Strengths as Superpowers – Replay (CAL123, S6 E17)

Welcome to Changing Academic Life. I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick, and this is a podcast series where academics and others share their stories, provide ideas, and provoke discussions about what we can do individually and collectively to change academic life for the better. I have a wonderful conversation already recorded, and I had hoped to get it out to you last week, but I've been traveling both for holidays and at a conference and haven't had time to finish processing it. What I'm going to do though is replay a past episode where we talked about strengths and how we can talk about strengths as our superpowers. Strengths being something that we are not just good at, but that we really love doing. And I've chosen this as a replay because my guest that will be coming up next talks about them using the language of natural talents, and whether you call them strengths or natural talents, they're really important to understand and become aware of. Because of how we can use that awareness to shape our work and our choices, to enable us to really be at our best and to make our best contributions, and also to recognize when we may overuse our strengths a bit and how they may work against us. Before I start that replay though, I just wanted to give you a quick update. If you remember the discussions with Graham McAllister in recent episodes. He talked about the significant impact that the late Gary Marsden had on him and his regret at never actually being able to tell Gary himself about that. After those episodes went out, I reached out to someone who knew Gary Marsden's family, and I asked if he would share the episodes with them. The feedback from them was really touching. Gary's wife said, and to quote. Thanks so much for sending this. How wonderful. It means so much end quote. And that so much was in capital letters with three exclamation marks afterwards. Gary's son also reached out to Graham directly and said to quote, there's no way to tell Gary the many things we wish we could tell him. Knowing him, I doubt he would've been comfortable accepting that he had a big impact, but hearing your stories keeps him alive. For me, my sister and my mother. Thank you for keeping him alive for everyone, even if it seems like a simple story. So that just reinforces the importance of Reaching out to people and letting them know. And I can also share my own experience of that last week. While I was at the conference, quite a few people came up to me and just said about how much the podcast meant to them and made some quite specific comments about the ways in which it mattered. I. And I'd love to share one Feedback on that, which was handwritten on a beautiful hand painted postcard and where the person had gone to quite significant effort to try to seek me out at the conference to let me know. And to quote from that postcard. Thank you for inspiring a culture that values everyone being their own unique selves. Forging new stories, journeys. Every once in a while when I feel lost, not knowing what next Changing academic life offers that Ray of Hope reminding me that work just like life is serendipitous in many ways. End quote. And that feedback really touched me and made the work so worthwhile. All of this reinforces the message that we are trying to get out in the discussion with Graham, that if there is someone who's had an impact on your life, reach out to them and just let them know. It can mean a lot. So now to get to the replay about our strengths as our superpowers. Or as my next guest will talk about them as our natural talents. Enjoy. So where do you naturally choose to spend your time? When you have the option of making a choice, what do you naturally gravitate to doing? Where's your happy place or places as an academic, what is it that you really love doing when you feel the most alive and in the flow? Maybe I. I wanted to muse on this today triggered by two different, but I think related interactions from last week. One was a discussion, uh, with a senior professor whose colleague made a comment to, to them that they should be writing more and notice the should, but for this senior academic they would always choose, they said to spend time with their students, not sitting down writing another paper yet, even though they were really clear on this as their own choice, they, they felt that, um, they still felt somehow that they weren't measuring up to what an academic should be. Again, the should. The other example was a Twitter discussion, responding to the conversation with Aaron Quigley, where he talked about his superpowers of not worrying who gets the credit, listening and talking. And Lewis Chuang started a Twitter conversation around superpowers. And interestingly also asked Aaron, what's his kryptonite? I love this nod to the Superman comics. So if you remember, kryptonite is Superman's Achilles heel. It made him weak and all sorts of different types of kryptonite emerged over the series having different effects on Superman. And then in some, some of the episodes, he could become immune or found out he could be immune from kryptonite by traveling to alternate dimensions. I think a generic kryptonite for many of us as academics is thinking that there must be some ideal super academic that we all should be aspiring to. And this isn't helped by the hyper competitive culture and the generic metrics that we all have to report to. And I would suggest that we can get some immunity from this kryptonite by traveling to the alternate dimension of knowing ourselves better and identifying what are our unique superpowers. Looking to where we get our energy from in doing our academic work. And also knowing what's our kryptonite. It's more specifically, and having mid mitigation strategies against this. I really strongly believe and promote that there's no ideal academic that we should all be aspiring to. We're all unique and we need the