Intercambio de Superpoderes : Shreya Thakkar
Evangelist Guide
Listen
“Are you busy digging the wrong hole?”
Who is the leader?
Who is going to show you what she has learned and almost maybe perfected?
Who is going to laugh in the face of failure?
Who is serene on the outside but frenetic internally?
Everyone, this is Shreya!
Such a great intercambio full of metaphors, insights, and funny phrases. She’s constantly reflecting on her journey and finding inspiration in the people and experiences around her.
“We're always told to fit in, you have these many resources, fit in here.”
From working with creative minds to rethinking how she leads and grows, she has this amazing way of turning challenges into opportunities to learn. What stands out is her belief: growth comes from trial and error. When you are learning, you’re going to fail. Whether it’s learning chess and laughing through the losses, or discovering a love for cooking, she embraces failure as part of the process of becoming better.
Shreya uses humor to invite play. It is a signal, to herself and others, the rules are about to change and she is going to “lead” by example, to “perform” something she is learning and rehearsing. Humor creates permission to do things differently.
She sees leadership as a responsibility to guide and uplift, even when it’s hard. And she balances it beautifully with her desire to be part of a community where people learn, teach, and inspire each other to reach for more.
“I try to learn from different people. So I keep them around me so there is something in them I like and I admire. I try to at least be one fourth of what they are.”
If I had to describe her in one image, it would be her own metaphor of a duck: calm and graceful on the surface, but working tirelessly beneath it all to keep moving forward. She’s someone who brings both depth and warmth to every space she’s in, and I’m so glad we shared this time together.
Evangelist Guide
Your community is doing amazing work but not appreciated. They need a bigger audience and to get people to rally for them.
Su comunidad está haciendo un trabajo increíble, pero no lo reconocen. Necesitan una mayor audiencia y que la gente los apoye.
Highlights
What it feels like to have this superpower?
"My tiny, powerful moments. I usually say I'm the leader here, so please listen. Sometimes I'm like, please listen to me. Those are jokes we would crack on. But it feels like a project manager. It feels like you're not taking responsibilities."
What have you learned?
"Never run away from a responsibility. Like if it's coming to you, it's a privilege and a great thing to take up responsibility, whether it's in personal life or professional life. Once you run away from it, you can't do certain things."
Intercambio de Superpoderes / Superpower Swap
We depend on each other more and more yet understand each other less and less. These intercambios or swaps dissolve the tension between our interdependence and estrangement simply by spending time together appreciating each other’s gifts. You have a superpower - a quality not on your resume but your community and colleagues all know you’re super good at it. You have a great story to tell and I want the world to know how amazing you are.
Sign Up:
You’re all invited. It's a fun chatty 1:1 session with some prompts and activities to discover our superpowers. You can sign up to do a session too!
What can we better appreciate about this superpower?
“I get buried into those responsibilities, and I feel a lot of guilt if I don't do certain things, like I have seen. Like I mentioned about the mentor. They are so good at project managing. I'm like, wow, it's something I want to learn. But it's impossible to do 500 things and manage and have details of what is happening in those different projects. But I would take up those things.”
Example from nature?
“I feel sometimes like a duck who is calm on the outside, it's like, Oh, look at me going. Follow me! Yeah, maybe sometimes I’m maintaining calm. But inside there is like inner battle happening.”
What’s next for you?
“One of my other learnings has been, not everyone wants to learn.
Doing something and preaching to other people, in my head, you can only be a leader when I say that the leader in a fun way.
I'm usually like, watch, watch me and learn, so I wouldn't show how do you cut something in the kitchen, or I would have made some good food. Watch me, and I would do it, and be like, oh, now, do you see how I did it like that was magic.
I would tell them like, welcome to the magician's code. I'll show you how the magic is done, and stuff like that. These are random things you would tell to tease each other, but I will only preach things I know how to do. If I don't know how to do it. I would not say it, because I don't know how to do it.“
What do you need?
I need work from home. One of my assumptions is places have energy. This is the desk I'm sitting in. I have sat here for hours and hours thinking and sitting in this place. This space over here gives me the thinking energy. If I'm on the bed. That's my resting energy.
Currently, I am taking my laptop and going to 500 different places and sitting there and telling my brain to be the best it has been. My brain is like, I will not start thinking here. I need to have certain disciplines, certain spaces, certain energies.Time for myself and time to be around others balancing. It would be great to have sometime I can practice what I have learned by myself. I can go out and see how other people are doing, and what can I learn from there? I pick the skill. Come back to my place, it's my laboratory where I experiment and fail, and whatever happens, it happens here.
I also need talented people who I look up to. I have a community. I am also part of the community looking up at other people. So, having both I can be an evangelist and have a North star to follow.
Shreya Thakkar
Shreya asks, “When I’m learning something new, I’ve found that waiting to feel ‘ready’ usually means waiting forever. So here’s my question: Do you wait for confidence before starting something new, or do you find it shows up once you’re already in motion?”
How it Works
The names of the superpowers and the scenarios act as a prompt to trigger memories and feelings. They are approximate. They are an entry point, something tangible, to learn more about each other. They are an initial prototype of expressing and appreciating our gifts. I hope, as a community, we take them, build, modify, and iterate on them.
The Description Side of the Cards
Each card describes a scenario our/your community is experiencing. You can imagine community however it makes sense to you. In general, they need your help in some specific way. This is your superpower. When you read each card, ask yourself if the community’s need feels like something you can do, know how to do, or even want to do. If two or three of them immediately resonate and feel like you, great. We will go through them together.
The Collage Side of the Cards
Each card has a collage of some of superpower attributes. It is to aid our appreciation of the superpower. They may appear a little like tarot1. But instead of the occult or supernatural, these cards describe actual powers. Their purpose similarly used to enhance the play with others.
The Agenda
04min: Introduction to activity
01min: Warmup
25min: Go through the cards, find your top 3
10min: Reflect on your superpowers
15min: Appreciation
05min: Feedback and Thank you!
Previous Intercambios
Heather Sparks : Evangelist Buddy
Verónica Módica Miras : Perspective
Livia Fioretti : Fixer / Gestor
Victor Sanahuja : Systemic / Sistemico
Martina Pagura : Energy / Energía
Jac Yue : Systemic / Sistemico
Lara Wiesenthal : Vision / Visión
Marta de Anton : Persistence / Persistencia
FIELD REPORT + Intercambio de Superpoderes
FIELD REPORT's goal is to reframe signals of external changes into opportunities for internal change. I want to harness the abundance of knowledge generated daily to bolster our readiness to change ourselves. Intercambio de Superpoderes is the first of many projects to launch in 2025 in partnership with Field Report. Thank you for reading and participating.
El objetivo de FIELD REPORT es reformular las señales de cambios externos para convertirlas en oportunidades de cambio interno. Quiero aprovechar la abundancia de conocimientos que se generan a diario para reforzar nuestra disposición a cambiar nosotros mismos». Intercambio de Superpoderes es el primero de muchos proyectos que se pondrán en marcha en 2025 en colaboración con Field Report. Gracias por leer y participar.
Tarot decks were invented in Italy in the 1430s by adding to the existing four-suited pack a fifth suit of 21 specially illustrated cards called trionfi (“triumphs”) and an odd card called il matto (“the fool”). Src: https://www.britannica.com/topic/tarot