Sowing Your Superpower and Reaping the Harvest

Apr 4, 2024 | Blog

I recently had an experience that reminded me of how sowing seeds with your superpower can bear fruit down the line in sometimes unexpected ways.

In fact, I discovered a new way that you can harvest fruit that I had not really reflected on before—namely, by taking advantage of opportunities to further employ your superpower at a greater scale and with broader impact, sowing even more seeds than you first imagined!

Sowing Your Superpower Seeds

When I began leveraging my coaching superpower by moving into a teaching and coaching career, one of my dreams was to ultimately have the broadest impact I could, to coach students and leaders far and wide—not only on campus and in the classroom, but in the wider world as well. This is one of the main reasons I wrote my book, The Treasure You Seek: A Guide to Developing and Leveraging Your Leadership Capital and launched a podcast, Training Camp for Leaders.

Just recently, I was presented with a fantastic opportunity to have further impact as a result of some of my superpower seeds I had planted several years ago.

For several years, I have taught a course I co-created that focuses on community investing—investing in others for both financial and social return. A former student of mine who had taken that course and who graduated several years ago recently came to me with an opportunity to launch a new initiative funded by her company. She is now a successful investor herself, and her firm hopes to fund the introduction of a version of my community investing course into other colleges and universities—broadening the reach of my coaching in exactly the way I dreamed.

When I leverage my superpower to teach students, I don’t always know all the ways in which it will come back to me. I certainly don’t expect anything back from the student apart from the opportunity to hone my superpower and to see their success down the line.

In this case, though, the investment came back around in terms of an opportunity to further invest my superpower more widely—by bringing my coaching to a new and different environment and group of students with the help of someone I had invested in previously. This student—whom I taught about community investing—is now investing in my dream of coaching more broadly in different settings!

Harvesting Opportunity

We’ve still got a ways to go to get the execution of this initiative off the ground, but even this first conversation was a great reminder to me—and can be a great reminder to all of us—that, as we’re investing our superpower, we are sowing seeds.

And sometimes, the harvest of those seeds comes in unexpected ways. (See here for a great discussion of how to take advantage of these unexpected opportunities.)

I see three ways the harvest of superpower seeds can come back to us, both expected and unexpected. First you can see firsthand how the investment of your superpower is benefiting others—as I see with my students. Second, it can create opportunities for you personally to expand your network, attain your goals, and go after your dreams. And third—and this is what I didn’t expect and have newly realized—it can come back in the form of opportunities to further exercise your superpower with even greater and broader impact.

In this last form, you can start to see regeneration of opportunity, continued growth, and momentum toward attaining the treasure you seek—all from investing your superpower in others.

Originally posted on Forbes.com

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