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: Energy

Energizers know exactly how to set the right mood. They’re not all play—they know when and how to focus—but there’s a lightness to everything they do and they lift up the people around them. They know how to laugh at themselves, and they know when a little mischief is in order. They can help the team when people are feeling drained or whenever there’s a lull in the overall level of joy.

Collaboration Tips

• Energizers are like the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to team health and morale. If they say it’s time to drop what you’re doing and go for a walk around the block, pay attention.
• They tend to have a highly optimistic outlook. If you’re someone who leans toward pessimism, their positivity may actually work a nerve or two. Make sure they know this, so they can tone things down if need be.

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.