Shadows of your Superpowers (Part 1)

Nikhyl: Hi everyone, welcome to The Skip podcast. My name is Nikhyl Singhal. I'm your host, and as most of you that are listening to The Skip know, this podcast is dedicated to your career and I tend to lean towards tech and product management.

But today I'm tackling a topic that applies to everyone, all the professionals out there looking to advance their career can really take advantage of today's topic, which really starts with superpowers.

Last episode I put out a podcast and a Substack article focused on the key superpowers that product managers need. You know, I, describe these superpowers as important because what I find in the best people I work with is that they have one or two strengths and they tend to not be deficient in any one area.

The skills that I laid out are around, collaboration or being great crafters. You know, these are two skills that are very different from each other, that are found in most great product managers.

They're great with data in the workplace and they know how to drive growth, or they understand these complex systems that might be existing in a domain or they might be existing in an organization and they know how to navigate those.

They know how to connect feedback from sales into product or have, you know, all of these tremendous depth of skills that I think are needed to be able to drive growth or large scale companies or product market fit. And all of these skills, I think, fit into this sort of last episode around superpowers, but it expands beyond that.

Beyond product managers. I mean, some people have tremendous stage presence or executive presence. They're really intelligent and they can go really deep on a level that most can't, or they are incredibly nice and affable and easy to work with, or they're terrific managers or they're driven or they're hardworking.

All of these traits are sort of skill areas, and if you're world class at any of them, you have what, what I call a superpower. This episode talks about what are the development areas that these strengths create.

The title is The Shadows of Superpowers.

I got this term from a therapist that I work with, and what she identified is that all superpowers have a shadow. And I found it to be such a career, unlock for myself that if I've coached or managed you in the last half dozen years, you know, I've likely spoken to you about your strengths and then I immediately go towards the challenges that they may create.

And that's what I want to share with all of you today, that you know, in some ways, career skills live in a balance, and every strength has this opposite, and in some ways the greater the strengths are, the harder the development area is to find, but the more significant the developer areas is. Think about how tricky that must be from a career point of view.

As example, you know, so people come to me all the time and they say, look, I'm stuck, or I'm getting a promotion, but at a slower rate than I'm expecting.

Or, I've missed an opportunity where they've passed me over, but I'm clearly the most qualified just based on the skills that I have and their needs. Sometimes it's a darker conversation that, you know, I'm struggling with culture and I'm a mismatch, or I have this investigation where I said something but it was taken out of context.

Or I find myself being asked to leave this company and I never expected it. And so when people come to me stuck or frustrated with their company or manager, or they're feeling like they're in a major career setback. This is what I focus on, and this is what I hope to share with you today. This episode is focusing on how to identify and address these important blind spots, and though it leans, as I said, towards product management, anyone that has a strength area can find value in today's topic.

So the way I've structured this episode is I'm gonna start with a bit of a framework on how you identify these development areas, how you address them. And then use some examples, but because this is subtle and complicated work, I'm actually gonna devote a second episode just to going deep on the coaching that I give and use some real live examples of very complex development areas that are sitting underneath some very powerful superpowers, and then how people need to mentally rewire themselves to essentially address these development areas that may have existed for decades in some cases.

Okay, so let's start with the basics. Why does this even exist? If you've never heard of this, you might be asking like, well, I'm sure that there are lots of people with development areas, but why would it sit underneath the superpower? And you have to kind of trace back as to where strengths come from.

And how do people recognize strength in the workplace? You know, if you have a strength amongst your peers, you're gonna receive a lot of praise. It's gonna help you pull forward in career. In fact, we've talked about the importance of finding a strength and trying to make it into a superpower. And obviously if you're doing it well, people are gonna love you.

And when you get this kind of praise, People tend to look past the shortcomings or the bad behaviors because you're doing so well in particular in the area that the company needs and maybe you're powered against. So net-net, because you're better than most of your peers, managers tend to focus on the ones that are average or low performers, is just kind of human nature.

