You Probably Don't Know What You're Good At. That Has To Stop

Buckle up. Buckle up, my friends, because I have a story I have to tell you. And it is a story that when I tell it to people, they actually literally gasp, okay? And it is a story that I tell with a purpose, not just for shock value. I tell you tell it because it is the foundation of becoming you. Hi there. Hello. I am Susie Welch. I'm a professor of management at the NYU Stern School of Business. And this is Becoming you, the podcast where I endeavor every week to help you answer the question, what should I do with my life? In it is a beautiful, messy question, isn't it? And there ain't none bigger. And today we're gonna take a look at this incredibly important question that is part of what you should do with your life, which is, what the heck am I good at? You know, I talk about values on this show a lot. Frankly, I talk about values a lot. I mean, ad infinitum. But today, I wanna talk to you about another central pillar of becoming you, and that is aptitudes. Values, aptitudes, and interests. These are the 310 poles of the becoming you methodology, each one of them super important aptitudes. Okay? What are they? Listen, they're your natural, inborn strengths, okay? They are your proclivities, your wiring. All right? Now, you may be thinking, I know my wiring. I know what I'm good at. But the question is, do you really? For most of us, our aptitudes are not always obvious. You know who they're obvious to? They're obvious to kids who are just spectacular at sports very young. Or sometimes you notice a kid who can, like, has perfect pitch when they're 2 years old or 3 years old and they're singing, you think, oh, my God, that kid's gonna be a musician. I mean, some aptitudes present very young, but for most of us, it's a lifelong journey to find out what we're actually truly good at, what our strengths are, what our inborn strengths are. You can actually spend your whole life finding out what your aptitudes are. And many of us do. We sort of go and we zigzag through life and we try a job and we find out, oh, not so good at this part of the job. Much better at that part of the job. And so we switch jobs or we're in a relationship and we think, ugh, I kind of stunk at communicating, but I was so good in this other way in the relationship. And then we zig and we zag, and, you know, we can be quite late along in our lives. And we have that really comprehensive list of our aptitudes. But you can, and I'm going to tell you, I think you should try to get access to that data sooner rather than later. And one way to do that is with testing. In my class, everybody gets tested. There's a whole series of tests. I'll talk about them later in the podcast. Now, let's clearly define aptitudes before we go on to the gasp story, okay? Because I want people not to confuse aptitudes with other things, like, can you fix a faucet? Well, that is great, but that is actually not an aptitude. That's a skill. It's a skill like coding in Java or knowing how to write really good ad copy that gets a lot of clicks. These are all skills and expertise. Those are skills on steroids. Expertise are when you have spent a lot of time working on your skills and you can actually be called expert at something. So aptitudes are not skills. You know, aptitudes, they run much, much deeper than that. Okay? And one of the ways I like to talk about aptitudes is this. It's my favorite way to talk about aptitudes because it's the moment in the classroom where people are like, oh, now I get it, Professor Welch. And. And it goes like this. Hey, I want you to sign your name, but here's a pen. Sign it with your non dominant hand. You don't have to do this right now at home, or maybe you're driving, in which case I would recommend you definitely don't do. But if you were to sign with your non dominant hand, you could do it, but it wouldn't look very pretty and it wouldn't be very much fun to do. And it sort of feels awkward like you can do it, but it's not your natural proclivity. Now switch the pen over to your dominant hand and sign your name. And you know what? It's easy, breezy, lemon squeezy. It's fun. It's natural. Well, aptitudes are the dominant hand of your brain, okay? You could think of them as the raw materials of what you're good at. They're what come naturally to you, and they're cognitive. Your brain. Brain wiring in terms of how you see the world and process the world. And also they're your personality traits that are natural to you, inborn in you. There's two schools of thought on this among social scientists. There are social scientists who believe that your personality is an aptitude, your personality traits, and others who think they're not. I happen to be in the school of thought that believes that some personality traits are part of your aptitude tool chest. Why? Because I've seen people succeed in jobs that purely on their personality. It's a strength. And so I do include that. Let's talk about the personality traits that can be aptitudes. For instance, having a personality where you make every single person feel like a friend, that is an aptitude. Or another emotional aptitude is curiosity, like just how much you want to know about other people and about what you learn about that is a gene. Scientists have gotten closer and closer to understanding how much of curiosity is inborn. Again, huge aptitude for some jobs. If you want to be a consultant, for instance, you better have a lot of that