Find Your Superpower Through IDEO U

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: Gap Detection

Superpowers: Gap Detection

Gap Detectors have a finely honed nose for what’s missing and wrong in a situation. They easily ferret out mistakes, sloppy thinking, logical disconnects, short-sightedness in planning, and a host of other problems a team may have but not see. While their talent sometimes goes unappreciated, the best Gap Detectors can be invaluable to a team—finding holes before the team falls in them.

Collaboration Tips

  • Gap Detectors are often in the position of telling the team to take another pass when everyone wants to wrap things up. While you may be tempted to ignore their warnings, it’s best to address gaps early—they rarely go away.
  • Experimenters are very comfortable having their work critiqued—they don’t This can be a thankless superpower, so try to express gratitude for it. It helps to view gap detecting as a way of protecting you from stumbles down the road rather than taking it as criticism in the moment.

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.


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