Tina and Juliet discuss whether superpowers are born or built, and how individual strengths shape what you bring to a team. They explore what it actually means to have a superpower beyond the comic book version.
What does that actually mean? What is it to have a superpower?
So when I think of superpower and when you first invited us to this talk, I thought, oh, crap, now I need to find out what my superpower is. But when I stepped back and thought about it, I thought, what is it? The skill that you uniquely bring to the table. And Tina, I really appreciate LEAP and its focus on soft skills because as students, it's so easy to think of a superpower as an individual effort. It is, what am I great at? What am I a rock star at? Where am I going to get constant A pluses and what could I get a PhD in? And that type of thing. But as you get more and more out into the world, it's what is a unique skill that I bring to a team and where will I be best when complemented by other members of the team? And I think within that, then it's what you uniquely bring to do. And unique means a couple of things. I think it means you enjoy doing it. You should enjoy your superpower and be really passionate about it. And then the other one is that other people should praise you for it, meaning that they value it and that it's a valuable thing to bring to others as well. So when I think of superpower, that's how I break it down. Great.
What do you think?
I generally agree with everything Juliet said. I think when you invited us, my first thought was like, oh, yeah, maybe this talk will help me figure out what my superpower is. So I'm still trying to find it. But to me, the superpower is really something about what can you do significantly better than most people around you in the sense, like, what's the thing that you. I think there's a couple companies that call it what do you spike on is a term I've heard a lot, but it's classically to me it's what do you do that you can create an outsize impact more quickly. And so I think like computer science, you talk about this a lot where like the 10x engineer, right? Like the best engineers are 10x more effective, not 2x, which I think is a really interesting shift from a world where I if you get into all the AI taking jobs, conversation at some point, but physical strength is one of those things that the fastest person in the world is 2x faster than everybody in this room. Not 10x faster, but the smartest person at a given whether it's a machine learning problem or literature, potentially anything intellectual is actually the distribution looks very different. And you as A superpower. You having a superpower might be 10x more effective versus well.
So that's really interesting. Does that mean that. Does everyone have a superpower? I mean, is it that, okay, we all have something that we do better than other people, that we're uniquely qualified to do? What do you think? And also as part of that, do you. Is a superpower something that's innate or is it something you build? Can you decide? I'm going to be a superpower in computing or in literature or whatever other topic.
So one of my favorite quotes is sometimes attributed to Einstein, although the Internet disagrees with whether he actually said it or not. And it's, everybody is a genius, but if a fish spends its entire life trying to climb a tree, it will think it's stupid. And that, for me, resonates so much because I think that we all have these innate abilities and there are people who are really talented and can see them, and hopefully one of those people becomes a mentor of yours or a manager throughout your life and puts you in a position where you can then exercise and build on that superpower. And there are things that will inherently not be your superpower. Right. Like, my mom wanted to have a professional tennis player as a child, and I was born, and she looked at the size of my shoulders and she said, well, there goes that dream. And so there are things that you can't do, and there are things that you will be good at, and hopefully there will be people who encourage you along the way who can see the things that you are great at.
Yeah, I think the optimist in me agrees and says, everybody has a superpower and it's a matter of finding it. And there's a separate question of is it valuable? Does the market value it? I don't know if that's true or not, but I hope it's true. I think your second question about can you choose a superpower to develop again? The optimist in me would like to believe that, yes, you can. But I tend to lean. My intuition says more. It's something that you are inherently good at, that you choose to focus on because you enjoy it. Whatever. It just comes easily. When I think of most people I know or superpowers that I can identify and friends of mine, they're often things that they don't think are very hard. And you're like, you are exceptionally talented at this particular thing. And they're like, really? I just thought it was easy.
You know, it's funny because when I ran my first company, I had this experience where everybody thought they were doing the easy job. And it was fascinating because you looked around and was like, oh, my gosh. You think that's easy? To me, that would be really hard. And I think that's actually really great when you have a team where everyone is playing to their superpowers and their strengths, and then everybody feels like they're doing the easy job.
O processo de reconhecer limites, mesmo quando a vida parece exigir sempre mais.
Depois de tantas histórias, aprendizados e pausas necessárias, o @interior_iza está de volta
