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Your Core
Your core is your essence, the special abilities you possess at the core of your being. It is the special gift you have been given that separates you from others. The core is used to connect to the need, because it is something special you have that fulfills what your buyers lack. You are joined because they see you have the solution.
A Flight of Confidence
It was the year 2000. Fireworks displays were being tracked live on CNN in perfect sequence as midnight struck in each time zone across the globe. There was one place where the fireworks were perhaps particularly special, the fireworks over the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
At the turn of the millennium, I was at McCann in London, working with our ninety-plus European offices in their business development efforts. Our folks in Germany rang me with some very good news. They were on the short list for an account with Lufthansa German Airlines. We knew this could be not only a shot in the arm for our office there, but a fantastic global win to boot. Up to that point, I had spent a lot of time in Germany. I have quite an affinity for the country, and can trace my family origins to a small town in Bavaria. My ancestors on my mom’s side, Great Grandmother Schneider and her eleven kids, came to the United States in 1882. I actually speak a bit of taxicab German as well.
In the run-up to the presentation, we began in earnest to meet with as many Lufthansa people as possible (remember the interview?). What was absolutely clear from these was the uniformly exuberant pride of the airline’s employees. To their way of thinking, Lufthansa was, in every way, the best airline in the sky. Looking closely at every aspect of what the company did and how they did it, we saw those employees were right.
Meanwhile, we at McCann had set out to build a center of excellence of our own, with the first major agency network in Berlin, the restored capital city, now a source of enormous German pride. The agency would be unique, creating global communications across all platforms and customer touch points from one center of excellence to all parts of the McCann global system.
The fireworks over Berlin at the turn of the century marked a special moment in German history. The arrival of the new millennium was a turning of the page, heralding a new generation and a vibrant future for Germany. I can recall Berliners boasting to me as I once gazed over Berlin from atop the Brandenburg Gate, “There are more cranes in Berlin than anywhere in the world!” (The vast development in Dubai and Shanghai had not yet begun.) By the same token, many shared that there was a schism at work: the increasing confidence and German pride contrasted against the backdrop of the past. To me, the hidden agenda at Lufthansa was clear:
We want to assert that we are the very best in the air but are concerned it may be seen as aggressive or arrogant.
We at McCann learned there was a reticence at Lufthansa to make such a declaration given all the baggage of the past; now the millennium had come, however, Lufthansa was a superlative airline, and it should be encouraged to declare itself so. To connect with this hidden agenda was to state the facts, which were unequivocal. On a host of dimensions, Lufthansa was far and away an industry leader, setting standards in everything from route, to aircraft innovation, to maintenance and in-flight services. The answer: German pride is not taboo. In fact, two words described the airline perfectly: pride and excellence.
Connecting the Core
The key to winning Lufthansa was to connect to a core of excellence and pride shared between us. We decided we would not pitch to them out of our offices in Frankfurt, but instead share with them the dream we had, to be the first network agency to build a proud, new, contemporary presence in Berlin. Of course, this was practical and answered their brief—they wanted state-of-the-art global communications services—but in truth, what meant more was our shared vision for Berlin as a symbol of German confidence and pride. And what really captured them was what we would communicate.
On the day we opened the meeting, I told the Lufthansa executives that this meeting was about pride and excellence, theirs and ours. I spoke of our shared leadership, of McCann as the number-one agency in the world and now the number-one agency in Berlin. I then removed a cardboard screen on the table adjacent, and there sat a two-foot scale model of a Lufthansa “Super Constellation” aircraft, circa 1955. In a flash, one of the Lufthansa executives exclaimed, “It’s a Super Connie!” I confirmed he was right. It was a much-beloved centerpiece of the Lufthansa fleet at the time and a symbol of Germany’s move forward in the postwar era. It represented, and continues to represent, a heritage of excellence. I continued, “You have always been, you are, and you always will be the very best airline that flies. At this special moment, there is no better time for you to declare your category leadership.” At that point, a fantastic creative director from our team, whose father was a Lufthansa pilot and whose mother was a Lufthansa flight attendant, presented a simple line, “There’s no better way to fly.” Smiles all around.
