RW6 Exploring your own superpowers

Two recent interactions made me think more about the importance of knowing our own unique superpowers (as Aaron Quigley discussed), ie our strengths, and also our kryponite (thanks Lewis Chuang), and how this can help us work out what is our good academic life. And to recognise that it’s ok that we can all have different superpowers. Related Links: The twitter thread started by Lewis Chuang: Aaron Quigley podcast conversation Mike Twidale podcast conversation Acknowledgement: Photo of power pose by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash Related Work: Michelle McQuaid, 2014, Ten Reasons to Focus on Your Strengths No matter what your job description says, Psychology Today. Jeremy Sutton, 2021, Cultivating Strengths at Work: 10+ Examples and Ideas, PositivePsychology.com. Ryan M. Niemiec, 2020, Coronavirus Coping: 6 Ways Your Strengths Will Help You Turn to your best qualities for prevention, safety, and health. Psychology Today. Transcript: (00:05): Welcome to changing academic life. I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick. And this is a bite-size related work podcast where we pick up on a single idea from literature and experience that may provide some insights or tips that will help us change academic life for the better. (00:27): 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 wanted to muse on this today triggered by two different, but I think related interactions from last week, one was the discussion with a senior professor whose colleague made a comment to them that they should be writing more and notice the 'should'. But for this senior academic, they would always choose 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 felt that they still felt somehow weren't measuring up to what an academic should be. Again, the 'should'. (01:32): The other example was a Twitter discussion, responding to the conversation with Aaron Quigley, where he talked about his super powers of not worrying who gets the credit listening and talking. 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 that he could be immune from kryptonite by traveling to alternate dimensions. (02:19): I think a generic kryptonite for many of us as academics is thinking that they must be some ideal, super academic 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 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. (03:25): 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 flow? 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 prioritise 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. (04:38): 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 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 interaction with the students and facilitating learning conversations. For others, it's about breaking down complex ideas into teachable chinks, 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 drives people. Or it might be that you're just motivated by inspiring the next generation of leaders. (06:16): And 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 other 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 strength for you just as an example. (07:12): 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 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 use their strengths more, a happier experience, less stress, feel healthier, have more energy, feel more satisfied and more confident. They're more creative and agile at work, and they experience more meaning at work and are more engaged as well. So recognising 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 super powers together to complement one another, just take a listen to this extract. (08:32): "I realized that, you know, one aspect of delegation that I could do with delegate things, to people who were really good at doing this thing that I was really bad at doing, and that's partly recognising strengths and weaknesses in ourselves. And it was a struggle because at times I'm inclined to be very egocentric and think, well, if I hate doing it that surely everybody else hates doing it. So I am now going to ask them to do this horrible thing. And then discovering this thing, I think is horrible. It's something they think is really nice. And this is something they...