What am I actually good at?

You create order.

You listen.

You sell.

You make.

You care.

You organise.

You challenge.

You finish.

But none of those words, on their own, tells us very much.

The more interesting question is:

What repeatedly happens because you're there?

That's what we're going to look for.

Over roughly thirty years of working with people and building teams, one of the things I've become most interested in isn't simply whether somebody is good at their job.

I'm interested in why they're good at it.

What comes naturally?

What do they do that other people find difficult?

What gives them energy?

What do people repeatedly rely on them for?

And if I took away their job title completely, where else could those abilities be valuable?

Some of the most satisfying moments in my career have come from seeing something in somebody that their current job wasn't really using.

I've seen people working in one function who were perfectly competent but were unlikely ever to become exceptional there.

Then you expose them to something different.

A different team.

A different problem.

Different people.

And sometimes something changes.

Their energy changes.

Their confidence changes.

Their performance changes.

The person didn't suddenly become more talented.

We changed where their talent was being used.

Imagine judging a fish by how well it can climb a tree.

It will look completely incapable.

Put it in water and the conversation changes.

The fish hasn't suddenly become more talented.

You've changed the environment in which you're judging it.

I've seen versions of this throughout working life.

Someone can spend years in logistics and gradually become defined as a logistics person, when the thing that is actually unusual about them is their ability to connect with people.

Expose them to PR, relationships, creators and influencers and perhaps another person starts to emerge.

I've worked with assistants whose title suggested support, but whose real ability was organising complexity. Give that person broader responsibility and perhaps you're looking at a future operations or retail leader.

I've watched people grow into heads of departments and directors because somebody gave them the opportunity to test themselves in a different lane.

It taught me something quite simple:

People don't always need fixing. Sometimes they need a different lane.

A CV is useful.

But it is largely a record of where you've already been.

Companies.

Qualifications.

Titles.

Responsibilities.

Achievements.

It can tell us what you've learned to do.

It doesn't necessarily tell us what you could become exceptional at.

And some of the most important evidence may not be on your CV at all.

Perhaps you've spent several years raising children.

We call that a career break, as though development somehow stopped because an employer wasn't paying you.

Think about what may actually have happened during that time.

Planning.

Prioritisation.

Patience.

Care.

Negotiation.

Organisation.

Teaching.

Managing competing demands.

Reading emotions.

Making decisions while exhausted.

Creating routines.

Solving problems with limited resources.

And perhaps you discovered something more important.

Maybe you genuinely enjoyed caring for people.

Teaching.

Organising family life.

Creating experiences.

Building a community around other parents.

Why should returning to work automatically mean returning to the career you had before?

Going back to work doesn't necessarily mean going back to your old career.

Ask instead:

What did this chapter of my life reveal about me that my old career never had the chance to use?

The same principle applies to hobbies, volunteering, sport, travel, side projects and the things you do simply because you enjoy them.

Your abilities don't only exist between 9am and 5pm.

At the other end of life, we can inherit a direction before we've experienced enough alternatives.

We choose subjects.

Then courses.

Then careers.

Often because they're familiar.

Perhaps our parents work in that world.

Perhaps a teacher encouraged us.

Perhaps we're simply good at the subject.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But imagine somebody studying business who spends every spare hour around music.

They love entertaining people.

They're fascinated by DJs and performers.

They're socially confident.

They become energised whenever they're around that world.

That doesn't mean:

Drop everything and become a DJ.

It means:

There's enough evidence here to become curious.

Could business and music intersect?

Could they spend time around promoters?

Music brands?

Artist management?

Events?

Production?

Could they learn to DJ properly?

Could they organise something?

Could they test whether the imagined world feels as good when they actually enter it?

You don't have to make a reckless leap.

You can run experiments.

I think a useful superpower sits somewhere around four things:

NATURAL ABILITY: What seems to come unusually naturally to you?

ENERGY: What makes you feel more alive rather than slowly draining you?

VALUE: Where does that ability actually help somebody or change an outcome?

ENVIRONMENT: Where does it flourish?

You could think about it as:

Ability × Energy × Value × Environment

It's not a scientific formula.

It's simply a useful way of looking at yourself.

And we're not going to ask you to pick five adjectives.

We're going looking for evidence.