Superpowers 101: Claim What You’re Great At

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You already have superpowers! Seriously. Not everyone can do what you can do. Even if it comes naturally to you. And if you’ve had to work hard to gain your skills and abilities, that’s awesome, too!

Superpowers can be anything from riding a bike, to wielding the Lasso of Truth, to managing projects, to . . . you name it. And since we all can do different things well, it’s important to identify your unique combination of superpowers. Of course, some of these will be more useful in a work environment, and some less so, but it’s great to claim them so you can decide which ones to highlight in your personal brand.

Identifying your superpowers is the first step in creating your personal brand. Click To Tweet

Claiming Your Superpowers

Whatever your superpowers are, own them and celebrate them. Think about a time when you rocked a presentation/analysis/design/audit/whatever it is that you do. How did you uniquely do it? What about YOU made it special and successful?

Creating a list of 3 to 5 superpowers can help you get in touch with what you do well and which skills and abilities you want to be known for. You can use them to help set your personal brand, and they show up well in resumes and bios. They’re also a cornerstone of True Leadership.

When you make your list of superpowers, they should have an action component — these are things you DO (things that you ARE show up in your Principles).

For instance, if you’re good at projects, put a strong verb with it: “managing projects” or “directing projects” could be a good superpower for you. Maybe you’d like it to be more specific: “managing cross-functional projects” or “directing multi-phase construction projects.” Whatever they are, be sure they’re clear and to the point.

What if You Hate Your Superpower?

Stuff we’re great at isn’t always what we want to continue doing or necessarily what we want to be known for. What should you do in that case? A mix of reality (what do you have proven experience with?) and forward thinking (which parts of your experience can help in the future?) is the key.

If you’re fantastic at arranging meetings, but you’re not inspired by that work (and don’t want to be known for it), think about that superpower’s component parts. Arranging meetings requires great organizing and maybe some negotiating skills. Those are great to highlight, and may be more consistent with the kind of reputation you want to have and the work you want to do in your organization.

Remember, they’re your superpowers, and you get to define them however you want! Be sure your abilities match up with what you’re claiming, though — you want to be able to follow through on the promise your personal brand makes.

Revealing Your Superpowers

To be authentic, you need to be yourself. All the time. But you do have choices in how the real you shows up. What do you want people to notice about you? What do you want them to notice first?

I’m not talking about hiding or denying who you are, or deliberately making yourself appear less than you are. Especially if you’re a woman or person of color or someone otherwise marginalized in our society. Heaven knows we’ve had enough of that conditioning. This isn’t about conforming to what other people think you should be. It’s more about a conscious and deliberate placement and positioning of who you are to serve you better.

Many people I know spend a lot of time and energy putting their biggest superpower out first. That may not always be the best idea. If you have a big, big brain, or if you’re a super-driver, or if your selling skills are the tops, don’t you think people will notice, anyway? And if you are truly great at thinking, driving, or selling, it might be a bit intimidating, or even off-putting to certain audiences or in some situations.

I mean, think about it. Do you really need LeBron James in your face about his basketball game? When he brings his comedic acting chops or his business sense or his identity as a father first, it’s really appealing and relatable . . . and it doesn’t take anything away from his mad skills on the court. It just proves he’s multi-dimensional. And funny as hell!

On the other hand, if you’re on the basketball court, LeBron will bring his basketball superpowers, and they will — and should — be front and center.

What are your superpowers? And how do you show them? Let us know in the comments below!

Principles 101: Discover What You Stand For

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Principles are your deeply held values; they’re what you stand for. Things like honesty, a sense of humor, perseverance, and strength, are all principles. These are things that you know about yourself, down deep. They show who you are and what you care about (note: things you DO show up in your Superpowers).

Acting according to your principles is the essence of authenticity and integrity. When you’re in sync with your principles — even in the face of resistance or challenge — you’re showing others that they can trust you, and exactly how you can be trusted.

Your principles are essential to defining your personal brand, and becoming a True Leader requires you to know what you stand for.

Acting according to your principles is the essence of authenticity and integrity. Click To Tweet

Discovering Your Principles

Make a list of your top 3 to 5 things you stand for. Here’s a short list to get you started: Adventure, Ambition, Balance, Cheerfulness, Clarity, Community, Courage, Decisiveness, Efficiency, Fairness, Flexibility, Hard Work, Impact, Innovation, Kindness, Passion, Reliability, Responsibility, Teamwork, Truth, Wisdom. Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list, but it’s meant to spark your thinking.

If you hate the idea of a list, there are other ways to access your principles. For instance, take your 5 favorite characters from books and movies. What do you like about each one? How do they act? What do they have in common? Answering these questions will help you identify the characters’ principles. And they’re likely to match up with things you value in yourself.

To test out your principles, fill in this sentence with your top 3, and see if it feels right: “I stand for <principle 1>, <principle 2>, and <principle 3> in everything I do.” If it works, that’s awesome! If not, find 3 principles that really resonate with you and that feel represent your true self.

