#40 - Exceptional
"I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself." - Mikhail Baryshnikov
Hello,
I've always intuitively resisted putting people in boxes, or ranking and filing people based on some generic characteristics supposed to define great ability or performance in a particular role. We are all different and do not fit into some abstract categories. Working in a regional team, where everyone has similar job descriptions and objectives, it's so obvious to see that everyone reaches the same goal (in our case, happy clients) by showing up with their unique, special style. One person shines with empathy, another - by being super organized and paying attention to the smallest details and numbers, yet another - by finding pleasure in crafting superbly polished and effective business writing. It's wonderful to observe and benefit from these unique strengths.
Everyone, absolutely everyone brings to the world their signature strengths that, put in the right conditions, shine. And when they shine, it's double-happiness: for the person who plays to her strengths, because she finds her ultimate self-expression, and for others, because we feel joy & admiration whenever we witness excellence and beauty.
This newsletter will start and end with two stories about two exceptional ballet dancers. And in between, we will define a "strength" and consider how to uncover signature strengths in yourself and in others.
The Soloist
This profile of Mikhail Baryshnikov, published in The New Yorker more than 20 years ago, is a long yet fascinating read. Baryshnikov is an exceptional dancer who has pursued personal and creative freedom, despite many troubles and constraints. The profile is best read in its entirety. What I bring here, are the passages that highlight the luck to encounter great teachers and mentors that develop us as individuals and not cookie-cutter test-takers; teachers that do not put us in boxes and believe in us more than we sometimes believe in ourselves.
"Pushkin had begun teaching early, at the age of twenty-five, and he soon specialized in men. His classroom manner was famously laconic. He rarely offered corrections, and when he did they were of the most elementary sort. (It was said at the school that he had two: “Don’t fall” and “Get up.”) Rather, as Baryshnikov explains it, what made Pushkin so effective was the logic of the step combinations he taught—the fact that they were true not just to classical ballet but also to human musculature. They seemed right to the body, and so you did them right. And the more you did them the more you became a classical dancer. Another thing about Pushkin, his students say, is that he was a developer of individuality. He steered the students toward themselves, helped them find out what kinds of dancers they were. “Plus,” Baryshnikov says, “he was extraordinary patient and extraordinary kind person. Really, really kind.” If there is a point in classical art where aesthetics meet morals—where beauty, by appearing plain and natural, gives us hope that we, too, can be beautiful—Pushkin seems to have stood at that point, and held out a hand to his pupils. (...)
Baryshnikov was still very worried about his height. Russian ballet companies follow a strict system, called emploi, whereby dancers are sorted by type into certain kinds of roles and remain there for the rest of their careers. Baryshnikov, though he was still growing (he eventually reached five feet seven), seemed too short for the danseur-noble roles, the grave, poetic leading-man roles. Not just his height but also his stage presence—he was boyish, vivacious, a personality—seemed to be pushing him toward demi-caractère roles, the quick, often comic supporting-actor roles. As he put it in his interview with Polanski, “I thought I would end up as a Joker or a Harlequin somewhere,” and this was not what he wanted. But Pushkin believed that his pupil would be a danseur noble, and he got him just to go on working. In 1967, Baryshnikov graduated from the Vaganova school. At his graduation performance, in the “Corsaire” pas de deux, “the scene was unimaginable,” his biographer Gennady Smakov writes. The crowd howled; the chandeliers shook. Baryshnikov was taken into the Kirov Ballet as a soloist, skipping the normal starting position in the corps de ballet, and now his troubles really began."
What Is a "Strength"?
I like one short and simple definition of strengths, or superpowers, from IDEO U. I also like their key observations on superpowers.
"Everyone has unique strengths - those things that come effortlessly and naturally to you. We call these strengths superpowers. Activating them helps brings out the best in us. And calling them by their name helps us gain confidence and communicate to others what we can contribute.
Superpowers are contextual, not fixed. They might change depending on context. Your superpowers are the way you show up to make your biggest contribution.
Superpowers are not your job function or title. They are more innate qualities that you bring to the table and how you are at your best.
Superpowers are actual, not inspirational. Your superpowers are how you actually behave and show up, not how you aspire to be. They come to life in the things you say and do.
All superpowers are equally super. No one superpower is better than the others. Each one is uniquely valuable and important."
