Discover Your Superpowers With Sanyin Siang

Imagine there is something that you’re amazing at, and it’s valuable to others. This thing is so energizing for you to do, you can’t not do it. And the more you do it, the happier you feel and the more valuable people find your contributions!

Now-- because the thing you’re amazing at is so valuable and so easy for you, imagine that you could also stop trying so hard to become better at the things you’re bad at. The pressure to be something you’re not or to master something really challenging just …dissolves. How would that feel? Pretty great, right?

What I’ve just described is possible for many of us if we can understand our superpowers, and then find the right place to work, and the right role to suit our gifts. It breaks my heart that most of us spend more time trying to become people we’re not at the expense of our superpowers. Somehow we're taught in society to only value something when it's hard and not value a thing when it's easy. And even worse, high achievers have a bad habit. We fixate on the negative: we love to talk about what we're not good at or what we could be better about or what someone else is better about than us. 

My guest this week is Duke’s Sanyin Siang , legendary executive coach, advisor to Google Ventures and the Executive Director of Duke University's Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics (COLE) at its Fuqua School of Business. 

Our gifts come easy, Siang says. “We should also value what's easy. That's a way of becoming our own best friend. Instead of saying to ourselves, 'Oh my gosh, you're such an idiot, why can't you get this thing right?' Because it's hard to say, 'Wow, bravo, this thing you're doing adds value.' [But] that's the glue of understanding our superpowers.”

What's a Superpower?

A superpower is something you excel at - something that energizes you and becomes more rewarding the more you do it. When you embrace your superpower, you can stop focusing on improving your weaknesses and instead leverage your natural talents.

Siang explains, "We don't know something is a superpower because it comes easily to us. We do it without thinking - it's instinctive or innate."

What distinguishes a superpower from a strength? Siang defines superpowers as "differentiating strengths." She explains: "I can put together a nice PowerPoint deck. It is grueling work. It does not energize me. I derive no joy from it, and yet I can do it. So it can be a strength. There's others for whom it takes them a second, and they come up with this beautiful deck that translates exactly the ideas that I'm trying to put on the page. Superpowers energize you."

Context Matters

For those of us who struggle with our mental health or are neurodivergent, our brains just work differently. This is especially important. We have so many gifts, but they might even be hidden because work isn't set up for us or because our inner critics are out of control. So I find the Superpowers framework so powerful in my day-to-day work, especially on the days that I'm feeling down and I am really mad at my tricky brain.

One of the theories in my new book, which is a guide for people who have hidden superpowers, is that a lot of us are really wonderful at our craft, but bad at our job. There's no one better at your chosen craft or profession, but you might not be so great at your job because your job is people and politics and bureaucracy and answering emails and task management and task completion and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So how do you reach a point where you can exercise your superpower because you have the permission and a structure to do it? Siang says it's being in the right context and working with people who trust you. 

She says, "One of the tenets of superpowers is we may have innate superpowers that we don't even realize we have because the context for expressing them have not yet arisen. Superpowers have to be in context. In some contexts, this capability can be a superpower. In other contexts, it can be kryptonite." Context matters, and we forget because we're so individualized. It's us in the context of who we are around as well and what we're all trying to accomplish, and what is happening in the world around us that superpowers often emerge.

When we’re in the wrong role or wrong fit, our superpowers can even be what we’re dinged for! Clayton Lord is an executive I interviewed recently. He’s has autism and has an incredible superpower, which is really, really valuable in a lot of situations: Lord can take in a lot of chaos and tons of information in a messy project that feels overwhelming to everyone else and solve it. He can literally see it, make the connections, and turn it into something that is doable. And everyone around him breathes a sigh of relief.  I feel his superpower so viscerally. But Lord also notes, "Sometimes that's my Achilles heel because I go in too deep and people get overwhelmed or they think that I'm being too intense in my feedback... It took trial and error and honestly good managers to help me understand this is your superpower, but yes, you have to modulate it as well."

How to Discover Your Superpowers

1. Ask others: "We don't ask this question because we're taught if we're asking what makes us good, it's like we're fishing for compliments."

2. Listen when people tell you what comes naturally to you: "People don't stop and tell you what your superpowers are because it's so obvious to the rest of us what your superpowers are."

3. Consider what part of your job you'd do for free.

Learn more by listening to my interview with Sanyin Siang:

I write this newsletter for free because I LOVE helping connect you to tools that will improve your life and help you step into the leadership role you're meant for!

Morra