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Tuesday, April 6, 2010


What’s your Superpower?

An acquaintance in Kuwait asked me that question. She’s actually writing a book on the link between superheroes and our own personal experience, so she tried out the question. I thought a moment and described my superpower as “seeing around the corner”. Like many leaders, I exist for the future. Whether in my personal life or my work, I feel the need to see beyond.



Then she followed up with; “What superpower are you developing?” That took a moment to think through, but I soon nailed it – “the power of now”. You see, I have caught myself often looking so far ahead that I miss today. I evaluate today by whether it has any reference or relevance to tomorrow and end up missing the power (and the joy) that exists today.

It’s a ‘curse’ of the nomadic leader – looking down the road for the next oasis, the next opportunity, the next customer, the next phase of development. Yet this is also a necessary superpower. It’s critical for the survival and impact of an organization or business. Stay too long in one place and you and your organizations’ vitality may be at stake.

What are some of the consequences of NOT using the superpower of “seeing around the corner”?

• Loss of ability to look around at the skies, the weather & climate to see where the best pasture is. You may lose the skills of discerning and evaluating the conditions around you in order to find opportunities. Keep exercising this skill, because as I have learned about the languages I have acquired in the past: “If you don’t use it, you lose it”.
• Inertia. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs describes one of the foundational needs of humans as safety/security. When we find it, it’s hard to give up. Any of you involved in change management know the power of this need! Once settled in, people are difficult to move. Yet the lifeblood and effectiveness of many organizations requires their leaders to know when and why to pull up stakes (& disturb security) so that they can reach their full potential and impact.

But what of the superpower: “the power of now”? There are consequences to spending too much energy and time focused on what’s next:

• People get weary of a leader who never settles down. It feels to employees that just as they get comfortable with a system, a skill or an approach, things change.
• It drains your organization of valuable energy. If leadership & employee energy is too often focused on change, or the ever-present prospect of change, energy for actually delivering your core purpose is diverted.
• You begin to think that the future is the current reality! It isn’t, and it will take a lot of ‘today’ people to pull you out of the clouds to consider the details needed to get to the future.
• You miss the immediate needs of your most valuable resource –the people who will eventually get you to your preferred future. Yes, people want a leader to see ahead, but they also want their leader to turn around and notice them. I recall an incident with an international team I worked with, where the leader was leading us (with all our luggage) through the streets of Hong Kong en route to a new hotel. We were walking. He walked so fast, without looking back to see whether his team was with him, that eventually they became strung out over about 5 city blocks! Every once in a while STOP, turn around, forget the future.
• The joy of just living in today is lost. If everything is evaluated on its relevance to the future, the simple joy of today is diminished. For many of your followers, today IS more important than tomorrow. It’s where and how they live. Therefore as a leader, enter into TODAY and see value in it.

So, to those of you with the overdeveloped superpower of seeing around the corner, remember this:

Today is the only foundation you have for tomorrow.