And there's also an expectation, and in some cases it happens that, you know, yeah. There's like eight things you do great and these amazing superpowers, and there's a couple that you don't, but you'll grow out of it, and it does happen. But when it's really close to your superpowers, you're receiving so much praise that it's very rare for a manager to essentially say, hey, you know this thing that you do super well, you don't do so well in these cases. Instead, people are like, are you kidding me? The manager hears this feedback, they get ten praises, they get one development concern. They're like, oh, this person is, you know, perhaps in getting not calibrated, or maybe there's a personal issue, or maybe it was a bad day and they throw it out so you don't tend to get a lot of this feedback around your superpowers except for praise, and it's easy to ignore it, right? And now of course, as your strength grows, you become known for this strength area and it drives your growth. But if your weakness exists because of that strength, it tends to grow alongside of it. So it's sort of a sidecar accompanying your strength down the road.

And what makes this tricky is that it's now even harder to address because you, now, if presented with any kind of concern on your strength, they're like, well, I've been working on this thing for four or five years and everyone knows that I'm amazing at it. You know this, this is a superpower. I'm known, I was hired for this skill, so there's no way that this is the area that I need to develop.

In fact, you sort of say that if it was a development concern or there's an edge to my strength, someone must have pointed it out until now. Why would it have come up for the first time here?

It must be the person, the environment, the situation, et cetera. Now what happens is you get even more responsibility. You move into, say, leadership or maybe a new role, or maybe you have a new manager and that person may be more clinical or that situation may be a fresh start, and when that happens, They may give you out of the blue feedback or maybe they delay your promotion and your responsibility may be like trimmed in your new role or you might end up even facing an abrupt ending. So these sort of setbacks, if you will. Are the day that the shadows have finally caught up with you, and this is when the coaching, the self-reflection really comes in.

So when this happens, I think there's like four approaches that people take.

One is they fight, they tell the people, they tell the system, they tell the role, the peers, you're wrong. This is not who I am. This is my strength, not an area of weakness, and this usually doesn't go well. This kind of accelerates people's demise.

The second most common case is they don't fight. They actually do the opposite. They withdraw. They've lost confidence. This is the first time they've really gotten a setback. They didn't get the promotion, or they've asked to leave a company and they just sort of say, Hey. You know what? Maybe my career was perhaps built on a house of sand, built upon sand.

And perhaps I need to really rethink things and this losing confidence damages the ego, and then they remain stuck. They are afraid to get back in the game. They're afraid to take risk. Clearly, I don't want you to go through that.

The third is people just, they hear the feedback, they see the sidecar, they understand what's being presented.

They just choose to ignore it, and they just say, hey, you know what? I get that there's an edge to my strength. What I'm going to do is just keep working on my strength and hope that it, you know, maybe I find a different role where the culture is such that it doesn't present the sidecar in such a concerning way.

Now, that will work and that's common but a repeat occurrence of this is likely, it's not sustainable, but it's also a way to kind of mask the development area by just continuing to leverage the superpower.

Obviously the fourth way to react is to address it, and I think those that address it just come to the realization that you cannot have light without darkness. You cannot have strength without weakness. They recognize this is just part of the game, it's not a huge hit on your identity if your strength needs to adjust in order to reduce some of the development concern. Those that really listen and understand and self-reflect on what's being said, they understand the edges.

And they adjust themselves to the workplace, to the environment, to the expectations of their employer, and truly listen. They end up moving quickly through the issue, and in fact, they move on to the next shadow because that's kind of the game, is to develop the strengths

And then manage the shadows that sit underneath them.

Okay, so before we get to examples to contextualize this a bit, you know, I want to just take a second to think with you about how development areas are addressed and identified in the workplace. Now, there are two types, and I think the, the most common type are the ones that are in the light that are easy to identify.

These may come as part of a formal review. They're common because people at your level typically hit the same concern and you end up identify through your manager, through some feedback.

You focus on developing them, you train and mentor your way out of it, and then you constantly get feedback to see if you're on the right track.

Right? So these are the traditional tools that you want to use. And it's hard work but it's not terribly complicated and that isn't really the type of development that we're talking about here. When you know you're dealing with the shadows of superpowers, you really have three things going, into this.

