Peer in episode #65 of the De Gebakken Peren Podcast.
Hidden Superpowers
When I played basketball years ago, a teammate broke his right lower arm. He couldn’t use it for a year.
When you’re young, you're sensitive to cues about what's accepted and what's not.
This sensitivity is influenced by your parents' actions or direct words to you. But also by how you observe them behaving in the world.
You see your parents not speaking up for themselves. Or, they show that their safety depends on the approval of others.
For a large part, you mimic your parents' behavior, even when you don’t understand the reasons why.
You learn to work around what’s not accepted.
You become careful with words. You become sensitive to others' opinions.
This can definitely go too far and can lead you to neglect parts of yourself.
But, as it does, you almost always will also have become masterful at a certain skill.
You’ve become very good at word-smithing. Or empathising with others. Or making sure everybody in the room is at ease.
Even when you might develop a bit of a love-hate relationship with this skill. You might not like the feedback that you’re good at it. Or, your inability to not not do it.
But, it’s a superpower too. Own it!
As for my teammate? While injured, he started practicing shooting with his left arm. The next year, he had learned to shoot with both hands. Which made him impossible to guard.
Creating Easier Paths
When you’re unsure of your purpose, a good place to look is to review what struggles you have dealt with or overcome.
You don’t want others to repeat the struggles you’ve gone through.
You know how painful it was.
And thus, you understand the immense value in getting help with it.
You can focus your energy on helping others so they don’t have to make the same mistakes as you have.
Plus, even if you don’t have the exact skills to prevent it (yet), you do have direct experience with being in it.
This can allow you to create exactly the right solution.
→ More on my coaching On Purpose.
Desire and Skill
When an in-crowd has been in charge of an organisation for a long time, it behooves them to get an outside perspective.
Say, the old guard and the young.
Two things are essential in making this work.
Of course, both sides need to want to learn from the other and need to be willing to change their ways.
And, both sides need to learn how to best talk to and interpret the other side.
It’s tempting to mostly look at the older generation for the willingness to change part, and to the younger generation to learn how to best talk to the older generation.
But, really both sides need to do both.
The older generation also needs to learn how younger generations think and value. And create space where new ideas can land and be implemented.
And the younger generation needs to learn how the mechanisms of the older organisation work. But get even further if they can also show a curiosity to the values underpinning the old ways.
