4 Steps to Find Your Fractional Superpower

Don’t Be Everything to Everyone

“You know all the right people

You play all the right games

You always try to be

Everything to everyone.”

from Everything to Everyone by Everclear

Breandan Filbert recently wrote a piece titled “3 Steps to Unleash Your Greatest Impact.” It touched upon something I, too, feel passionate about: when you are leaving a full-time role after a 20-to-30-year career and enter the gig economy when you are choosing ‘fractional' as your career, then focus is the name of the game.

After 30 years in sales, revenue, or growth, most executives have done a lot of different things; in fact, many LinkedIn profiles look alike. Most everyone has worked at a few nameplate accounts, has delivered substantial growth, has built and transformed, hired and coached, and exited successfully.

But now it is time to identify your superpower!

Because having done ‘everything,’ being able to do ‘everything for everyone’ does not allow you to stand out. Like it or not, there is a lot of noise in the space. In order to stand out, you need to be crystal-clear and focused on who and how you can help and what your superpower is.

Brendan offers three steps:

Review your career history “for the roles that offered you the greatest personal satisfaction and impact, and reflect on past experiences. Think about what made certain jobs enjoyable and which ones gave you a sense of accomplishment. Consider factors such as job responsibilities, team dynamics, working conditions, and salary.”

Evaluate the nature of each role “- was it more creative or managerial in focus? Was it challenging or straightforward? Once you have identified jobs that provide the most gratification, make sure to note what skills you developed within those roles that can now be applied to launching your fractional service.”

Assess what you contributed to the role. “Once you have left the role either through job change or promotion, your coworkers and supervisors will often share what they most miss when you left.”

I would add a fourth and final step: Ask yourself what it is that you would like to do going forward. What do you feel passionate about? In some cases, it can be something entirely different from your past career, though that might be a tough sell. Most often, though, it includes a subset of what you have done before. Something that gave you a sense of accomplishment, that builds on skills you have, recognized by others, and that you want to do now.

Let us know if we can help you find your superpower.

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Breandan Filbert – 3 Steps to Unleash Your Greatest Impact

Photo by Lena Kulla