I think one is that you're getting inconsistent feedback, and so this is a key point. Your feedback is inconsistent because you're hearing that, hey, most of the time you are amazing at this, but sometimes you were shockingly bad. You know, that's kind of a funny statement, but you are amazing until you're not amazing, in which case you're not just average, but you're terrible.

Often these are situational, meaning that, I was great except for this one person which triggered me, or this one part of the project or this one function. There is something that is getting to me, but it's not a consistent notion, so this inconsistency is the one to pay attention to.

Related to that, the feedback is contradictory, meaning that people aren't really open about sharing this concern. They tend to hold back. So it takes some digging. Maybe your manager is getting some feedback and they're actively pulling or someone that's fairly distant that doesn't know you well is giving you this feedback and what often happens is, I mentioned is that because this inconsistency and because it's contradictory, it's the type of thing that's easily dismissed by you, by your manager, by the system. And what I want you to do is that if you're in a development situation where you are hearing that, hey, on occasion. You are getting inconsistent feedback. You are sitting probably in a shadow, meaning that the feedback is accurate because perception is reality, but it is sitting inside of a strength, which is why it tends to be easy to move past and because it's tied to a strength, addressing it is very difficult for you.

Because every time you decide to improve on the thing that you're being asked to develop, it means you're taking some foot off the gas of your strength. And so if that was the case, you're like, well, now I'm going to do less of what I need to do for the project, and I'm known for in order to appease this concern, this sidecar, the shadow.

And that contradictory is not a good trade off in your mind, and so it's remained for so long. And it's now become a obstacle for your future career growth because it required you to reduce your strength to address an inconsistent piece of feedback that only comes up in certain situations. That's why this is so complicated and subtle.

But now we're gonna go walk through a bunch of examples and you'll start to see how common this is though the work to remedy it is subtle by nature.

Okay, so let me give you 10 of these examples relatively fast just so that you get a sense of what we're describing here.

So, how many of you know a great storyteller or someone who has tremendous executive presence? Almost every company has them. Sometimes they're in leadership positions. Sometimes they're people that you know in industry.

These evangelists, you know, these are the people that you just love to listen to because they have great, great presence. Well, often the biggest criticism that they face is they don't go deep. They tend to draw up these amazing narratives and these stories, but they don't really think about the constraints.

And so people don't know what quite to do after they hear the story except be motivated,

And then they're kind of stuck.

Or consider a person who's incredibly collaborative. You know, we all know those that are just a joy to work with. They're nice. They always think about the team.

They think about how to make sure we are a success. These are the friendlies, but they may struggle with conflict. And they may shy away from really tough decisions, and that's the shadow of being nice. And you can say that, oh yeah, that kind of makes sense.

But ultimately if they were to be more opinionated and be more emphatic about their point of view, they won't be so nice. And when given a trade off, they're nice. So why would you address it?

Consider the the straight shooter. Everybody says, well, I'm a real straight shooter. This is how I tend to work. I'm a real clear communicator. I'm very principled. But the concern is that not everyone's used to receiving such monotone, such principled communication.

Sometimes they're considered to be harsh or aggressive because they tell you like it is, but not all situations require you to be told what it is. Sometimes being a little bit diplomatic is necessary, but that diplomacy clouds clarity. And so these folks tend to have this struggle, which is, I don't really understand how I can continue to be clear and direct when not everyone is interested in that level of communication.

They seem weak when in reality they just aren't used to this style, and they may need multiple ways of receiving the information.

Every company has this sort of expert in process. They know how to put the meetings, put the docs, put the schedule, make sure things are on time. Heck, every family probably has one of these people in order to get the family moving forward and marching in the right direction.

But sometimes it starves the fun and innovation that's necessary as part of building great product and you get these criticisms, which is like, the process may be great, but we don't get points for process. We get points for making great products or delivering great things. And so these too many meetings, too many docs, but that's the fluency of what this expert provides.

So most project managers have this shadow in how to make sure that they introduce enough space into their process, which is almost like the anti-process,

People on this podcast who have great concept, great idea, who are known for the brilliance of their concept. Oftentimes, much like the storytellers don't have the operational rigor to deliver, founders tend to struggle with this.