Connection to the hidden agenda that inspired the Lufthansa executives demonstrated our appreciation for their hidden agenda to talk to their rightful place of excellence in aviation, all driven by a shared core of pride and excellence. The business was awarded to us, and, I am proud to say, the concept and the relationship have continued for more than ten years.
The Truth That Lies Within
Finding the core means stripping all else away to reveal the brilliance that is purely you. This is ultimately what connects. I learned this from my inauspicious beginnings in advertising, which I started very much through the back door. As you’ll later learn in some detail, I worked with Marriott International both during and after college in the foodservice arena. This was hardly the kind of background that interested the glamorous folks on Madison Avenue (yes, they really were located on Madison Avenue …). I was turned away by virtually every major agency because of my lack of relevant experience. While thumbing through the pages of Advertising Age one day, I saw a profile on ad agencies in the food service business, those who did advertising for companies like Marriott. Eureka!
There was a little company called The Food Group, and I found the name of its CEO and founder—a fellow named Don Axelroad and proceeded to ring him every Monday for literally four months. His secretary, a lovely lady who never lost patience, answered the phone, “Oh, hello Mr. Allen, oh I’m very sorry, Mr. Axelroad isn’t in at the moment. I will let him know you called.” I could literally recite her response along with her. (I was tempted, but never did.) Finally I called at 8:30. I dialed and the phone was answered, only this time the husky voice said, “Don Axelroad …” I stuttered and stammered, “Er, this is Kevin Allen calling.” A shocked Don replied, “Oh my God, it’s you! What on earth do you want?!” I replied in an instant, having recovered myself, “I want a job!” He chuckled and referred me to his partner, a man by the name of Harry Delaney. But now, how to pitch Harry?
I rolled up at the appointed time and, after some small talk, Harry, a stereotypical “adman” and consummate salesman, asked me his first and virtually only question: “Well, you’ve got no marketing or advertising experience; why should I hire you?’ I declared, “I am an enthusiastic and hard-working guy, people like me, and I am your target. I am a food service insider. I know more about your audience than you guys do!” Harry smirked, looked at me, and replied, “Okay, wise guy, let’s see.” He gave me a project. Find out everything I could about tomatoes (turns out he was pitching Del Monte). After two weeks and a successful recitation on the fascinating subject of the noble tomato (did you know tomatoes are a fruit?), Harry called me into his office with the following news, “Look, you have absolutely no experience. You’ve never worked in an agency, you have no marketing background, I don’t know why I’m doing this—you got the job.”
This was a wonderful start, and I learned tons from both Harry and Don. But what I really learned, on reflection, was to identify and apply my core. That is to say, I found a vital, relevant, and genuine part of my core experience and personality, and I matched it to a relevant context. I loved my tenure with this wonderful little company and was looked after like a wayward son by these generous people. Ambition called, and I soon found myself an account executive with a venerable Pittsburgh-based ad agency called Ketchum, MacLeod & Grove.
Out of a Nearby Phone Booth … It’s Perfect Man!
I was now out of the womb and amongst the sharks. I soon came to the conclusion that if I was to compete effectively I would need to adopt a whole new stance: Kevin the Business Titan. In blue suit, white shirt, red tie, and wing-tip shoes, I adopted a demeanor that was a cross between that of Sean Connery and Walter Cronkite. I convinced myself that in order to succeed, I would need to conform to a set of standards of dress and demeanor that were aligned with a stereotypical corporate success story. My pitch was simple: I was perfect. To meet me was to form an impression that I had just walked off the polo field or had spent the afternoon in the library of the University Club and was preparing to jet off to a distant capital to hobnob with other captains of industry.
One afternoon, I found myself addressing my colleagues in the agency in preparation for a new business pitch. There I was, holding forth to the group in my worldly manner, reciting the facts and figures of our prospect, when the door opened gently and a distinguished gentleman slipped in and made his way to the back of the room.
It was Bill Genge.
This impeccably dressed, elegant man with a shock of pure white hair, a former World War II fighter pilot, was the chairman of the agency. He was beloved, highly respected, extraordinarily dignified, and we all worshiped him. For me, the worshipping took place from afar, as I had never met him before. He just happened to be in town and was curious to see what the New York team was up to. I pressed on in my worldly demeanor. When we broke, Bill wandered up to me at the coffee station, put his arm around me, and said, “Son, that was one darned fine presentation. But can I give you a piece of advice? Why not step out from behind that blue suit and be yourself. It’s what we all want to see and love about you.
I was absolutely stunned. How was it possible that this man, whom I’d never laid eyes on before, could see behind my worldly facade and knew that lurking behind it was a real person, the real Kevin, who he believed the world wanted to see?
I was laboring under the huge misconception that the slightly eccentric, exuberant, sensitive (yet perceptive), and somewhat goofy part of me was not in any way characteristic of someone who succeeded in business. Faced with this belief, I adopted the characteristics I associated with day-to-day business effectiveness and with that most important goal, climbing the ladder. It turns out I was not alone in this kind of thinking, as this had been very much part of corporate life since the 1950s. In fact, this viewpoint and behavior were actually codified by a guy named William Whyte in a book called The Organization Man. In certain rigid corporate cultures, the individual is effectively subsumed by the corporate entity. In order to be successful, members of the company are encouraged to essentially give themselves over to the company, sacrificing their individuality for the overall corporate good. Their personalities and individualities are surrendered for the sake of corporate “belongingness.” Dreadful.
At the end of the day, your core is your passport to success. Success does not require abject psychological surrender to the organization you work with. Having initially believed that my own personality was no ticket to the desirable destination of corporate success, I learned that to be successful was to be myself. No easy task. Why? I think because there’s a lot of “training,” overt and otherwise, that suggests that there’s a certain kind of characteristic that makes for successful people. The question is: How do you choose among all the facets of who you are to know what the core is?
Success in winning business and creating a following means coming across as your own genuine self and allowing others to see you as you are, all in the name of making a human connection. Bill’s advice to me was right, because as Perfect Man I may have been talking, but I was certainly not connecting. Perfect Man is a hollow core, not a genuine person. The person (or team or company) your audience needs to see is a rich mosaic of characteristics that they will be drawn to and will bond with through affinity and even a little bit of curiosity. The search for your core is a quest to find and, perhaps more importantly, to believe in your true and compelling assets. Any pitch to a person or an organization is only credible when it reflects an essential truth of what you’re about. Finding this truth and having the courage to shine a light on one key element to the exclusion of others is a difficult process requiring discipline and self-confidence. Without this core, there is no clarity as to how you add value or what the compelling impetus is for people to follow you. It comes from within you. Nowhere else. It is the truth that lies within. This true ‘voice” was captured in a wonderful poem:
I AM NOT I
I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit
and whom at other times I forget.
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walk where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.
—Juan Ramón Jiménez
I first heard this haunting poem, read aloud by poet Robert Bly, at a weekend retreat for the senior male members of McCann Erickson. The retreat was designed to break down the tough male stereotype at McCann, and the gathering was documented by a reporter from Adweek, Greg Farrell, who entitled his article “The Wild Men of McCann: What Happens When a Hard-Charging, Male-Dominated, Ego-Driven Agency Culture Is Asked to Get in Touch with Its Inner Self.” The retreat itself was inspired by a remarkable and unforgettable man named Peter Kim, then McCann’s vice-chairman, who saw it as part of the mountain-moving change he was implementing at the agency.
The weekend was presided over by Robert Bly. Tough, battle-hardened McCann veterans soon, when exposed to the magic of a storyteller and sage like Bly, stripped off their war faces. What was revealed was a quirky and altogether remarkable set of people, certainly not the one-dimensional warriors who had first set foot in the place. Hearing this poem, recited by Bly as he plucked the string of a haunting instrument called a tar, riveted all of us and, as we reflected on it, taught us that there is a true self that lies within, special and profound. I learned that the most important thing in any endeavor you undertake—at the core of your place in the world—is you … the real you. This is the “you” that people will follow. And for me, it was the man Bill Genge told me to be.
Ok, Here’s How …
Finding your core, and that of your organization (and that of your prospects, for that matter), is a mining operation. It requires digging deep to find a special central character that is genuinely yours. Finding your core is also an acknowledgment and acceptance process and then … it’s a celebration of your special gifts. You’ll note here, I speak of both you and your organization. That’s because, at the end of the day, you and your organization connect to people, not to a faceless entity. People are emotional creatures. Here are three ways you can mine for your core:
1. Associative Method
Associative methods use words and images to evoke meanings that reflect your own true characteristics. Associating is a helpful technique because it uses recognized symbolism to sort through characteristics to find those that best describe you. Associative methods also provide a window on how others who have observed you and your organization in action see you. These are the people you know who know you well, warts and all. I call them your “board of directors.” These are the members of your fan club. People who adore you, believe in you, and know you intimately. They can come from either your personal or professional life They’re not your official board (perish the thought), but those people who know you and adore you unconditionally. They’ll be frank about what you are and are not. When working with executives, I ask them to consult with those close to them, and have those people describe the executives’ key strengths, characteristics, and abilities in a simple e-mail; then the executives follow up with a chat. The result is always illuminating, clarifying, and confidence building.
There are two excellent methods you can use to arrive at a description of your core:
Core Questionnaire
These are a few simple but probing questions that call upon you to be decisive about who and what you are. They are discriminatory by their nature, and ask that you choose among a sea of characteristics that stand out from all the others. It’s not that you don’t have other characteristics, you no doubt do, it’s deciding which ones define you (or your organization).
I am unique because I .
People know me to be .
I am good at .
What makes me special is my .
Core Word Sort
Sometimes answering these sorts of questions brings on writer’s block: You sit staring at the page. The exercise below provides a bit of stimulus. Here, I draw on an excellent technique we used over the years when developing brands. From the pre-selected list of words, choose six that best describe your (or your organization’s) core. It’s actually a lot of fun and a great team-building exercise. Be careful when working in groups, though; finding your core is a decisive act, not a compromise or a consequence of consensus.
| Smart | Creative | Transparent | Diverse |
| Irreverent | Secure | Entrepreneurial | Goal oriented |
| Elegant | Pioneer | Risk Taker | Realist |
| Challenger | Activist | Explorer | Initiator |
| Fixer | Connector | Architect |
One of my clients reached out to his board, some clients, and others close to him in his industry, and did the same exercise for his company. Here is what he got back:
Intelligent
Formidable
Wise
Influential
These characteristics inspired the basis of the company’s expansion by invigorating the core of who they are and what makes them special. These characteristics were reflected faithfully in their go-to market platform and in the way they connected to clients and prospects. Management and employees recognized it and believed firmly in it. It is no accident that they are exceeding their growth plans handsomely.
2. Projective Methods
The MasterCard pitch was, when I look back on it, the most protracted and most difficult I have participated in. This was because of the nature of the product: a little piece of plastic with a logo on it. Therein lay the purity of the pitch: complete and utter product parity (there are no differences in form or function between Visa or MasterCard) with no extraneous issues, be they product features or other aspects of marketing advantage. The essence of what the MasterCard brand stood for needed to be found and leveraged. Day after day we struggled, with no results. We tried everything from analogies to myths, always ending up at the same dead end. All the while, we sweated, ever mindful that each passing day with no direction took us one step closer to pitch day, and we had nothing to show.
Our strategic team, at work on a dozen different tracks, decided to try a method to see what it might offer: a projective technique. The projective technique is a psychological profile test in which a variety of stimuli are used to evoke associations and underlying feelings and emotions. The most famous is the Rorschach, or inkblot, test, which takes otherwise abstract images and records people’s feelings and associations after they are exposed to the images. For our projective test, our team devised a set of photographs, about fifty in all, showing everything from a shark to a baby. The collection was enormously varied, with the intention of provoking the widest range of feelings and ultimately helping consumers make a choice. In doing so, they’d give us some insight and direction. Groups of consumers were asked to choose from among these photographs the ten that best represented the core DNA of MasterCard and its nearest rivals, Visa and American Express. Then, they were asked to select one among the ten that they deemed to be the closest association with the brand.
On the day of the results, we all assembled to anxiously await our breakthrough, a hopeful, exciting representation that would give us direction and win us the pitch. The first photo, which the photo consumers had chosen as emblematic of AmEx, showed a well-dressed businessman boarding a Learjet. Then came the Visa image, attractive young urbanites at a ski lodge having drinks and socializing. Then came MasterCard’s … drumroll … a picture of a little suburban house with the porch light on.
Our hearts sank. What on earth were we to do with such a dull association?
So, here we were, only weeks away from our presentation and no closer to a breakthrough, until our strategic group began to try to understand the associations of this little house and to figure out why it was selected. They discovered that the porch light evoked MasterCard because it was a brand that was involved in the everyday lives of ordinary people rather than catering to the highflying Learjet crowd or martini-swilling urbanites. MasterCard was seen as a more genuine, down-to-earth card that stood for the everyday. This was our core. But how could it be leveraged?
People, our team observed, had moved away from the ideals of the high-rolling ’80s toward more authentic, substantive, inner-directed values. What was initially seen as boring and mundane, a simple little house, was actually an electrifying and powerful breakthrough. MasterCard was all about good, genuine people buying good things for good reasons. This, as you will see later, was the platform that led to the idea that changed everyone’s lives, and now “Priceless” is in dozens of countries around the world, still running after more than a decade.
Here are two projective techniques you can use to get at the core:
Core Picture Sort
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. It’s true. Using imagery to assist you in looking at your core is not only fun but very effective. You tend to select a picture on instinct, then set out to derive meaning from it. This is why therapists use it to good effect! One way to do this on your own is to buy a random set of magazines. Pick a broad-based weekly, as well as magazines from a cross-section of areas, like fashion, lifestyle, and the like. Be sure the magazines are as diverse as possible. Then, leaf through the pages; when a picture appears that instinctively grabs you, tear it out. Your objective is to get ten that truly reflect who you are. Then earmark the three that are closest to your core, and then, ta-da! pick the one that most reflects you. Once you have done this, write down the words or characteristics represented in the picture you have chosen. These are the elements of your core.
Core Celebrity Sort
Another projective method uses widely recognized individuals. This is revealing because well-known people evoke for us certain core characteristics that we associate with them. For example, your collection of people might include:
Select the people who best represent your character, and are most like you. Let your instinct do the picking. Then, with your ten celebs selected, write down at least three words you associate with each individual you’ve picked. From this list, as you did in the word sort, select ten words, then three, then one.
3. The Footprint
The Footprint is a wonderful tool that combines a number of the elements we reviewed to form a profound imprint of the core of the company, brand, or person. It comes from one of my brilliant colleagues, Eric Einhorn, McCann Erick-son’s Chief Strategy Officer. Eric is a talented strategist and visionary and was a key part of the MasterCard team. He is a great thinker and distiller and his footprint defines the core of a brand, company, and yes, a person to its essence through the identification of words in answer to two key questions, the means and the is. It forces a choice of those words that best describe three primary meanings, that is, what associations it possesses, and then asks to assign three dominant personality traits. Fabulous.
Its strength is in providing both a broader spectrum of definition while not losing the all-important requirement for distillation and decision-making. Eric’s work during MasterCard opened up the thinking to the power of MasterCard’s unassuming yet profound profile. To realize its power was to first understand its essence. Here it is, as we presented it.
MasterCard Footprint
… Means Everyday
… Means Ordinary life
… Means The Generic Card
…Is Unassuming
…Is Unpretentious
…Is Practical
In addition, it was to be used as a prescriptive, for what things could be:
MasterCard Prescriptive Footprint
… Means Everything That Counts
… Means Real Life
… Means The Best Way to Pay
…Is Purposeful
…Is Genuine
…Is Resourceful
You can take your word sort exercises to another level with the superb exercise in the search for your core. Thanks Eric!
4. Profiling Method
I love you. Ich liebe dich. Je t’aime. All express exactly the same sentiment, but in a different language. Profiling provides a means of ensuring that you can calibrate your pitch in such a way that no matter who you’re speaking to it will be understood and celebrated. This is not intended to change who you are or what you believe, but to ensure that your pitch is expressed in a manner that your audience can appreciate most. It’s based on human sensitivity. A good illustration was our pitch to Marriott.
Whether I was sweating in the dish rooms of Marriott In-Flite’s airline catering facility in Newark, New Jersey, or sweating at a hotel near Marriott’s Bethesda headquarters on the night of our pitch rehearsal, I could simply not get rid of the butterflies. As with every pitch I think I’ve ever done, we’d pledged to rehearse and get a good night’s sleep, but there we were in the evening going through our material, a long night ahead of us. Then a fellow with a beautiful little baby in his arms popped his head into the meeting room. He smiled brightly and said, “Welcome to Bethesda, I hope everything is going well for you.” Joe Okon, a kindhearted and thoughtful man, was a key marketing executive from Marriott. He was actually checking in to see if we were okay. We were amazed. After exchanging pleasantries, he left us to our rehearsal, wishing us good luck for the morning. The moment he left us we all agreed on what a lovely gesture it was. At the end of our chat I can still hear Nina, our creative director shout, “Yeah, and he is soooooooo logo!”
Logo?
In those early days at McCann, Jim Heekin, the industry’s greatest quarterback, put together a talented yet wildly diverse team. Unlike the homogeneity of the old McCann group, the incredible diversity of this team was what made it so compelling. Margie, my new business partner, had the idea to sensitize the team to one another’s personalities; even more importantly, we had to be sure we were effectively understanding our prospects’ personalities. (Remember, one never says no to Margie ….) She accomplished this sensitization by organizing an extraordinary meeting led by a gregarious, larger-than-life man by the name of Stuart Sanders, founder of Sanders Consulting. He’d developed a simple system that cleverly labeled each of the personality typologies, categorizing each of these differing “types” using the familiar elements of a print ad, a reference useful for ad agency types: “headline,” “body copy,” “illustration,” and, you guessed it … “logo.”
Stuart presided over our unruly group and channeled our enthusiasm over discovering this wonderful new tool. We were like a bunch of schoolchildren as we tallied up our responses to reveal our various profiles. (For my own part, I was identified as a complete and off-the-charts “logo.”) With this type of tool, we knew how to identify and match Marriott’s core because we had a tool that allowed us to dig to find it.
After this introduction to the power of profiling, I engaged extensively over the years with a variety of profiling types. I discovered the work of David Keirsey, who described four “temperament types” (“artisans,” “guardians,” “idealists,” and “rationals”) in his book Please Understand Me. Of the many licensed personality profiling tools currently available, one of the most widely used is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI, which draws on Carl Jung’s psychological types to understand and assess personality. At my company, we use DISC, a fantastic profiling tool based on a behavioral model developed in the 1920s by Dr. William Moulton Marston.
For your company, constructing a profile means assessing your organization’s fundamental strengths. At McCann Erickson, in assessing our profile we recognized our long-standing tradition of competitiveness (and combativeness). This was reframed as an unrelenting effectiveness culture, which could be harnessed for McCann and for its clients (and was the very element that we applied when pursuing MasterCard).
What’s Your Profile?
As a consequence of the differing natures of how each of these types relates to other types, reacts to situations, consumes information, and makes decisions, it is easy to see how vitally important it is to carefully decide:
| 1. | Which profile are you? |
| 2. | What is the profile of your organization? |
| 3. | Which profile is each of the individuals to whom your pitch is directed? |
| 4. | How will the different profiles affect the way you put your pitch forward? |
Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor, observed, “One of a leader’s responsibilities is to meet the needs of those he or she leads. The point is not to alter your message depending on the audience, but to present it so that it can be understood by every one you are addressing.” Think of determining your target as deciding to eat at an Italian restaurant, but realizing that there are a variety of menu items at that restaurant.
