What is Your Superpower?

This is Part 1/4 of my leadership series speech that I have given to companies, conferences and teams around the country. The links to the other parts are list below.

Part 1: What is your Superpower?

Part 2: Understand and Fill Your Weaknesses

Part 3: Establish Culture

Part 4: Earn and Command Respect

Leadership is comprised of many different components. The first component of leadership is what I like to think of as “Discovering Your Superpower.” Every person has a superpower. You all have something that you are incredibly good at. Maybe it’s a technical superpower, maybe its a leadership superpower, maybe its a financial or math superpower or maybe it’s a people superpower. You all have one. So as you think about leadership, you have to think about: Whats my superpower and where am I great?

As an example, some of you are Iron Man – some of you are really smart. Some of you are like the Hulk – really strong and resilient.  Some of you may be like Black Widow – super sneaky and stealthy and are able to get things done before anyone needs them done.

All these Avengers and team members are amazing as individuals but they are much better when combined as a single collective unit. The secret for you as a leader is understanding what your superpower is and then taking advantage of that. As I will talk in Part 2, the secret is about surrounding yourself with other people who fill in your weaknesses or “kryptonites.”

What’s my superpower? Here’s a confession… I am not a technical person. I took one programming computer science class during my junior year at University of North Carolina. Back then we used punch cards to track our progress and 3/4 of the way through the semester our computer systems broke, so we weren’t able to finish the course! Recap: I’m not a tech guy.

Another confession: I am not a gamer – I’m bad at them and I don’t love games. What I do love is the business of Xbox and the amazing things that the business and console industry brought. To summarize, I took my superpowers in business, leadership and management and built my team around my lack of technical or “gaming” experience.

Go find your superpower!

Part 1: What is your Superpower?

Part 2: Understand and Fill Your Weaknesses

Part 3: Establish Culture

Part 4: Earn and Command Respect