428 | What is your Superpower and Making Others the Hero of Their Story

Your superpower holds the key to massive growth and increased ease in your business growth journey. What is your superpower? In my initial years of growing my company and my team, I had no idea about this concept of superpowers. I discovered over the years that it is best to let people work form their strengths. Tuning into your superpower will give you a road map to success. Knowing how to determine the superpower of others will make you a better leader too. Today, I share with you a simple framework that you can use to help you find your superpower and those of the people that work with you. When you take the time to map out the superpowers, you will be able to grow faster. Discover what is your superpower. Use your superpower to help your team grow too.

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What is your Superpower: The Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

What are your superpowers? And, what does that have to do with leading and growing a company? Well, I find too often people operate in doing things outside their superpowers because there’s no one else to do them. They have to do all this work, and they have to do the administrative task and what not. But, if you think for a second here. Why do you have to? Is it something that you made up in your mind, or is this your only option? If you have a team, and you’ve probably built one if you’re listening to Leaders in the Trenches, then you want to tune-in to your superpowers and the superpowers of everyone on your team.

Hi, my name is Gene Hammett. I work with fast-growing companies. People that aspire to create something meaningful in this world. They have a mission, and I work with them to create leadership and culture that makes that possible. I wasn’t always great at leadership, and I’m still learning. But, I guide others to create the kind of leadership that inspires employees to take more ownership, and that is what we’re gonna talk about today is the superpowers.

Owning your superpowers, and allowing others to own their superpowers. There’s a couple of things in here I want to bring up, but the first thing that comes to mind is, you know, your employees want to be a hero. They want to be a hero in a story, but most of the time we think they want to be a hero in your story. But the reality of this, they want to be a hero in their story. Small differences. I got this from listening to Masters of Scale. Reid Hoffman did a two-part episode where he talks about, you know, growth comes from letting your employees be the hero of their story.

The key here is their story. What do they want to achieve? Who do they want to be, and who do they really want to become? Well, if you are not operating within your own superpowers and you’re not letting them operate within theirs, then you are gonna miss the opportunity for them to be the hero of their story, and thus creating the kind of influence and impact in your organization that causes the kind of growth that you really desire. So I bring this to you, a simple exercise. This comes from a great mentor of mine, sorta informally, Jeff Hilimire. Jeff blogged about this. He blogs very often. It’s not daily, I don’t think. But, Begin the Begin. And, this really is about him mentoring a nonprofit leader about their superpowers. And, he asked them to do this exercise, and I’m gonna share this with you because I didn’t make this up, but I thought it was fairly genius. He asked the leader, and so I’m asking you, to write down your superpowers and all of the superpowers of the people on your team.

So, I don’t know if you have two people, five people, 20 people, but we’re looking at the direct reports here. If you have one of the bigger organizations that listen to the podcast, then I’m not talking about everybody under the company, but your direct reports. What are their superpowers? And if you can’t tune in to it, that should tell you that you don’t really know them as well as you could know them.

Now, the second thing I want you to do is look at what you did this past week as a leader. If you gave a speech, or if you wrote an article, or if you were interviewed, or if you had to work on a strategy document, or if you had to meet with investors, think about the things that you did. Now, I want you to put them on a sticky note. Each one of those big projects. All the task, all the things that you think, and that’s part two. Part three is the hard part. If you were not able to go to the meetings that past couple of weeks, who would you have assigned them to? Who would’ve taken ownership and stepped in your place? Again, if you have a team and they have superpowers, then you want to align the task with their superpowers. So if you take those sticky notes and you put ’em next to the names, you would have a much better view of where you should be delegating.

Now, I know it’s not possible with every business out there, but this is the goal is to strive toward this. And if you’re struggling to create more ownership within your team, this is a great exercise to give them more responsibility, to grow as individuals. Which again, is a very important part of growing the company. Now, when you’ve done this you should be left with just a handful of things that hopefully align with your superpowers, because if they do, then you want to play in that zone as much as possible. And literally, 80-20, 90-10, or even more. You want to cut away all the things that aren’t within your superpowers because once you do that, you will be happier at what you do, you will have more creativity and innovation that you bring to this, and you will propel the business faster and further then trying to do everything yourself.

So, that’s my take here for today. Again, that comes from Jeff Hilimire. Begin the Begin is his blog, and really will help you. I’ll put the link inside here, but you know, make sure that you’re helping your employees be the hero of their story. So, that means you need to tune in to what their story is, and you need to understand their superpowers, and then run this exercise to make sure that you are really delegating and allowing them to take ownership of the work that’s out there. So as always, lead with courage. And, I’ll talk to you next time.

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

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