gene. So some of the emotional aptitudes that we that present as personality. Oh, she's so friendly. She's so warm. There's actually an incredible study that was just out that shows that the people who are the most liked are the people who actually like other people the most. I mean, there's a direct correlation between how well you are liked and the number of people on a list that you create. About here are the people I like. And the longer your list of people you like, the more you're liked. Isn't that rich? That's actually an aptitude, the ability to like a lot of people without judgment. That's another emotional aptitude. These are actually traits that are huge determinants and what kind of work you should be doing and what kind of life you should be leading. That is incredible data to know about yourself. And so if you're just sitting there thinking, like, I know my aptitudes, let me say this, maybe you do, but I bet you could know them better. All right, but the story I'm about to tell you is about Susie. Long ago in business school, when I had a sense of what my aptitudes were, but I didn't know for sure. And one thing I can assure you is I did not own that data. I didn't look deep into what I was good at. And when I did a little tiny bit, squinting my eyes, I certainly didn't own it. And Akana Paul paid the price. So let me bring you into that story and take you down that road of the moment where. And it was a moment where I discovered that not having a firm understanding and ownership of what you are uniquely good at can really hurt. So by the time I got to business school, I had a vague understanding of what I was good at. I knew That I was a very good writer, I was a very fast writer. And I kind of knew that one of the gifts that I was born with was that I could talk to a lot of people from all different walks of life. This was a very much. Maybe it was a learned aptitude, but I mean, my mother had it, and all the Payson that I hung out with as a growing up in an Italian family had it. And so I knew I was good at talking to people. I had a lot of questions. Maybe if somebody had said to me, are you curious? I would have said, yeah, pretty curious. Little did I know how curious I am. That's a defining aptitude of mine, it turns out. But when I got to business school, the first message that I got back from my fellow Harvard Business School students was, I had no aptitudes. They were as mystified as I was about how this former crime reporter from the Miami Herald had landed at Harvard Business School. They were all previously had been investment bankers. They'd all been consultants. They knew how to do sensitivity analysis. They knew what a credit default swap was. They knew how to run numbers. And they were good at telling businesses what to do in their. It's sort of ludicrous. But anyway, they thought they did at that young age. And I had been, as I said, a crime reporter who'd covered business briefly. And I actually, though, had management experience, which many of them didn't have because I managed the overnight shift of the Associated Press, which is where the Associated Press stuck everybody who wanted to unionize the organization. I joked that I managed Twelve Angry Men, the Twelve Angry Men. But there were more of them, and they were. They were dreadful to me. Although I eventually wore them down with my Susie Cream Cheese kind of smile all the time. And I just wore them down. And at the end, we all really liked each other a lot. But it was a brutal year before I wore them out. So I kind of thought like, oh, there you all talk about management. But I don't know how many of them have managed like I have. Then school started and I started to have to take classes like economics and finance. And I remember my earliest thoughts being like, why is everybody complaining about how hard these classes are? They're great. Then the middle of my first semester, I got called from the academic advising office and they asked me if I would tutor economics and finance to other students. And I was like, I think you've got the wrong number. I mean, I honestly said something like that, you're calling the wrong person. And they were like, no, You've been recommended by your professors in managerial economics and finance to be a tutor. And it's funny, at that time, the professors had sort of been giving me feedback. But my main data was that I found the homework to be incredibly easy. Unbeknownst to me, literally unbeknownst to me. Now, I had always been super good at math in high school. Like, I loved calculus, but it never dawned on me I could be good at math. And I realized really soon, because the data was so obvious to me, that I was. Had some kind of crazy aptitude for finance. I just had no idea. And here's the icing on the cake. I adored it. I loved it. I thought it was. I thought it was the most beautiful language I ever heard. And I thought, maybe I'll go into finance. Then I met the people who were in finance and I thought, well, one of these things is not like the other. And I decided that was not going to be a fit for me, kind of, you know, because I was. Had a different personality than most people in finance, but I was heavily recruited by the banks. So business school went on. And at the time, I was married to my first husband, Eric, who I've mentioned many times on this podcast. Eric was in finance. And I never talked to him about my homework. Why would I. My homework was easy. And frankly, I would say our