After years of doing yoga I still can’t step through from downward dog into a lunge. It’s not the simplest of moves but it’s pretty fundamental to any yoga practice. For the longest time I berated myself about it, mostly frustrated but also very judgmental of what I couldn’t do. And it’s not just on the yoga mat, it’s incredibly easy to let life become a constant audit of what you can’t do.
The topic of superpowers came up in a number of different contexts last week. It clearly had to be my topic this week. Superpowers are those things that you can do effortlessly; the things that come so easily they are almost a gift. The things you do better than most other people.
These are the things we don’t see so easily. We don’t audit our superpowers: we tend to neglect them and second guess them. We overlook our brilliance; it’s so much easier to focus on where we are failing or falling short.
Which is a little odd when you think about it. You would think our ego wouldn’t be able to help itself but crow about what we are awesome at. For some reason this doesn’t happen, we get far too busy cataloging all our failures. Cataloging the shortcomings.
What’s tricky about most superpowers is that we seemingly don’t have to work hard to achieve the result. It’s literally like we were bitten by a spider and woke up the next morning able to climb up walls. “I don’t know how I do it, I just can” is what we often tell ourselves. Which is bullshit. We can do it because we have spent years mastering the skill. We have 10,000 hours many times over.
We make the mistake of thinking that because it’s easy for us it must be easy for everyone. That’s a big mistake. We all need to know how to bust out our power moves. We need to know what makes us indispensable. And not place a limitation on it or judge what we are (or are not) good at.
And, for that matter, it’s also a mistake to not see other people’s superpowers. The most effective leadership and management is supporting people to be great at what they are great at. Expecting someone to be a rockstar when they are not musically inclined is an exercise in futility. Expecting someone to suddenly become a numbers person when they have no aptitude or training is unfair to them and ultimately unfair to you and your team. In sport they call that a hospital pass: literally setting someone up to fail.
See your superpowers and the superpowers of others. Celebrate them and spend less time worrying about your apparent weaknesses. Trust me. No one else is looking at what you can’t do.