ignore them at your peril. They will almost always crop up—even more inconveniently—later on.

Identify your superpower, build stronger work relationships, and learn how to set the conditions for thriving, collaborative teams in our new class, From Superpowers to Great Teams.