Your Superpower is your contribution, the role that you’re put on this Earth to fill. It’s what you do better than anyone else.

Everyone has unique strengths – those things that come effortlessly and naturally to you. From Superpowers to Great Teams, a new online class offered by IDEO U in partnership with SYPartners, guides learners through a discovery process to identify their unique strengths—called Superpowers—and learn to amplify them.

Drawing from the archetypes and attributes of effective leaders, these superpowers range from empathy—a strong ability to understand the needs of others—to systems building—understanding all of the pieces of a process—to creative thinking, grit, and decisiveness, among others. Tapping into your superpower will not only help you to bring your best self to work, it will allow you to create the conditions for the people around you to thrive. Knowing yourself and how you relate to others is key to building strong relationships, great teams, and thriving organizations.

Superpower: Motivation

Motivators know how to get the best performance out of people. They have many tricks in their bag—some loving, some tough—and they know exactly what will work for whom. Motivators are tapped into the larger purpose, which is why they’re the ones to call on when the team is in a rut or starting to spin. They can help people remember why the work matters and reinforce how each person’s contribution makes a difference.

Collaboration Tips

• Motivators know what makes you tick. Sometimes you can feel manipulated by that in the moment, but just remember you’ll feel grateful when you’ve actually accomplished your goal in the end.
• Remember that Motivators hate inertia and passivity. When the team is having a hard time, they favor taking action over simply talking about what’s wrong. Any whiff of victimization, and they’ll be on your case.

Identify your superpower, build stronger work relationships, and learn how to set the conditions for thriving, collaborative teams in our new class, From Superpowers to Great Teams.