Superpowers & Blind Spots
Does everyone have a superpower? If so, how do we discover ours? Once your superpower is revealed, how do you put it into action? Learn what superpowers are and how to use them for good instead of harm. Learn why blind spots are so elusive and why it is essential that we understand what everyone else sees and then commit to change.
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the Overly Human podcast where we discuss all things human in the workplace because it's not just business—it's personal too.
Rob:
Hey, welcome back to the Overly Human podcast with Rob Harr and Traci Barrett. Today we're going to talk about why understanding your blind spots and superpowers matter. And I know Traci, you've got a lot of thoughts on this, but I think we probably ought to start with setting the stage for what blind spots are and what superpowers are and what we even mean by those two things.
Traci:
Yeah, that sounds like a good place to start. Just kind of defining those I think are important because a lot of discussion goes on about them, but not many people know how to understand what their strengths and blind spots are, or even what a blind spot is. And probably the simplest way to put what a blind spot is are weaknesses that leaders can't see in themselves, but are evident to those around them.
And that's why they call them blind spots because we just can't see them and they exist for all of us. All of us have a blind spot. If we don't think we have a blind spot, that might be part of our blind spot. And we also all have strengths. And understanding our strengths can also be very difficult for people to know and to articulate. And it takes actually going through a process of understanding them. Just like with blind spots, it takes a process of self-awareness and going a bit deeper to be able to understand them and articulate them. And then from that point is the jumping off point basically to leaning into those strengths, those superpowers or rectifying those blind spots and making sure we have them in check.
Rob:
Okay. So yeah, those strengths and I think that probably full disclosure, we go ahead and say that I like to refer to those as superpowers because, well one, I'm a geek and that seems kind of fun to talk about it. And like I always think that people get excited, at least on our staff, that when I say, hey, that's probably one of your superpowers, people really get excited. Like, oh really? Tell me more about that.
Traci:
I love that. I think that's a great way to describe them actually. Because if people can believe in their superpowers, they'll use their superpowers.
Rob:
Yeah, and I was having this conversation with a staff member this week and they were asking, how do I know what my superpowers are? I think it comes down to reflecting about what you do really well and I think you could identify with what your superpower is, is when you can't understand when somebody else can't do something. And it's because it comes so naturally to you. And that's really one of the ways that you can identify with things that come easy or what your strengths are is when you get frustrated when working with somebody who can't keep up in a certain area.
And I think that's a really powerful way to not only talk about how to identify that stuff, but to also develop empathy around your superpower to realize that I'm really good at this, but man, not everybody is. So I need to have grace with these people that aren't keeping up in these ways because well I guarantee that I've got a blind spot that I'm not keeping up with them in and they need to have grace with me. And I thought that was like a really interesting way to kind of think about like how to self-identify these because I think that's really hard.
Traci:
Yeah, I think it is hard, and I think that's a great trick. That's a great tool to use to sort of get behind and understand what your superpowers are. Another great tip is to really stop and think about what you get excited about. What part of the day, what agenda item during a meeting do you go, oh, this is my favorite part. Or this is what I really want to start talking about and speaking about. That's probably the thing that you're really good at. Strengths and motivations are somewhat intertwined. So what gets us out of bed in the morning? What makes us tick? What gets us excited, typically revolve around our strengths. They're intertwined.
And so if you get really excited when we get to the strategic part of the meeting when we are talking about vision or strategy, that's probably a strength of yours. If you get really excited when we start talking about detailed action items or how are we going to actually activate that strategy or make sure the goals are met, that's probably a strength of yours. If you get excited when we talk about sales and marketing and you just want to get on the phone with a client, that's a strength of yours. So the things that really start to light your fire and really get you motivated are definitely interlinked with your strengths.
Rob:
Yeah.
Traci:
Because remember strengths are innate talents, things that are innate in you, things that you're born with. They become strengths when you figure them out and you practice them and you lean into them, it's like working out. When you start to lift weights and you work that muscle, it becomes a strength. So that's why it's important to identify them and lean into them.
Rob:
Yeah. How do you go about leaning into those strengths in your opinion? Like what is the right way to do that?
