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: Provocation

Provocateurs have a super thick skin. They are much more concerned with being effective than with being liked. And they routinely push the team outside its comfort zone or break up consensus by playing devil’s advocate. They often strive for greatness when others might be content with good enough. The team needs them most when the work lacks originality or everyone is playing it too safe.

Collaboration Tips

• Let yourself be provoked. It can feel hard at first, but don’t take it as an affront to what you’ve already done. Take it as a challenge to go even further.
• You can be blunt with Provocateurs. While they can be strong-willed, they are generally very open to getting honest, tough feedback. They’ll respect you for giving it.

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.