marriage was not that great in those days. And we didn't really talk about business school. And he certainly was not involved in any way with me doing finance. He just thought, oh, okay, look, Susie's doing finance. But life goes on. And by my second semester of second year, I was in an extremely advanced finance class. This was an elective. It was the hardest finance class you could take. And it was me and 89 guys. And we were all in this very, very tough finance class together. And I remember, I thought, okay, I've met my match. I'm in this class with all these investment bankers. These are all people who are going back to Goldman Sachs. They're all going back to J.P. morgan. They're all going back to their banking jobs. And as the semester went on, I thought, I'm killing this class. It's hard, okay? But it was hard for all of us. It wasn't like I was the only one thinking it was hard. I kept my paces. I asked great questions. I got up at the board and solved a lot of equations. And as the semester went on, the homework was getting harder and harder. And then we were approaching the last day of class. I thought to myself, I Haven't been cold called for a while. That's when the professor comes into the classroom and he randomly picks one person and you speak for 20 minutes to open the case. You solve the case. You speak for 20 minutes. That's the tradition at HBS. And I thought, oh, I think I'm about to be cold. Called again. Just had that tingly feeling. And I opened the homework packet and I thought, oh, my God, I'm going to need a bigger boat. This was the hardest homework I had ever seen for finance. It was brutal. But there was great news, and that was that Eric was away on a business trip that night in Minneapolis. And so I didn't have to make dinner. I didn't have to have chit chat. I didn't have to do anything. I had the house completely to myself. This was before children and dogs. And I literally was like, giddy with glee. I sat down at my desk and I worked for four hours to crack that case. I wiped out my other homework quickly. And then I sat down and like four hours later, I looked up and I thought, like, this was the greatest achievement of my life. I killed this case. Because it wasn't just my solution of it was not just good. It was like, spectacular. Like, I thought, oh, my God, I have, like, built a car with my bare hands. So the next day I go in and I still have that spidey feeling I'm going to get cold called. I'm feeling very, very solid. If I am sit down in class, everybody's kind of like moaning and groaning because everybody was agreeing with each other that that homework assignment was a brutal. The professor comes in and he looks right at me and he says, okay, Suzanne, you're on. You were opening the case. So I take a deep breath and for the next 20 minutes, I solve the case. You know, I spoke for 20 minutes. And meanwhile, while I'm doing it, the professor is up at the blackboard writing down every single word I'm saying and smiling at me. And I know I am slee playing. And at the very end I said, and so therefore, the solution is. And it was a number. It was like 16. The solution is 16. And he wrote it down on the board and he circled it like 12 times. And he smiled and he looked at me with, like, joy on his face. I was always such a teacher's pet and we were very fond of each other. I, you know, talked to him a million times and he smiled at me and he nodded and then he looked at the class and I was like, the Biggest smile in my face. Hell yes, Susie. And, okay. So he looks at the class after I'm done. He's still smiling. I'm still smil. And he says, okay, is there anybody here who has any questions or comments or pushback or feedback on Suzanne's solution to the case? And there's kind of this dead silence in the room. And I was down in the first row, and there's this dead silence, and I hear, like, this rustling. I hear this kind of, I don't know, kerfuffle. And so I turn around and I look up at the back row. It's kind of like an arena. I look up in the back row, and there's a whole group of finance bros up there sort of elbowing each other and laughing and talking and kind of, like muttering to each other. And the professor was looking at them with expectation. And I am, like, looking at them with expectation because I'm thinking that this is the moment of truth. Those guys are gonna, like, stand up and salute me. And I'm so excited about it. And finally one of them, Tom, let's call him, raises his hand, and the professor says, yes, Tom. And Tom says, ha, ha ha, big bro. Y kind of laugh. And then he says, I want to say that I agree with everything Suzanne's husband just said. And everybody just burst into, like, peels of hysterical laughter and high fiving. And, I mean, it took a moment. Like, I felt. I'm honest to God, I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach. I felt like I had been kicked with a heel in the stomach. I mean, I, like, saw stars. And it took me for a moment to process it. It was like, wait, did he just suggest that Eric did this? And I knew that if I said, but Eric's out of town. Eric's in Minnesota, like, I'd sound like I wasn't one of the boys. Like, I couldn't take a joke, But I knew that I did that homework. And they had the time of their lives. I mean, they laughed. I think it went on for five minutes. I mean, it felt like it went on for 500 years. And now I want to say, of course this would never happen today. I mean, in this day and age, not a single student