Traci:
Yeah, I think it's really knowing what they are and if you're still having trouble figuring that out, you can always take a StrengthFinders. That's just super easy way to kind of get a start and what are my top five strengths according to this assessment? It's pretty tried and true and valid and reliable. So that's a quick way.
Also, I encourage the leaders out there, people who are actually doing feedback or performance reviews…sometimes we'll just say, “Oh, you're a four out of five in this area” but we don't articulate to people specifically what they're doing well. We don't say, this is exactly what I like about what you do and how you do it, and I want you to keep doing that.
So we can help our employees identify their strengths by just being more specific and giving them like more verbal descriptions when we're doing feedback and then that's the process of them understanding, oh, okay, I need to do more of that. I need to lean into that and continue to do it. But we also want to find balance because sometimes when people lean too much into their strengths it actually can become a blind spot.
Rob:
Oh, okay. Become overly dependent on what they do well.
Traci:
Yeah. Or they think, oh well I'm really good at strategy so I should be the only person handling strategy. Or I'm going to speak a little too much on this topic because I really think it's my strength. So sometimes we want to make sure we have balance in our strengths and we're using them in the right places and in the right way.
Rob:
Yeah, that's really interesting. Like I've said for several years to people that work here with us that part of my job that I actually enjoy is to help employees identify their superpower and help call those out. Two of the ones that kind of jumped to mind on staff that we've had is we had a young project manager, just brand new project manager, converted UX designer and her superpower, she knew exactly when she was in over her head. You could have her go do anything and as soon as she was in over her head, she would stop and come ask for help and it was the most amazing superpower I've ever seen in a junior-type employee because you could have her do anything and she would never get in trouble. And figuring that out made working with her a breeze.
Traci:
Exactly.
Rob:
We've got another person on staff whose superpower is she can tell clients their baby is ugly and they will say thank you. And I have seen her do it for years and it still amazes me. She can deliver bad news with the best of them and even things that are really personable that you think that you know the client wouldn't want to hear or somebody else wouldn't want to hear and they do say, “ You're right. My baby really is ugly. Thanks for telling me.” And no one else will tell me the truth and it just blows me away every single time I see it. And I love helping people identify those things because it's almost like a hack that allows you to just know what your crutch is and that you can lean into it when you get in trouble. Right? I always think about like the superhero kind of analogy that if you're Flash Gordon and you can run faster than everybody else, well you get in trouble, what are you going to do? You're just going to use your superpower.
Traci:
No, that's great. And I think that's one of the things that makes you such a great leader is that you, one of your superpowers, is just being observant. You're able to identify that in your employees and that is a true gift. And I think for many of the leaders even listening now, sometimes we just need to take a breath as leaders, we need to observe the room. We need to watch our employees, we need to identify, wow look at how great they are at that. I need to point that out. I need to coach them in that area and bring them to awareness. Because most of what you're describing probably, the people that you're telling, “Wow you're really good at this. You're great at communicating with the client and showing empathy.” They don't know that, to them it's coming naturally. So it's hard for them to recognize it in themselves.
And what we find is when you put a piece of paper in front of somebody and you say, list out your top five strengths, they can't do it. Most people just, they kind of know, but they don't know. And so it takes us as leaders to help point those things out. But in order to do that, we have to observe, we have to take a breath, we have to really watch what's going on, interactions and feedback and communication. And also point out things that aren't obviously oftentimes listed as superpowers, like empathy, creating harmony, connection. Those are great in the workplace. And if we can point those people out, that really, really helps with team cohesion, health, and longterm client relationships.
Rob:
Yeah, totally. So before we switch over to blind spots and I want to make sure we have some time to that. I would love to ask you what is your superpower?
Traci:
My superpower is, well, I'm going to lean on my StrengthsFinders because it makes it easier if I can talk about them. My top two are achiever and strategy—so are being strategic. And for me that's something that I've really tried to kind of lean into is how can I help others kind of reach their goals? How can I help them see the path and achieve? So achieving is not just for myself, it's helping others achieve. And then being strategic is I can kind of, I can just strategize. I can see sort of the vision of how are we going to get from point A to point B, what's the best path? And I find the most enjoyment in doing that. So how about you?
