The importance of naming your strengths and capacities.

At a recent team meeting, we were invited to share our superpowers. Each of us spent 5 minutes using colored markers to write, draw, scribble words, phrases or an image that described one of our superpowers.

Fully engrossed in the activity, I selected The ReLuminator for myself – even throwing in a tagline: Helping you to light up your path and your brilliance. I noticed that I was smiling the whole time as I wrote and drew my superpower on the 8X14 inch paper. 

Then we turned to the person next to us and shared our superpower, why we’d chosen it, and how we saw ourselves using this power. It was wonderful to hear my colleague describe her superpower and how she used it, then share with her ways that I saw her using that power. 

After that, we each shared our superpower with the whole team, giving everyone the chance to listen, ask questions, and reflect back how they experienced our strengths and capacities. I felt energized as my colleagues affirmed, “Yes, indeed you are the one who helps us to find a path and blaze a trail.”

Yet this group conversation was about more than just affirming what we’d already seen and shared, it was also about getting us to expand our view of what our power was, literally naming and calling forth a power that we might not have recognized as such. 

By the end, we were all laughing, radiant, our powers emanating from us, shimmering and visible to one another. The experience both compounded my appreciation of my teammates, and deepened our appreciation of each other.

There is something incredible and potentizing about naming each others’ strengths in the presence of each other.

In reflecting on the exercise, I realized that it’s a version of a skill I use in coaching called “Calling Out the Power” – which is a practice of deep listening, where I name and reflect back to my clients their unique strengths and capacities that they might be overlooking or forgetting to call on as they face a difficult challenge.

So what about you? What’s your superpower?

Calling out the power supports you as you step into your creativity, wholeness and sense of possibility.

And it is also a way to help you recognize how your yearnings, curiosities and emotions, as well as your strengths, are all sources of wisdom and power so that you can fully engage with the world. 

Who might you tell, and then listen to, as they call forth even more powers in you than you recognized you hold?