diverse mix of us all to deliver good science overall. So what are your superpowers? The questions I started with can be one way to start to reflect on this. So for example, when you do have the option of making a choice of how you spend your time or the opportunity to volunteer to something, what sort of things do you naturally gravitate to doing? Where's your happy place? What is it that you really love doing that makes you feel alive and where you really get in the flow? I. If I think of people I've worked with over the years, I know that there's one person I'll always find in the maker lab if they have free time because this is what lights them up. Another person I know will be there behind their closed door, sitting at their desk and reveling in the time to write. And for me, I know that I will always prioritize time for people and mentoring over writing or tinkering. None of us are better or worse academics than the other. We're just different, and we bring different superpowers to our work. So I can also give another illustration too that just might help make this more concrete. So all of us work who are working in universities might be required to do some lecturing. And so on the surface, by role title and by task, it might look like that is all pretty much the same, the same job of lecturing. But if you actually ask around to the people that you know and ask them what is it about lecturing that they really like? If they, if they like it. And I'm sure that you will get a whole range of answers. So some of the answers that I've heard to this question, you know, some people love the, the aspect of actually standing up in front of the class and performing in a way and engaging this class. Other people will talk about it's really the, the interaction with the students and facilitating learning conversations For others, it's about breaking down complex ideas into teachable chunks and how to communicate that. For others, it's the creative work of developing learning materials, innovative learning materials. Or it might be the strategic planning of the whole learning journey for the student. And that sort of, that strategic thinking is what really, um, you know, drives people. Or it might be that you are just motivated by inspiring the next generation of leaders. I'm sure you can come up with other reasons and it'd be interesting to know what are your reasons. For anything we do, I would suggest even in delivering to the metrics, the things that we have to do, we can still ask ourselves though, what are the parts of this that we might actually love? And then look at how we can do more of that in delivering to what we have to do, because that's where our energy lies, and that's where we get to use our strengths and our superpowers. So in delivering to the metrics, it may be really annoying and painful, but maybe I can also take the time to celebrate for myself what it is that I've learned over the time. If love of learning is a, is a strength for you, just as an example. So there's really strong evidence across a lot of diverse literature in different countries, cultures, and with different settings from students to businesses to, um, everyday life that points to really strong benefits of knowing and using and developing your strengths. And the literature talks about things like, you know, people who use their strengths more are happier, experience less stress, feel healthier, have more energy, feel more satisfied and more confident. Um, they're more creative and agile at work and they experience more meaning at work and are more engaged as well. S So recognizing that we all have different superpowers also reminds us that we don't have to be good or excellent at everything, and that's completely okay, and that we all bring very different interests and superpowers to our work, and that's the great value of working in collaboration with others. I had a conversation for the podcast with Mike Twidale some time ago, and he gave us a great example of how we can put our different superpowers together to compliment one another. Just take a listen to this extract. I. I realized that, you know, one aspect of delegation that I could do was delegate things to people who were really good at doing this thing that I was really bad at doing. And that's partly recognizing strengths and weaknesses in ourselves. And it, it was a struggle 'cause at times I'm inclined to be very egocentric and think, well, if I hate doing it, surely everybody else hates doing it too. So I am now going to ask them to do this horrible thing. And then discovering this thing I think is horrible is something they think is really nice and this that something they think is horrible, I think is fun. So learning what it is that you know, plays to other people's strengths. And there may be something that everybody hates and that has to be dealt, but often there are these sort of different strengths and skills that can be played to. So isn't that a great example? So it's also worth knowing that it's not enough just to name our superpowers and assume that they're always fantastic to use, or that we don't need to develop other skills if we need to. So two examples or caveats around the whole notion of superpowers. One is. Not having some superpower doesn't mean that we can't do something at all or that we couldn't learn. It just means that it doesn't come so naturally to us and we'll have to put in more explicit effort to develop that. Programming, um, is an example for me. So I, I could learn how to do programming and even be good at it, but I really had to draw on my superpower of conscientiousness and persistence to put in the hard work to get through it and to enjoy the sense of achievement at the end, even if I didn't enjoy the process and it, it took explicit effort. I am also not so great at the bigger picture, strategic thinking, and I could go on courses for this. And luckily, so far, like Mike's ex example, I've been able to work with