What's Your Superpower?

One of the most important things I learned during my career as a manager, was that if I want to support people improving their performance and grow, I need to understand what their strengths are, and build on that. It's a lot easier to notice the mistakes and focus on corrective actions. But excellence cannot be built on improving weaknesses.?

I remember this one time that made me think about how complicated it is sometimes to understand people's behaviors. It was a Friday afternoon, and I was preparing for the last meeting of the week. A colleague with whom I was working on a project, Maria, joined the call and immediately started to vent. She was angry at her boss because according to her, he was always demanding more and more to be done, without appreciating that everyone was really doing their best.?

It all started with a presentation. My colleague had been working on her presentation skills for a while and she had agreed with her boss to make her aware of what she could improve after an important presentation. When the presentation ended, her boss walked with her back to the office and gave his feedback. She had done well, the presentation was credible, but she needed to work more on her persuasion skills. She needed to speak slower, use less hand gestures, make more eye contact and not repeat information from the charts. She thanked him and said she appreciated his candid feedback. But in reality, she felt disappointed and distressed. An hour later, she got an email from one of the other management team members, saying “Thanks for all the hard work you put into this project, Maria. The presentation today showed us only the tip of the iceberg, but I know how many teams are working behind the scenes and how much detail is required to put this together. Great progress, keep it up!” While reading the email, her mood lightened up a bit as she thought, "there, it was not that bad after all."

This event made think about two things: why was Maria so upset and blaming her boss for being demanding and insensitive, when in fact she just got the feedback that she asked for; and what was it about the communication style of the two managers, that made such a big difference in the way their message was perceived.

Why So Negative?

Rationally, what happened was not so dramatic, and you might say, clearly not a reason to get upset with someone. But as humans, we are predictably irrational. And what we remember at the end of the day is not what people said. It’s how they made us feel. Maria's boss was looking for flaws and areas of improvement. He was focusing on identifying blind spots and weaknesses. The other manager was focusing on what went well.

But getting constructive feedback and working our weaknesses is important right? Only by knowing our weaknesses can we improve. Well… it depends.?

What happens when we receive “constructive feedback” is that our brain perceives it as a threat and goes into “fight, flight or freeze” mode. It feels like rejection or a personal attack. We close ourselves. On the other hand, when someone is reminding us about our strengths and what we do well, our parasympathetic system responsible for the “rest-and-digest” functions activates, and we enter in a more relaxed state. In that state, we are open to learning and accepting new information without feeling attacked.

What caused Maria’s frustration had less to do with her boss, and more with how her brain is wired. As humans, we have been “gifted” with a natural negativity bias, that we need to understand, accept, and learn to work with.?

Our brains act like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones, says psychologist Rick Hanson.?

As bad as it might sound, negativity bias is actually good. It gave us evolutionary edge. It’s a great advantage to know and recognize that good things are nice but bad things can kill us. So, we unconsciously react to negative stimuli to protect ourselves. The only way to change our reactions is to reframe our perspective and make the situation feel less threatening.

To do that, we can start from the assumption that the other person has a positive intention. That will help us create a safe space and reduce the feeling of personal attack. If we disagree with what is being said, we can ask some clarification questions, again, out of curiosity and not as defense mechanism. Instead of asking “Why would you say this and that?”, you can paraphrase “Just to make sure I understand, when you say this and that, do you mean….?”

Psychological safety is by far the most important factor in building strong positive relationships and teams. When people feel safe to speak up and express their opinions, they are being true to themselves and feel authentic.

It all starts with self-awareness

If we want to understand the world around us and have more positive interactions with other people, we need to first understand ourselves. What is our personality like, what motivates us, what do we value, what do we believe in? What brings us joy and how do we cope in the face of adversity? How do we self-manage and handle our emotions? What are we good at and what weaknesses do we have? Only by reflecting on all these aspects, can we be ready to manage the ups and downs that life brings us.

Our sense of self shifts when we are at peak or in a valley. If we don’t have a good grasp of who we truly are, our ego might take over when we are winning and feel on top of the world. That’s not a lasting feeling and there will be different times coming. The same happens when we are down. We might feel insecure and lose faith in ourselves.

Self-awareness helps us calibrate and see all these ups and downs as learning experiences. If something worked unexpectedly well, ask yourself: why did it work? How do I do that again? In Japanese, the idea of continuous improvement and optimization is called kaizen, which means “change for the better”. How do we incorporate a kaizen philosophy for ourselves, in everything we do??

“Optimization stems from the conviction that you can do better. It’s less about fixing what’s broken and more about improving what works. […] Always reflect backwards and incorporate forward.” Scott Belsky

How are you intelligent?

When we are focusing on our natural inclinations and strengths, we are creating skills that help us achieve mastery in the field that interests us. Brain growth is like getting new buds on existing branches, rather than growing new branches.

Rather than getting stuck on finding out how intelligent we are, the better question we should ask is “how am I intelligent?” Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner developed a theory of multiple intelligences, to capture the full range of abilities and talents that people have. Gardner’s theory suggests that we all have a dominant strength in one of these eight areas: Visual-Spatial, Linguistic-Verbal, Logical-Mathematical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Naturalistic.

Knowing our dominant strength is important because we can build our knowledge and mastery in a certain range of domains, in a more natural way that feels good and helps us stay in the flow. But we need to understand that beside the fact that intelligence is very diverse, it is also dynamic. We use multiple parts of our brain when we perform a task and by pushing ourselves to find new connections between things, we create unique outcomes that are difficult for others to reproduce.

“Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”- Albert Einstein

Excellence is built on strengths

Focusing on our strengths rather than on our weaknesses and building further knowledge and skill from this standpoint, has a lot to do with finding pleasure in the experiences we create for ourselves. Leaning into our strengths, makes work more fun. When we work on something that doesn’t bring us joy but only pain and discomfort, the chances to get into a flow experience are smaller. We will give up faster and we will not find the energy to continue. This doesn’t imply that everything we do always needs to be pleasurable. If we want to grow and learn, there will always be discomfort at the edge of our comfort zone, especially when we seek new challenges. But when the challenge is an extension of what we do well and of what we like to do, we will find the right drive and balance to keep us in the flow.

“Only when you operate with a combination of your strengths and a disciplined self-knowledge can you achieve true and lasting excellence.” Peter Drucker

Looking back at my conversation with Maria, it’s clear that on one hand, she needs to find better coping mechanisms and learn how to manage her emotional distress, so she doesn’t enter in defensive mode every time she receives constructive feedback. On the other hand, her manager could do a better job delivering that feedback in a way that emphasizes strengths and creates a psychologically safe environment. In the end, it all starts with empathy, personally caring and assuming positive intent. This helps us see the potential in others and directly contribute to their growth and happiness.?

Disclaimer

The stories I mention are inspired by my own personal experiences, but I do change names and situations for privacy reasons.

Helpful Resources:

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything [BOOK], by Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica

Nine Lies About Work: A Free Leader's Guide to the Real Word [BOOK], by Markus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall

Chris Voss's Tactical Empathy: 6 Reflective Listening Skills Combined [VIDEO], How Communication Works

10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation [TED Talk], Celeste Headlee

?Angela Duckworth: How to Cultivate Your Character Strengths, [PODCAST], Finding Mastery with Michael Gervais

This article is an abridged version of "What's Your Superpower?", originally published on www.sparkingdrive.com on March 23, 2022

Copyright ? 2022 by?Teodora Takacs. All Rights Reserved