Now that you have your list, take a few minutes to clarify your principles. What do they mean to you? The same word can have different meanings — this is your opportunity to get clear on what you stand for.

Well done! You can use these principles in all sorts of ways. Knowing where you’re in alignment with your principles and where you’re out of alignment is a great start.

Principles Alignment

We are drawn to people, organizations, and even books or other things that share our principles. When people and organizations align with your principles, you’ll feel good — fulfilled, even.

People

The people you most like to spend time with will likely share at least one highly-ranked principle with you. For example . . .

One of my close friends shares two top 10 principles with me: Equality and Collaboration. We love to work together on projects that have themes around equality. Our discussions are deeply satisfying because we’re in harmony.
Another friend and I share the Productivity principle. She’s the one I seek out when a meeting is particularly non-productive — I know she’ll be as frustrated as I am!
And I absolutely adore chatting with another friend about our kids; we share Family Orientation as a key principle.

Organizations

When organizations share principles with us, we often want to join them or do business with them. And when an organization’s principles align in both actions and words, the organization comes across as more authentic. Here are a couple of examples:

A non-profit based in my hometown has a mission to serve women, and they are doing that through a nationwide network of young people. Because our principles line up, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to work with them.
My daughter was exploring universities to study environmental science. One school made a big deal about their commitment to sustainability on their website, which she thought was cool. When she visited the school, the food in the cafeteria featured organic vegetables grown at the school’s farm, recycling and composting was featured, and there were no trays (students had petitioned the administration to remove them, due to the water and energy it took to clean them). The alignment of the sustainability principle from the curriculum to the website to the campus made a powerful impression on her, and she chose to attend the school.

Principles Conflict

When you find yourself feeling judgmental, chances are good that whatever it is you’re judging is in conflict with your principles. Your principles are intensely personal, though, so the things that infuriate you will be, too.

Chefs and gourmands will likely be more offended by careless restaurant cooking than others might be; judges may react more forcefully to people lying, artists to things that are not esthetically pleasing, and veterinarians to animal cruelty.

If you meet someone who doesn’t share at least some of what you stand for, it’s hard to find common ground, and you may not want to spend time with them.

From an organization perspective, if your principles don’t align (or actively conflict) with those of an organization, you may not want to have anything to do with it. And when organizations acts in conflict with their own stated principles, they comes across as inauthentic.

Once you discover your principles, you’ll start seeing them all over the place. When you read a book or watch a movie, when you’re in a meeting, at a sporting event, or even sitting in traffic, there they are!

What’s the principle that’s most important to you? Tell us about it in the comments below!

Vision: Know Where You’re Going to Lead People Right

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Everyone agrees that strategic vision is crucial to leadership, but there are lots of different ideas about what that means. Vision can be different depending on the level of leadership, but in short, it’s the ability to “see” into the future, forecast what’s needed between now and then, and understand the impact of different decisions.

Because it’s tied so strongly to planning and strategy, Vision is one of the five skills that make every leader better (Compassion, Curiosity, Communication, Vision, and Resilience).

The range and scope of the vision that’s needed as a leader largely depends on the type of role you have. If you’re a CEO, you need to be able to imagine out far into the future to see competitive threats, opportunities, shifts in your customer base, and how all of this could impact your enterprise (and how you want your enterprise to impact all of the above).

If you’re a first-line supervisor, the scope of your vision may not require you to think out as far into the future, or to understand impacts beyond the organization you work for. However, you do need to have a great sense of how the work your team does impacts others, as well as how other teams’ work impacts your team.

You also need to be able to describe your vision to others, involve your team in shaping and defining that vision, and use your vision to anticipate and embrace change.

True Leaders describe their vision, involve their teams in shaping their vision, and use vision to anticipate change. Click To Tweet

Describe Your Vision to Others

Describing your vision requires that you know where you’re going, you’re committed to your vision (but open to change!), and you use your great Communications skills to help your team see the things that you see. And why you see them that way.

You have different information than your team does, which will almost inevitably be at a higher strategic level than the information they have. You should be able to see connections to the bigger organization and between departments more clearly than your team, who doesn’t attend the same meetings or receive the same communications as you do.

With all of this information, you owe it to your team to share — they’ll make better decisions, which will bring better results.

Involve Your Team in Your Vision

So, great! You’ve shared your vision with your team. The next part can be a challenge — let your team help figure out how to execute it. The good news is that, as a leader, you shouldn’t be solely responsible for this work; the bad news (at least for control freaks) is that you shouldn’t be solely responsible for this work.

Invite your team to join you in vision & strategy work. It’s up to you to figure out how complete your vision is before involving your team. But regardless of the stage they join, at a minimum, listen to their suggestions (and modify your vision where it make sense), and work collaboratively with the team to set interim goals. If your team is very senior, maybe they help shape the whole strategic vision and bring the plans & tactics for how to deliver it back to you for feedback.

