"Don't try to copy other people's superpowers. Discover your own." As a leader, how do you find your own and how do you help your team find theirs?

1.3k viewscircle icon4 Upvotescircle icon9 Comments
Sort by:
Technology Strategist in Software4 years ago

Strengths questionnaires are super helpful! Try VIA Strengths Questionnaire. It's also worth paying the $50 or so for the full report, but you get a fair bit of info from the free report as well.
https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register

Lightbulb on1
CEO in Manufacturing4 years ago

You firstly have to discover your weaknesses and strengths.

CEO in Manufacturing4 years ago

The recipe that has worked well for me is to focus on the things I’m good at and surround myself with passionate, talented people to compliment what I’m not. Specifically, I acknowledge and accept the things that I’m not good at and surround myself with professionals who have diverse experience and different profile types - Think Myers Briggs’s or Colors. I then make sure that our culture is open for constructive discussion and debate. That health tension and encouragement to openly brainstorm and challenge is critical. Once that trust that is built and people are comfortable to collaborate, everyone on the team accelerates. Their superpowers emerge and are harnessed to boost the business performance. It’s invigorating and builds a culture that people want to be a part of. One caution is to watch for people that may weaponize this. Senior executives are responsible to lead by example to ensure that the culture is not corrupted. That’s when superpowers can go the dark side and distort the culture from within. I’ve experiences this twice in my career. As a new CEO I watch for this every day. Culture is a competitive advantage as you can do so much more when your team is on board.

CTO in Healthcare and Biotech4 years ago

For myself be humble from my mistakes and learn from them. For my team I empowered them.

CEO in Software4 years ago

I’ll never forget my first 360 assessment group readout. When a bunch of leaders were assembled in a conference room and handed out our detailed 360 reports, the moderators giggled.

Because they knew ALL of us skipped to the back of our reports to read the negative feedback first.

Then they dutifully reminded us - that the only reason a company invests in 360 exercises is because their participants have already exhibited superpowers. The whole point of the exercise is to help the individual double-down on strengths and not obsess on weaknesses which everyone has to certain degrees.

I’ve never forgotten that, and always remind people I mentor about prioritizing strengths before covering weaknesses.

Lightbulb on2

Content you might like

Budget allocation12%

Potential process improvements70%

Onboarding & training bandwidth8%

Security & compliance7%

Reviewing prior purchase overlap1%

View Results

Employee referrals 50%

Direct sourcing (e.g., LinkedIn, Indeed, other third-party platforms) 50%

Paid advertising

Organic brand content (e.g., careers page, social media, etc.)

Community or academic partnerships

Something else (comment below)

View Results