From Superpowers to Great Teams Class – IDEO U
A complementary definition, that distinguishes strength from ability and describes the conditions necessary to call an activity a strength, belongs to Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall:
"A strength, properly defined, is not "something you're good at". You will have many activities or skills that, by dint of your intelligence, your sense of responsibility, or your disciplined practice, you're quite good at, and that nonetheless bore you, or leave you cold, or even drain you. "Something you're good at" is not a strength; it is an ability. And yes, you will be able to demonstrate high ability - albeit briefly - at quite a few things that bring you no joy whatsoever.
A strength, on the other hand, is an "activity that makes you feel strong"... It is a combination of three distinct feelings - positive anticipation beforehand, flow during, and fulfillment afterward - that makes certain activity a strength. And it is this combination of feelings that produces in you the yearning to do the activity again and again, to practice it over and over, to thrill t the chance to do it just one more time. A strength is far more appetite than ability, and indeed it is the appetite ingredient that feeds the desire to keep working on it and that, in the end, produces the skill improvement necessary for excellent performance."
Even if we know ourselves well, we sometimes struggle to define our own strengths. There are three approaches that I've come across that have their merits and complement each other.
Finding Your Strengths: Top-Down - "Picking from a Catalogue"
There are many variants, but the underlying idea is the same: there is a catalog of some generic strengths and, based on a questionnaire or a similar exercise, you get the list of those that characterize you the most. I've recently tried two:
VIA Character Strengths Survey
There are 24 generic strengths grouped into 6 different themes (Transcendence, Humanity, Wisdom, Courage, Justice, Temperance). After you've classified 100 different statements on a scale from "very much like me" to "not at all like me", you get the list of your strengths ranked in three groups: 5 signature strengths, 14 middle strengths, 5 lesser strengths. For an extra fee (I have not tried that) you can get a detailed report describing your character strengths profile.
This test has left me with mitigated feelings. First, the statements that get you to end results are too abstract. And their list is so long that towards the end you don't really give a lot of thought to the answers. And even if my own top 5 list (love of learning, appreciation of beauty and excellence, love, gratitude, curiosity) seemed pretty accurate, another one could equally looked true. Second, there are activities that I found missing from the list, like decision-making, empathy, thinking, decision-making, to name a few. All in all, this exercise left me "ni chaud ni froud", without any particular emotion. It did not trigger any strong reflection or action, just a tepid "So what"?
From Superpowers to Great Teams Class – IDEO U
Here, things got slightly more exciting. First, The list of 21 superpowers sounded less abstract and more anchored in actions. The way to reach to your own two superpowers - the superpower card sort - is, in my opinion, a better way than ranking some abstract statements in isolation. Here, you made consecutive comparisons across 3 different statement cards and repeatedly remove the statement that seemed the least relevant.
As a result, you get only 2 superpowers that characterize you the most - not the whole list ranked based on your answers. Mine - energy, and decisiveness - also looked right. But the most useful feature is that for each strength, there have been two complements: One is a warning about a shadow side of the superpower: for example, an Energizer sets the right mood and lift up the people around them, but may sometimes steer a team away from conversations about problems or conflicts. A Decider loves making trade-offs that leave others agonizing but can get impatient when people try to reopen a decision or be prone to blind spots. The second one is collaboration tips with a person who possesses this superpower, and which superpowers in the team can counterbalance each other.
Overall, I found this approach much more interesting and engaging - whether taken on your own or together with the team. I really liked this training and took away quite a few ideas to experiment with our team.
Finding Your Strengths: Inside-Out - "Loved It/Loathed It"
This approach is anchored in the definition of strength as "an activity that makes you feel strong" and comes from the same book by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall.
"Twice a year, spend a week in love with your work. Select a regular week and take a pad around with you for the entire week. Down the middle of this pad draw a vertical line to make two columns, and write "Loved It" at the top of one column and "Loathed It" at the top of the other. During the week, any time you find yourself feeling one of the signs of love - before you do something, you actively look forward to it; while you're doing it, time speeds up and you find yourself in flow; after you've done it, there's part of you looking forward to when you can do it again - scribble down exactly what that something was in the "Loved it" column.
And every time you find yourself feeling the inverse - before you do something, you procrastinate; while you do it, time drags on and ten minutes feel like a hard-fought hour; and when you're done with it you hope you never have to do it again - scribble down exactly what that something was in the "Loathed It" column.