Rob:
I don't do a lot of the StrengthFinder things, but one of the things that I've always recognized about myself is I have a stupid good memory. I can keep large complex systems in my head. And I think this will actually make a pretty good segue. One of the things that's awesome about that is it allowed us to run our business in such a way where I have been the traffic cop for years. And like been able to sit in a meeting with all the project managers and all the leaders and soak things in and be able to know exactly where we're at. And I think up till recently I would have said that that was always a good thing.
But I wonder if it's recently became a blind spot and kept us from being able to like distribute knowledge better just because I can remember it and can recall it instantly doesn't mean that anyone else has any idea what's going on, on a regular basis. And I've realized that my strength has become an organizational blind spot. So that's one of the things that we're actually in the process of correcting here and making it…like I hate the idea of single point of failure. So I always like to use the brother or sister, which is the single point of success which is good.
I think that's a pretty good segue to talk a little about blind spots.
Rob:
I think that there is tricks, and we talked about a few of them to kind of identify strengths in yourself and have others help you identify your strengths and superpowers. But I'm not convinced that I have any good tricks to identify blind spots within yourself because those are just places you don't see. It almost feels like you have to have somebody on the outside being able to provide perspective. What do you think about that? Like where are you kind of lined up with that idea?
Traci:
I think it's true. I think that a lot of smart, really smart people, really great leaders know what to do. They just don't know what to stop doing. And it's just hard for us. We're just insufficiently aware of ourselves, and we tend to give ourselves much more of the benefit of the doubt than we give to other people. It's just how we're created. We're human beings. This is how we're created, and so I always tell people you need an honest, accurate picture of who you are and that's not going to come from you. It's going to come from a trusted friend, a trusted mentor, a coach, an outside coach. If you're brave enough at 360 which is so, it's such an amazing tool. And if you can get one done by a certified person and that will do it well, it's a great assessment to really understand who you are and to get some solid feedback.
There's assessments, really easy assessments you can take like an EQI, an emotional intelligence assessment that really, in very quick amount of time, can show you what your strengths are and also what your top three blind spots might be as well. And there's like huge amount of enlightenment that you can get in a very short amount of time.
I think another thing is to surround yourself with diverse thinkers. We often talk a lot about hiring for diversity and that's true, but I always tell people add that extra diversity bucket that is diverse thinkers. Oftentimes we tend to hire people that are exactly like us and that can lead to group think or people that aren't going to push back on us. And we want people to push back on us. We want people that are going to challenge us a little bit and sometimes if we keep getting challenged on the same things, that might be a picture into what our blind spot might be.
Rob:
I think that we've gotten to the point where we, as people, have confused effective collaboration for getting along. And I think that's a dangerous spot for us, especially working in this industry because we need a lot of diverse perspectives because the population we're building things for is diverse. And it's so easy to think as man, we're really good at collaborating and really what our brain is actually saying is like, man, we really get along. And we have the same ideas and like I would almost argue that if you put eight people with the same ideas in the room, they're going to get along really well. But what value came from having them in the room if they didn't disagree on where they were going. The conflict or the not always conflict, the disagreement, the iron sharpens iron is required to have valuable collaboration, not just be friends and wanting to do the same things.
And that's where I think our work gets better when we have different kinds of diversities because we're actually getting to different solutions rather than the solutions that we could have done really by ourselves if we surround ourselves with people who think and believe the same things that we believe all the time.
Traci:
Exactly. Exactly. A lot of times people will say when they're in the interview process like, “I really want to hire them, they remind me of me.” It's like it's fine to hire people that have the same type of personality that you do and it does make work fun, but we want to have a healthy conflict. And a lot of that comes back to the leader. The leader needs to be able to say to the team like, “Look, I'm going to create a safe space for you guys to challenge me. It's okay. I want to hear where you think I might be a smidge off base or somebody else in the room, and I want to start all give each other that space to be able to have healthy conflict.” We don't want to have unhealthy conflict or an unhealthy environment.