Their concepts are amazing, but their ability to execute is challenged. And then when they hire people who are excellent at executing, they worry about the execution and rigor that they introduce because they don't find that to be as valuable as their ideas and it's the shadow that they need to address, but then they have trouble welcoming that light into the company and creating the balance.

More extreme case is people that are great at wartime. This is one of my favorite ones. There's a set of people that are listening who just know when times are tough, they know how to ensure that they keep everyone on point. And drive progress, drive pace, drive execution, make sure things get done. But then what happens when things do get done? What happens when peace time arrives? Those that are great at war time. Often end up creating war as opposed to living in peace. Their superpower is war.

And so when they see peace, they create war as opposed to harvesting peace to some extent, companies need to live in war, but then they need to also bask in peace. And during peace, you end up being able to be more long-term thinking and take more risk.

And during war you tend to be more reactive, and so you need both. But if you don't have both in your playbook, you'll continue to seek out war and apply it to every situation that you find. Now a more traditional strength is those that have industry expertise.

You know, Hey, I really know travel really well. I'm terrific at enterprise sales. I have depth in how healthcare works. I'm an expert when it comes to investing, uh, in early stage companies. Well, the challenge is that if you've been doing it for a really long time, you may not be able to see the new opportunities as easily because your expertise is knowing it so well that you can always find the flaw.

And what ends up happening is disruption happens because it's baked in naivete, and naivete is not what you have. So you end up leveraging your superpower and squashing the concepts that are essentially naive, but are innovative. And that is a very tough shadow because you've worked so hard to become the networking expert for hardware, and then it turns out someone comes along and delivers on a brand new idea that you would've never considered. This is the, the so-called you look for the faster horse while someone comes along with a car. That's what this shadow actually identifies.

So some of you listening to this podcast have tremendous work ethic. You spend a hundred hours a week on driving and pushing work forward. Maybe a hundred hours is an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. And what ends up happening is you start resenting folks who don't push as hard as you do at work.

That's your shadow, because not everyone at a company who's a top performer needs or can spend that much time. And it makes it very difficult to build a diverse workplace if you end up only respecting and advocating for folks that can push that hard. You want to avoid that resentment, but it's quite challenging because you are making that sacrifice.

For those that sacrifice everything for work, whether it's hours or time spent, or perhaps the location in which they work or the industry that they're in. You know, this one's one of my favorites because no promotion, no compensation is going to be good enough for you because you've given so much to your work that your shadow is that the company will never be in a position to give you the same back, and yet your power is to give so much to work, and this is by the way, not just a work concept. This is a relationship concept. If your superpower is to be power giver, to give as much as you can, there's literally no way for someone to respond to that because most people are not able to reciprocate the amount of power that you give. So you're always going to be disappointed.

That is your shadow. And the elite performers face this more than any others because they can give and have so much impact that a company, no company will be able to return it. No relationship would be able to return it.

And then the last one is one of the most curious, which is those that have been driven and are successful, "One day I will have the money. One day I will have the power. One day I will have the title." Those that are driven that way tend to be very, very strong in that they'll eventually achieve that power, that title, that responsibility, that compensation.

And the shadow is what do they do next? Because if your entire world is to be wired by what's next, it's incredibly difficult to then say, well, what happens when you've achieved all those things? What do you construct as your next north star becomes your challenge, becomes your shadow.

Okay, these are just 10 examples, but we can go on forever and in fact, in the next episode, I want to spend a little bit more time on a few of these and really walk through the superpower, the shadow, the traditional responses, and then the coaching that we do.

But I do think that most solutions to these shadows follows kind of a basic framework. And so let me introduce that now. I feel like it helps most people going through this to know that these shadows are pretty common and they're connected to their strength. I think that it's really hard when you think, boy, I must be broken, because I'm not getting consistent feedback.

This is sort of subtle work. My manager doesn't really know what to do with this situation. I see people in the company that, that are like me, and I feel like this is more personal than principled. I think that when you feel like after listening to this that, hey, maybe is all common because of my strength and I just need to work through it.