at HBS would ever presume that a woman's homework was done by her husband. And certainly if they did, no one would say it out loud because they'd be kicked out. But at the time, this was a source of enormous amusement. And it felt like they had been waiting all semester to Diss me. And honestly, I felt sick. I mean, I felt like I could still actually feel how hot my face was. And the professor let it go on for too long. I think he was stunned. I think he felt terrible for me. I think he knew perfectly well I had done that homework because he had seen my exams. In fact, I know he had not one iota of doubt that I had done that homework. And he finally calmed them down, and then the class went on. And I mean, I don't even remember the next hour and a half. Okay, I don't even remember it. And this on what, you know, happened 40 years ago. Okay, so do I still feel it? Yeah, I guess. What? I still feel it. I felt so not known, so disrespected. But the biggest lesson from it, looking back, and the lesson I want for you is not to hate Tom. Okay? One time I taught this and the student was like, just give me Tom's home address. I mean, I think that Tom went on and had four daughters who all went into finance. And that Tom is a different man today. That's what I think. And so I believe that he certainly would never do such a thing ever again. So I'm just gonna give him complete amnesty. The person who I'm mad at is me. Because I never claimed my own abilities. I never owned how good I was at finance. I was always stunned by my aptitudes. And the thing about your aptitudes is they belong to you. And they are the most important data you have. And you just, like your values, have got to state them to the world. I knew I was great at finance, and I should have said. When I started opening that case to the class, I should have said something like, I worked on this for four hours. It was not easy. But here's my solution. I mean, I should have come right out. I think I take people by surprise now because I sometimes state my aptitudes openly. Why shouldn't I? They're all gifts anyway. I mean, what you're inborn. I mean, I've worked hard to get better at stuff, but a lot of the stuff I'm good at is cause I just got some genes that made me good at it. And I'm gonna tell you, I think you should try to get access to that data sooner rather than later. And one way to do that is with testing. In my class, everybody gets tested. There's a whole series of tests. But I happen to like youscience.com Again, no financial relationship with them. My students take that test another way. You can find out how the world experiences you, which is a huge piece of data around your aptitude. You can ask people. There's little hacks. I mean, I love the hack where you say to people, what's the first word that comes to mind when you see my name pop up on your phone? I love that one. I tried it with my team and people said some very nice things. But the person who works most closely with. She said the word that pops into her mind is the word machine. Well, okay, it's true. But I needed to learn that. That's how sometimes how people experience me. I do have a lot of intensity. Okay, fine. I actually have a tool that I created myself called the Pi360 tool. You can send it out to 40 people, it takes them less than five minutes, and anonymously, they can tell you how. How they feel about you, and you can find out how. How people rate you on terms of the quality of your relationships with people and on your ideas and your execution. Very, very inexpensive. And I intentionally so, so that people can get data on how they're experienced, on their. On their emotional aptitudes. So there's lots of ways, but you gotta do the work. Doesn't happen naturally. I mean, look, I wanna tell you something. I'm like, the worst. I mean, let's just choose one thing I'm terrible at. I'm the worst singer in the world. I've literally been in church singing and have had people ask me to stop singing. Okay? Like, one time this guy turned around, he goes, like, we can hear you in this row. I mean, that's how bad my singing is. Okay? At church, somebody asked me to stop singing, okay? So I mean it. Like, some of my aptitudes, they're just gifts. I got it. I obviously got brain wiring. That helps me be good at finance. I mean, I worked hard to get better at it. But your aptitudes, whatever you've got, and you've got aptitudes, it's your job. A, to discover them, okay, with testing, with asking other people, but. But I'm gonna suggest testing again. And B, by owning them, saying, I'm good at this and I'm gonna get better at it. Okay. I think that's on you. And becoming you, frankly, is about that being on you. And maybe I'm just playing it forward from what happened to me when I suddenly realized that I didn't know my own story and I wasn't telling the world my own story. So here's looking at you, Tom. Thanks for that. Thank you. Very much for teaching me how important aptitudes were. And I'm out here teaching other people. That is it for our episode today. Okay, so now it's your turn. You've been listening to me this whole time. What do you think? Where does this fit into your life? And what are you going to do next? Whatever it is, I want to know what happens next in your story. Write to me. Write to me. You can find me on Instagram and LinkedIn, and I am one of those people who is always on. So do it this minute. Come back next week, please, for another episode, and just keep on becoming new.