But we do want to feel like we're growing and learning from each other. And that's only going to happen if we as leaders open up the floor and say this is a safe place to speak out and to put out and push against these ideas that we're trying to figure out if this is what we should be doing.
But oftentimes when it comes to blind spots, some very common blind spots or things that are just really hard for us to see like our impact on others. That's a very common blind spot, just like unaware of how you show up. And that's again, because we don't see ourselves, we don't see ourselves in a meeting, we don't see our facial expressions, we don't see our gestures. And so that makes it hard for us to know what kind of impact or how we're coming across.
That ability or that needing to be right or I know attitude that comes from that whole impostor syndrome that a lot of leaders feel, where they feel like they overcompensate for the imposter syndrome that they're feeling on the inside by trying to show up thinking or portraying that they know it all. They have that kind of I know it all attitude or they'll push back to just sort of appear that they know it.
Having too much emotional expression or maybe not enough emotional expression can often be a blind spot. People can't read you or maybe you're exuding way too much emotion.
So these are just kind of common blind spots that I like to toss out there because sometimes people listening can be like, oh, that could be me. I'm not sure, but it might be. And another good way to know is as a leader is to just ask when you're having one-on-ones with your staff members like, “What could I do differently or what is it that you feel like I might need to work on?” We often forget to do that because we feel like we're so focused on giving feedback to the person that we don't ask for feedback ourselves and that could be another just quick way to identify that blind spot.
Rob:
That's something I know that I've struggled with is both sides. Is one, being able to be in a place to ask for it. But two, to know if you can trust it because the power dynamic between leaders and the people they're meeting with does exist. And some people won't say the things that they actually need to hear because of that power dynamic. Even if you've set up something, what you think is a really safe place and that's really, really hard to get over.
One of the things we did a couple of years ago was we actually during our peer review process, we set up a process where anybody can provide anonymous feedback to my business partner and I, and for the most part those pieces of feedback we get are you're doing a great job and this, that, and the other. But every time we've done it, there's been somebody willing to step out and provide something really valuable.And because of that one little nugget we get out of that, we go through the whole thing every single time.
And I'm also convinced that like if you ask the same question over and over and over again and allow space for somebody to answer it, eventually you'll get to the place where they'll give you an answer. But it might take six months, a year of repetition and not just like, hey, if you don't have anything to talk about, I guess we'll talk later. It's no, like tell me, how do you feel about things are going here? And I think it's one of the ways that I think is effective and those one-on-one sometimes is to not make it about, hey, can you provide me feedback? But can you provide feedback about what the company's doing and take that, set that little bit of dissonance to say, no, okay, I can criticize the company. Like we can do these things better. And maybe they don't look at that as the same way as thinking like, oh no, I'm telling you that you're wrong.
Traci:
Yeah. Yeah. And it's also how you frame the question too because sometimes it can seem less confrontational if you say something like, “How can I better support you?”
Rob:
Yeah, I love that.
Traci:
That's just a different way of putting like, what can I do differently? And that's sort of a softball for them to kind of say, well maybe you should do this or maybe do this a little differently. So it's all in the delivery too.
Rob:
Yeah. No, that's really good. I like that. Well, I think that kind of wraps us up for time today. I kind of like to leave everybody with one additional thought.
As we kind of talk through these topics and talk about what it means to be human in our businesses, I think that the theme that Traci and I keep coming back to is that if we want to be better at our jobs, that is starts with trying to be a better human. And I think that if we're all focused on getting a little bit better and understanding our teammates better, and a lot of times understanding ourself better, it actually allows us to have more empathy. Knowing that you have blind spots and recognizing them and using and finding people to work with that helps cover those things up can really do a lot to make the work better and to actually learn to have a healthy co-dependence on others. So any closing thoughts, Traci?
Traci:
No, that's great. And I love that approach, that we just have to tap into our human side. We need to connect as humans and we need to understand ourselves more deeply as humans.
Rob:
All right, well until next time. Thank you.
Traci:
Thanks.
Announcer:
Thanks for listening to the Overly Human podcast. We know you have a lot of choices, and we're grateful you chose us. If you like what you've heard, please subscribe and tell your friends to listen as well. The Overly Human podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. Thanks for listening.