You know, you just feel better and safer about managing these kind of concerns. I think that it also helps to know that this is much

more acute and much more subtle as you become more senior. And I think one of the fun parts of this exercise is a lot of what I'm trying to share with you isn't just for you, but it's around watching others, people that maybe you are in a position to manage if you're a senior and listening to this podcast, or maybe if you're at a company and you see executives.

You can kind of do the math. You can be like, oh, that person is really, really great with stage presence or strategy. I bet you they're really struggling with execution. And you're like, oh, sure enough. Look at that. And then you start seeing this so much more clearer that it's like you can't have one without the other.

And so you can use this as a diagnostic tool for others. And again, it helps to know that this is a common thing and that there's some safety in numbers here.

Maybe the most common example is a lot of you that ended up being successful as an individual contributor started managing others. And just ask yourself if you did the exact same thing that you did as an individual contributor when you started managing, how effective of a manager would you be?

And the answer is like only marginally because a great individual contributor gets into the details and knows how to get a specific thing done. A great manager is able to scale that, so you can't do the IC job. When you are managing, you have to pull back. And that's an example of, you know, what gets you here isn't what gets you there.

But in some ways that this process of career growth is a natural notion around building a strength and then stepping a little bit away and then building an ancillary strength and adjusting your strength so that it's indirect as opposed to a direct in this example. And so what I find is that though it's some skill development, it's such a mental game because most of these folks are so successful that you almost have to commit to change mentally and that commit to change and that identification and working through it, I compare it a little bit to rewiring your breath or your posture, and so in some ways it's like almost it's an intrinsic quality that you're adjusting, but on the other hand, it really needs three prerequisites to make this change. So I'm presenting it as though it's a such a complicated change, but I think it's complicated because it's elusive, not because it's hard.

And so what I find is that if you have the self-awareness, the desire, and the humility, you can find these shadows and cast them in the light. The self-awareness is needed to identify and find the subtlety. As I said, listen to the inconsistencies. The desire to change is not just to blow it off or to move quick past it, but to actually receive the signal and let it really connect with you and your strengths and that acknowledgement, moving to action is very hard for most people because it is a rewiring of something that has brought them to where they are. And then frankly, the hardest part, but the most critical ingredient is humility. Because you have to be humble to say, hey, I'm really successful, but I'm still willing to change.

And I think that you rarely see people that are able to do all three, because we're talking about successful people with strengths that are now being asked to change, have this self-awareness and the desire and the humility to say, I'm can be better even though I'm good. And so if you find yourself like, Hey, I think I could be all three.

You've solved 90% of this. So though it's a hard rewire because it comes down to some of what makes you intrinsically successful, it's not as skill-based. It's not like it's gonna take years of practice. It's not a knowledge thing. It's essentially a recognition that you are not set in cement, nor are your skills change is possible.

And then if you're fluid in that interpretation of your skills, you'll just adapt. You'll be like, oh, you know, it turns out that for me to get a little forward, I need to take a little bit off of my strength. I need to take my ego and keep it a bit in check, and then I can quickly work through how I can incorporate another playbook that can actually help me counteract this weakness.

And the good news is that once you make this adjustment, People are so positive, you'll see such success. You won't see like, wow, it feels like you're checking out or you're not as engaged. You'll see people come out of the woodwork who have been holding back and give you positive feedback, and the moment that you see that positive feedback.

You'll snap into doing more of it. It'll self reinforce this new behavior. So there's great promise to those that practice change around their development and their superpowers, but it does take a tremendous amount of soft skills and EQ and patience with yourself.

Okay. Well, I've been a bit high level though. I gave some examples of what the shadows and what those superpowers are.

In the next episode, we'll go through a half dozen or so examples of real life scenarios of what I've coached people through and how they've had to rewire themselves. And you'll start to see that there's a lot of promise in this work, but it's some of the most subtle and some of the most important work.

The successful folks out there go through to get to the next level. I appreciate all of your feedback on this topic as well as others. Please share this episode in particular with all of the terrific professionals that you know, because I think this is one of the most important topics to advancing to the next level of career and beyond.

So I look forward to hearing from you. Look forward to seeing you on my next podcast. Thanks everyone.