Regardless of how you do it, sharing your vision is a fantastic place for collaboration.

Use Vision to Anticipate Change

The only constant is change. And change is great — it’s a sign of adaptation, evolution, and innovation. As a visionary leader, you should be in a place to see major shifts in your team or group coming from farther away than your team can.

There will be changes that come from above you (in an organizational sense), that you’ll be called on to execute and perhaps design. There will also be changes that you and your team identify as being critical to continuous improvement.

As a leader, you’re uniquely positioned to help your team through change, whether it comes from outside or inside of your team.

Developing your knowledge and ability in change and transition management will serve you well. There are lots of great sources for learning more about change management, and if you’re not familiar with them, I encourage you to read up.

At a minimum, you should be able to figure out how your team is adopting and adapting to the change in front of them and what you can do to help them through the change process.

What’s worked for you in sharing your Vision? Share it in the comments below!

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Resilience: 4 Ways True Leaders Bounce Back Better

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Resilience is all about bouncing back. It’s about risk-taking, too, because there’s not tons to bounce back from if you’re not putting yourself out there. Resilience is one of the five skills that make every leader better (Compassion, Curiosity, Communication, Vision, and Resilience).

How do you recover, and help your team to recover when things don’t go the way you’ve planned?

Be flexible
Stay positive
Keep perspective
Blow off steam

Resilience helps you and your team recover when things don’t go the way you’ve planned. Click To Tweet

Be flexible.

It’s a given: things will go wrong. But you have some control over how many things could go wrong. Perfectionists can have a hard time with resilience, since there are so many ways to mess things up and only one way to be right. Being flexible can help you find alternatives. The more pathways you can find to success, the more opportunities there are to get there.

Stay positive.

Your team needs to know that you have their backs. If you’re of the mind that anything that isn’t a success is an opportunity to learn, the chances are pretty good that your team will indeed learn from things that don’t go as planned.

If they’re spending their energy on covering their asses or assigning blame, you probably won’t get the information you need to avoid or prevent the situation in the future.

Keep perspective.

As a leader, you need a thick skin. Not everything is about you (precious little is, actually), so try not to take things personally. What others say and do reflects primarily on who they are, not who you are.

And when you make a mistake, admit it! You’ll get a ton more credit for owning up to mistakes (as long as you have a plan to address them in the future) than trying to hide or deny them.

Blow off steam.

Resilient people find ways to manage their stress in healthy ways. Anything from exercise, to listening to music, to painting, to gardening can work well. Liquor may be quicker, as they say, but it won’t be as helpful in bouncing back from adversity on a regular basis.

That’s it: maximize your Resilience by being flexible, staying positive, keeping perspective, and blowing off steam. You’ll be a better leader for it!

What helps you bounce back? Chime in below!

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Communication: Tips Great Leaders Use to Rock Meetings & Emails

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Being able to communicate clearly with your team (and others) is essential to high-quality leadership. And Communication is one of the five skills that make every leader better (Compassion, Curiosity, Communication, Vision, and Resilience).

When your team is clear about your expectations, and you understand how people like to give and receive information, great things can happen. Two of the most common ways communication skills come into play in the workplace are in meetings and with email.

When your team is clear about your expectations, and you understand how people like to give and receive information, great things can happen. Click To Tweet

Meeting Communication

Much of your communications persona comes from how you conduct yourself in meetings. If you have a reputation for productive meetings, people will look forward to them. Or at least more than they will other meetings.

Be on time. Honor other peoples’ time — if you’ve accomplished what you need to, finish early; and if you don’t have anything important to cover, for heaven’s sake, cancel the damned meeting.

Say less. Believe it or not, one of the most powerful communications skills is not saying stuff. Create the space for others to shine. Remember, participating in meetings is part of your team members’ development.

As a leader, there’s an expectation that you know stuff; in meetings, it’s important that others can demonstrate that they know stuff, too. And chances are, they’ll know some different stuff than you do. This is a great place for Curiosity, too!

Be mindful of others’ styles. Some folks love brainstorming and coming up with ideas on the fly. For others, that’s torture — they like to have time to think about an idea before speaking about it to their peers. Send out a meeting agenda ahead of time, to help your more introverted employees prepare and feel confident participating in the meeting.

Email Communication

How you communicate in email is important, too. Answer emails promptly. Be brief and professional (spell check exists for a reason!). And if you don’t feel confident with written communications — and a lot of people don’t — take a class or read up. A simple internet search can put you in touch with a ton of great resources.

People learn from your practices. If you’re sending notes out in the middle of the night, they may believe (wrongly or rightly) that you expect an answer immediately. This creates lots of tension, and is easy to avoid. Every major email program has a feature that allows you to determine the send time — even if you’re up at an odd time, you can set your email to send during normal business hours.

Taking extra care with your meetings and email will ramp up your communication skills, which can accelerate your leadership results.

Have you seen a great meeting practice this week? Tell us about it below!

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