by Albert Berkshire
I’m willing to bet there isn’t a day that goes by in any given sales department, in any given radio station where someone doesn’t ask that unanswerable and burning question: “What is with those people?” It’s something that I can’t even explain, and I’m one of “those people.”
I am (as Trent Rentsch calls us all) a “Creative.”
There are things that I think about that I couldn’t begin to explain why I think about them. It’s like they just appear in my mind and somehow, sometime, I must find a way to get that particular thought into a radio commercial. And to be completely honest – it sometimes scares me, too.
I think about and express things that make salespeople walk away… backwards… unwilling to turn their back on me. Partly to be comedic and, in some ways, to make sure they are completely safe.
It’s not like we’re actually insane or touched or crazy or even weird. (Well, maybe a little weird.) We just see things differently. We take the most visual experience and translate it into words. And that can make some people uneasy.
So in an effort to better understand why I think the way I do, I asked a student of neuropsychology at The University of Toronto to explain the difference between “right-brain” and “left-brain” thinkers, why we think the way we do, and what’s the best way approach us. All information I thought would make for an interesting article. Her response (I’m beginning to laugh) was so convoluted, so incredibly confusing and so desperately intellectual that I had to get a dictionary to understand her answers. In fact, I thought it was the lyrics from an Alanis Morrissette song. The best part of her reply was the line: “…the brain is not so black and white—to overly simplify it is to trivialize its majesty.”
It sounds like she’s a “Logical” not a “Creative.”
So where does this leave me with offering advice on how to better understand us? I’m back to my first thought. Let us appear to be insane, touched, crazy or even weird. If it makes salespeople feel better to think we are “different” and “unexplainable,” so be it. There are those of us who are perfectly comfortable with being who we are, and there are those who will someday discover that it’s okay to be a “Creative.”
Next time you get a funny look from a salesperson, the look that silently says, “What is with you?” Just smile and say, “I’m a Creative.” It’s a wonderful feeling knowing what’s with your people.
♦