What Are Your Superpowers?

Many people struggle when asked to describe their professional value.  They often deflect to evidence like job promotions or success data in their resumes. It’s easy to define our value by what we’ve been hired to do.  But, those are limiting and they don’t tell the whole story.

Your most powerful career assets may be hiding in plain sight.

These are your superpowers, or your aptitudes.  They are your natural ways of thinking, problem solving, envisioning strategies, seeing gaps, connecting dots, and communicating.  They come so easily that we often take them for granted…”Oh that?  That’s just something that I do.” The very things we think are least remarkable about ourselves often are superpowers that set us apart.

Look for clues that may help you take stock of your superpowers.

• What do people most consistently come to you for?

• What problems do you solve, almost by instinct or intuition?

• What actions are easy for you but difficult for others?

• What roles do you continuously end up playing – even when they are not part of your job description?

  
  

Some of your aptitudes may be revealed through routine tasks or life activities. For example:

• Are you the one who routinely packs the trunk when it’s time for a road trip? (3D visualization)

• Do you love solving puzzles or figuring out who the villain is in mystery novels? (numerical reasoning)

• Are you great at planning events, especially the logistics and all the moving parts? (sequential reasoning)

• Do you immediately spot the gap in someone’s argument or see the flaw in an assumption?(inductive reasoning)

Your aptitudes are innate.  You come wired with them and just like the apps on our phones, there are some we use all the time and some we ignore.  Others are appetites and can be identified when we feel pulled to do something or make something without knowing why. It’’s good to be curious about those and once you become aware, to develop those unused aptitudes, which will expand your potential for growth.

Becoming familiar with all of your assets will help you build a more robust story about your value proposition and the qualities that set you apart from others.  They complement your experience and the skills you already know about, and they never go away.

You may also be able to look to functions or roles you hadn’t considered before. You can re-envision your career with a fresh narrative that connects your experience with your capabilities. This means sharing not just what you have been hired to do, but also what people count on you to do.

And, as a bonus, by discovering and sharing your hidden talents and superpowers, you may also discover hidden possibilities in what you have already been doing all along!

If you want to read more about aptitudes, I highly recommend Your Hidden Genius   by Betsy Wills and Alex Ellison