other people who are better at this and to, uh, compliment our strengths together. The second caveat is that sometimes our strengths or our superpowers can also be hidden kryptonite for us if we overuse them. Or underuse them or use them unskillfully or inappropriately in a specific context. So one of my superpowers is being really curious and, and love, just love to learn. And what that means is I have really eclectic interests and, you know, uh, have broad, uh, broad feel of lots of what's going on in different areas. But the downside that I have to watch out for is because I can be interested in all sorts of things. I'm really prone to going down rabbit holes, and so I need to work much harder on staying in focus if there's something I need to do and watching out for myself, going down a rabbit hole and wasting time. Another example is I think one of my superpowers might be fairness, and that leads me to behave in particular ways around people and with people you know, to, to see that things are just and fair. I. But it can also not serve me well when I notice unfairness or injustice somewhere else, or feel like someone's treated me unfairly and I can really end up ruminating and being very upset and having sleepless nights around that. So I need to have strategies for trying to manage that. So just having a superpower doesn't mean that that's brilliant. You know, there, there are, you know, there's lots of nuances around actually understanding and using your superpowers to best advantage. So in summary, I. We all have our own particular superpowers and our own particular kryptonite. And what I think is interesting in all of the podcast conversations that I have, I how much we hear this in different people's stories. Everyone has a different, a different career path, different motivations for their choices, uh, different sorts of things that really drive them and that they get excited about. And it's just a great reminder that there's no such thing as the ideal academic or the good academic life. It's what's a good academic life to you. And this connects to our related work today. As I said, there's a huge body of evidence in the psychology and, and in the, you know, organizational business literature about the power of using superpowers more. So I'm going to link to two popular science articles that provide a broad overview or summary or discussion of strengths, and also links to the underlying peer reviewed papers. And, uh, I said that some of the ways that you can investigate your own superpowers is to just think about, um, the questions that I ask, but you could also ask others. 'cause often if we think something comes so naturally to us, uh, we, we just take it for granted and assume everyone can do that because it's just so effortless for us. So sometimes it needs other, we need other people to reflect it back. And so there's a link in, in one of those articles to an exercise called Reflected Best Self, where it helps you, it talks about how you can go and talk to other people about helping you identify your strengths and the articles also point to some online profile profiling, uh, tools that you may like to use as tools to think with that might start to point you. I will also link to a third article by Ryan Niemiec, six ways your strengths will help you turn to your best qualities for prevention, safety, and health. And that's the end of the replay. I'm going to add two additional links to the webpage and there'll be the two different strengths assessments that you might be interested in taking for yourself. You can also find many other strengths assessment tools if you wanna do a search for them. Um, the first one I'll point to is called the via VIA Character Strength Survey. It is free to take and it has a significant research base behind it. As its name implies. It focuses particularly on character strengths. The second strengths assessment tools I'm going to point to are from strength scope.com. And for this one, you'll need to pay and you need to access it through a certified strength scope coach who also goes through the debrief with you. And for full disclosure, I am a certified Strengthscope coach if you were interested. There are different versions of the tool of strength scopes tools. Uh, you can use it as an individual. You can also do a strength scope team assessment that enables you to identify the strengths across the team and how you might make best use of those. And there's a strength scope leader survey that particularly focuses as the name says, on the strengths that leaders need to bring to their work. And there's an extension to the leaders and the individual surveys that can include a 360 component. 360 being where the feedback is asked from people that you work with, both, um, people that you report to, your peers, and people who report to you One of the advantages of Strengthscope and why I particularly like it is that it's a little bit more work oriented. Strengthscope is also the only commercial strengths assessment tool that's registered with the British Psychological Society. Whatever tool you use though, you'll find that you'll gain some insights and they'll help you to understand what your strengths might be, and also provide pointers for you to reflect on about how you might make better use of those strengths once you have that awareness. So have fun exploring what might be your strengths as your superpowers. Knowing that and making better use of it can make all the difference. You can find the summary notes, a transcript and related links for this podcast on www.changingacademiclife.com. You can also subscribe to Changing Academic Life on iTunes, Spotify. And I'm really hoping that we can widen the conversation about how we can do academia differently. And you can contribute to this by rating the podcast and also giving feedback. And if something connected with you, please consider sharing this podcast with your colleagues. Together we can make change happen.