Obviously, there'll be plenty of activities in your week that don't make either list, but if you spend a week in love with your work, by the end of the week, you will see a list of activities in your "loved it" column that feel different to you than the rest of your work. They'll have a different emotional valence, creating in you a distinct and distinctly positive feeling, one that draws you in and lifts you up.
Think of these activities as you "red threads"... You are weaving red threads into the fabric of your work, one thread at a time. now, you do not have to end up with an entirely red quilt... A little love goes an awfully long way: when you can deliberately weave your red threads throughout the fabric of your work you'll feel stronger, perform better, and bounce back faster."
Finding Your Strengths: Outside-In - "Highlight Reel"
A great complement to the first two approaches draws from the impact your strengths have on others. In the book "Exceptional", Dan Cable proposes to build your own highlight reel:
"Composed of your most exceptional moments throughout your life, both large and small, your highlight reel will contain your own memories, combined with memories from people you know well. It will help you recognize your strengths, shape your life around them, and create new habits that trigger the best version of who you are, more of the time. Rather than focus on what we do wrong, a highlight reel captures what we do right...
Step 1. Learn to recognize what story you're currently telling yourself about who you are and discover how to edit that story to reflect your best possible self.
Step 2. Three activities that result in your highlight reel.
Reflect and "mine your mind" for stories about yourself that you are most proud of and that you find remarkable
Give gratitude to people in your social network for times they have been at their best.
Gather evidence from your social network in the form of their stories and memories of your brightest and most outstanding moments.
Step 3. Learn how to access those signature strengths regularly."
Exceptional: Build Your Personal Highlight Reel and Unlock Your Potential, by Dan Cable
Take Me to Church
I promised to finish the newsletter with a story of another ballet dancer. His personality is highly controversial and quite far from politically correct. But the story below is not about his political preferences (that I personally don't share), but about him as a dancer. It comes from the same book "Nine Lies About Work" that I read this week and that is a big inspiration for this newsletter.
"About twenty years ago, a thirteen-year-old gymnast named Sergei Polunin was plucked from his depressed Ukrainian town and brought over to White Lodge, the junior Royal Ballet School. For the rest of his childhood, he was trained in the Royal Ballet techniques, and he displayed such extraordinary natural talent that, at nineteen, he became the youngest principal male soloist in the history of the Royal Ballet Company. Everyone in London agreed that he was better than Baryshnikov, better than Nureyev, better even than Nijinsky, the most technically perfect dancer in a century. London was proud to have found him and nurtured him.
But no one truly knew him, and no one truly cared to. He was a passionate, lyrical dancer, strong but fluid, soulful but angry, his tattooed body merely the most obvious sign to push the boundaries. The powers that be at the Royal Ballet Company ignored all this, and instead did what they always do with their prodigies: they made them follow the strictures of the Royal Ballet Way... And so he danced, and he danced, and he delighted and amazed, until one day, at the age of twenty-one and only two years after he ascended to principal, he quit.
There was a pattern for the perfect Royal Ballet Dancer, and this pattern didn't care what Sergei Polunin loved. He was forced to conform to this pattern and let his red threads slip away, and soon, he felt apart. Ballet is an unremittingly technical and demanding craft, but if you build technical craft on a loveless foundation, you net only burnout, because technical mastery absent love always equals burnout. Burnout isn't the absence of balance but the absence of love... Sergei flailed around for a few years, no longer at home in either London or Ukraine... And then he did what you might have done if you've ever found yourself similarly untethered: he found one thing he knew he loved - one frayed strand of a red thread - and he followed where it led. He asked a choreographer friend of his to create one dance that he would truly love, a choreography as lyrical as it was technical, equally precise and passionate. He would practice the piece, danced and filmed it twice one muggy afternoon in Hawaii... and published, to very little fanfare, his version of Hozier's "Take Me to Church"... Whether you are a fan of ballet or not, you'll recognize it not only as the work of a man at the end of his tether, but also as a pure expression of technical craft and unabashed joy... you will see, from inside out, that this is the fullest, most authentic, and richest expression of this unique person"
Sergei Polunin, 'Take Me to Church' by Hozier, Directed by David LaChapelle - YouTube
When You Move, I'm Moved
More of the music videos with the moves that move me:
Stay healthy and move in your unique ways,
Arina
Pictured: Mikhail Baryshnikov