Last week I randomly watched Emilie Wapnick’s 2015 TED talk on ‘why some of us don’t have one true calling’. Her words have been bouncing around inside my head all week, and today I finally figured out why. I am a multipotentialite, and I have found my tribe!
I joined the Pop Education team as the Operations Manager in June of this year. I come from a wide range of work environments and professional roles. This exciting role is another one to add to the list. Nevertheless, I have always struggled with the knowledge that I was a ‘person of all trades and the master of none’. Even now when children in my life say they don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, I smile and tell them I don’t know either.
Emilie helped me realise that as a multipotentialite this was ok – I don’t need to find that ‘one calling’ to devote my life to in order to be a success. I can almost hear you googling multipotentialites as you read. Let me give you a quick heads up – the definition includes reference to three superpowers. This is what excites me the most about being part of Pop Education. As I reflect on who we have in our team, I can see we are all multipotentialities (I wonder what the collective noun is for a group of multipotentialites?).
Sure, we are experts in our field. We are brilliant assessment writers, curriculum developers, education designers, digital developers, mentors, and industry leaders. But collectively the Pop team is next level. We boast all three multipotentialite superpowers and these propel us upward.
Idea synthesis is the first superpower of multipotentialites at Pop Education. Individually we come from a range of professional fields. We have eclectic interests and skills. If you don’t believe me, then have a look at them on our website! This on its own is a nice to have – what makes this one of our superpowers is the way we use these interests and skills to create something new. We are skilled in making the most of these intersections and creating a thing of beauty for our clients.
Rapid learning is our second multipotentialite superpower. As a business who is obsessed with creating exceptional online and blended adult education experiences, it would come as no surprise that we value rapid learning. We take this one step further. We are used to being beginners – we are skilled at learning something new and learning it quickly. We are energised when we are asked to step out of our comfort zones, and we bring our collective experience and skills to the fore when we work on something new.
Our third and possibly most important multipotentialite superpower is adaptability. Under normal circumstances, adaptability is a no brainer for us – we easily change, adjust and modify according to need of the environment. However, this has taken on new meaning for us and our clients in the time of Covid19. Not only do we practice adaptability within our work, now we are leading and supporting others to be adaptable in this time of rapid change. Using our superpowers for good, not evil!
So now I think I know where I fit in the whole scheme of things. I am relieved to learn that I don’t have to devote 40 years of my professional life pursuing one field of interest and expertise to be a success. I also now know why I struggled with the concept of progressing my studies through to PhD level – and here I was all these years blaming it on my ENFP personality type!
Featured image by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash
