20160606 Ice Cream Sundae #36: 3rd Strength Individualisation and insight

Hi ,I published a great conversation with Jim Collison at Gallup for my podcast this week; he’s their Technology Manager and podcast host. I had great fun recording it, you should check it out. Some of you may remember I started a Sundae series to illustrate my top Gallup Strengths. For those who don’t know it, Gallup is an American research-based performance management consultancy. They’re particularly known for their opinion polls, and increasingly for their Strengthsfinder test and strengths based coaching. Based on extensive research and in-depth interviews with professionals in almost any type of field you can imagine, Gallup identified 34 Strengths themes in total. Taking the test online gives you your top five and those are what I've been writing about. As of December 2015 over 13 million people have taken the Strengths test and found out what their top strengths are. I wrote two Sundae newsletters about my top strengths so far: Ideation and Futuristic. Given the podcast is about Gallup Strengths this week, it seemed appropriate to circle back and write about my strengths some more. Now I’m getting into the third one, it’s both more interesting and kind of more complex to express what these strengths mean to me separately because there’s a lot of correlation between them. My third strength is called Individualization. This is the theme's short description: â€œPeople exceptionally talented in the Individualization theme are intrigued with the unique qualities of each person. They have a gift for figuring out how different people can work together productively.†Given it is mentioned in my podcast with Jim Collison, if you’re interested in finding out more I also recommend checking out the Gallup Theme Thursday episode about Individualization. While I have more visible practical applications of Ideation and Futuristic, this one feels more elusive. They call it an intuitive theme. A knack for sensing what the unique qualities of a person are, who they are. Now I’m thinking about it I actually practice this theme in the interviews and conversations I have with guests on my podcast. Its true people fascinate me. Meeting people individually and talking with them about who they are, the kinds of media they consume or products they buy is an area of my job I love as a marketing & brand strategist. I equally enjoy having conversations with clients about what they are trying to achieve. I ask many questions to understand what they know about their business and unravel the best way to help them set and realise their branding and marketing objectives. A practical example of how this strength shows up for me is that I am reliably good at choosing great gifts for people. I consider what they enjoy, put myself in their shoes as much as possible, try and remember anything they might have said in the past that gives me clues as to what they would really appreciate getting as a gift, may it be for Christmas, their birthday or some other occasion. Correlating with other strengths I’ve already written about, when I have ideas I often think of who might find them interesting and share with them. I also make connections between people from the perspective of intuitively understanding why they might have something in common even if it isn’t obvious. When someone tells me about their interests for example, I can’t help but automatically and vividly imagine what might happen to them in the future, or how they might develop skills, interests or hobbies. From a personal perspective I’ve been going on a few dates lately. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I think I’m pretty good at sensing and orienting conversations in the direction of my dates’ interests. I’m always interested in their unique qualities whether I am attracted to the lady in question or less so. Correlating with my Futuristic strength, when I’m attracted it doesn’t take me long to imagine a future full of fun dates, love, arguments, family meals, possibly children, marriage, etc. Obviously that’s both an advantage and an inconvenient depending on the circumstances and I rarely know which one it is on the spot. These movie projection fantasies happen in a split second. You might think I should stop fantasising about the future as much as I do. You could also tell me to stop being the height I am. Both would be equally near impossible. It’s just the way I operate, so I mitigate and manage it however I can when it’s not too relevant (like on a first date). As much as possible, I virtually shake my head to dissipate the daydreams and get back to the present moment. In cases where my imagination takes over, I write about those fantasies to get them out of my head.  The way I listen to people differently may explain why so many naturally tend to confide in me.   In some cases I’ve had acquaintances or even complete strangers strike conversations with me and after a mere few minutes start telling me of intimate issues they dealing with in whatever area of their lives. As a strategist it’s part of my role to understand and occasionally even define wide sweeping trends, may they be cultural, about media consumption, gender, or based on specific interest groups. This is useful in order to provide a direction for what tends to be mass communication solutions like advertising. It is a short hand to explain and categorise what I often feel is too complex to neatly fit in a box to define an audience group comprised of millions of people. On the other hand and as examples, I feel I’ve learned more of people and culture by traveling around and meeting individuals than I have reading trends and market research reports. The smiling old woman who kept feeding me roast sweet potatoes wrapped in aluminium foil on a minibus somewhere in Yunnan province on the way to the Vietnamese border. Sharing a cigarette, rice alcohol and gesticulating to communicate with an old man and his family while they were training a cock (rooster) for an upcoming fight in the countryside South of Laos. Wandering around various supermarkets in different parts of the world and observing the people shopping and what they were buying, how different it was from other places I knew and am used to. While the research reports are important to get a bird’s eye view of a country or industry, it’s these random encounters with individuals that I believe give me a better appreciation of the people I’m tasked to communicate with. An elusive and tough to get part of the job of a strategist is to come up with what’s generally called an insight. Once the business problem you’re trying to solve is clearly determined and the audience the communication will be addressed to is sorted, the next step is to figure out something interesting that allows you and everyone else involved in the project to consider what there is to be done from a completely new and inspiring perspective.  An insight is often defined as some kind of human, cultural or societal truth. It’s a piece of information that sheds new light onto the issue we’re trying to solve or the intended audience.  I think the individualization theme gives me an easier and intuitive grasp on what constitutes an interesting or inspiring enough piece of information, both in itself and considering the specific people in the creative team and the client I will be briefing. Of course like everything about Strengthsfinder it’s only just a useful interpretation rather than an objective truth. As an example, a couple of years ago I was working on a new business pitch for the advertising account of a recently launched low cost airline. Of course this kind of brand and service is very functional, people are just looking for the cheapest flights. My challenge was to figure out a way to inspire the creative team and the clients with an approach that would allow our communications to be different and distinct from that of competitors as well as separate from the cost of flights. While I was doing my research into the way people purchase flights and travel, I remembered a fact from an article I’d read a few years before. Dan Ariely, a psychologist and behavioural economist had written about a piece of research that showed that people who took shorter holiday breaks more often throughout the year were happier than people who took longer holidays less frequently. I think this makes intuitive sense, doesn’t it?  When you have nice holidays to look forward to more often throughout the year you’re happier as a result.  This insight constituted a keystone piece of information for the brief that was functional because taking more holidays can naturally mean buying more flights for the airline, and emotional because we’re talking about being happy, something important to everyone. I also leverage the individualization strength in managing teams. I find it easy to sense which team member will be best suited for different tasks, based on their talents, skills and experience. I ask a lot of questions to better understand the motivations of each individual on the team, get what makes them tick and as much as possible tailor the tasks I give them to what they’re best at. It helps me be a better listener too, as I’m interested in people. As a result, people often come to me for advice. I enjoy one on one conversations and this theme may well be why I chose to write this newsletter the way I do. I like to imagine I’m writing directly to you, the person reading. In addition to the Sundae emails, I recently thought it would be nice to bring back the hand-written letter, truly tailored to the one person it’s written to. I wrote and sent my first letter this week. I’m going to write once a week to different friends and family members. I can’t believe this year is flying by so fast; we’re already in June. I mention this because I’m planning to take a summer break for the Sundae newsletter. You will still receive a weekly email though it’ll be a specially adapted and lighter version for the summer season. I’m working out what it will be, maybe a short Zen koan, haiku or something similar. More on that in the next couple of weeks. If you enjoyed reading the newsletter, please forward it to a friend or share it on your social networks! There should be buttons to share this on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter at the bottom of the email. Enjoy the rest of your weekend! Till’ next week, Willem

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