I set out some time ago to develop a simple platform that had both a broad application outside of advertising and a firm grounding in Jungian thinking. Now, clearly, there is no precise science to these typologies, only their roots in the truths found in Jungian psychology and its implication for people’s tendencies and preferences. I found it necessary, as I began to work with an array of companies, to adopt a broader terminology than those found in other profiling systems. But I think my choice of names for typologies really has to do with my inveterate love of Broadway: I use “script,” “stage,” “cast,” and “marquee.” It’s fun, and we get to pick our favorite stars to describe folks we’re pitching to. Here are my type descriptions:
Script People
These are process people, detailed, thorough, and orderly. They enjoy the process and methodology as much as (and maybe more than?) the result. People who cherish what they create, they are inner-directed and logical, and they value facts, clarity, and that which is familiar. Script people are engaged through an unemotional sequence of logic and proof. As the detectives say, “Just the facts, ma’am!”
Stage People
These people want action and directness. They expect you to listen, and everything is about getting things done. Stage people expect others to be precise and to the point. No beating around the bush for these folks. Confident and aloof, they value brevity, crispness, and a good debate. Challenging and decisive, they make decisions through unemotional analysis, after which quick action is required. Wagons, ho!
Cast People
These are “people” people. They view the world through the lens of human sensitivity and relationship. Consensus builders, they are sensitive and open, and they take others into account in everything they do. This empathy and value of friendship guides both their personal and their professional engagements. They are able to see all sides and they make decisions by virtue of their effects on people. Imaginative and kindhearted, cast people drive for harmony and consensus. How do you solve a problem like Maria?!
Marquee People
Expansive, energetic, and idea-driven, marquee people place a priority on creative thinking and possibilities. They are big-picture people and are all about adventure and inspiration. Highly verbal (give them a good listening to!), they relish stimuli and being in the limelight. They place a great deal of stock in the daring, new, and uncharted. “I know how to solve this problem; let’s put on a show!!”
This process is applicable to organizations as a whole, not only to individual personalities. So it’s a very good practice to profile the company, too. Lufthansa was decidedly a “script” client. As a consequence, we made sure to have mountains of material demonstrating our methodology, procedures, measurement practices, and other operational data that would efficiently create and distribute communications to their global infrastructure.
You may recall during my perfect man phase, a key ingredient was my wing-tip shoes.
I’m afraid to say they met an untimely end. It was a summer day in New York City. I was walking briskly from Penn Station to The Food Group’s offices on Thirty-Fourth Street. I was wildly self-conscious about these shoes, as I always felt my feet were much too big (they’re a size twelve). Honestly, the shoes felt like gunboats, like they were a block long. In spite of my feelings of self-consciousness, my ambition to be equipped with the right “captain of industry” clothing won out until I reached Second Avenue. On the corner was a fellow dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt with a little table in front of him. He was selling socks, tube socks, to be precise, the long athletic ones with little red and blue stripes at the top. “Tube socks, get your tube socks here!” he exclaimed. “Two dollars apiece!” Just at that moment, he looked down at my enormous wing-tip shoes and said, “And you can get a pair for them big dogs, too!” The wing tips came off that evening and went in the closet.
They’re still there.
And Now …
There are many people whose belief systems drive everything they do. They have an all-encompassing set of values and practices, which is the lens though which they see the world, relate to one another, and, above all, make decisions. It is the credo.
REMEMBER THIS
Your core is your essence, the special abilities you possess at the core of your being. It is the special gift you have been given that separates you from others. Any pitch for a person or an organization is only credible when it reflects an essential truth of your special and compelling assets. Your core is how you add value, and it provides a compelling impetus for people to follow you. It comes from within you, nowhere else.