Practical Genius (12 page)

On many levels the narratives we repeat to ourselves and to others frame our ongoing experience, and therefore it’s important to share the stories that place your practical genius at the center of the story. I’ve come to realize that the more you speak your whole truth, the more affirmed your integrated hard and soft assets become.

For example, one of my dearest friends, Katina, is a former marathon runner. By the time she had her second child, she had gained seventy pounds and had gotten to where she couldn’t live with herself. She decided to speak out about her fight with sugar addiction and her battle going from a size 2 to a size 18. Katina, whom I’ve known for twenty years, has always been a fitness freak, and to see her life change physically and emotionally after having children was hard to watch. I knew she had to change her life, and advising her to first address and change her narrative had an enormous impact. I encouraged her to start a fitness blog, and once she started sharing her story with others she began to live a very different life, once again placing fitness at the center of her health and well-being. The result was weight loss, of course, but also more energy and an overall happier, more authentic woman who now teaches others how to incorporate fitness in their lives no matter what their challenges.

Stories change us. If you are sick and tired of hearing yourself sing the same tune, it’s because you’ve become the flat or boring story
you’ve been telling. It’s time to look at the ingredients of your genius and make
that
your story. Reveal something new about yourself that you haven’t shared with a person. For example, a client recently shared with me and her team that she was heading on a service trip with her church to help rebuild a neighborhood in Haiti. What was exciting about this new tidbit of information was that she had been going to Haiti for ten years and no one knew it. She was surprised to discover that others were interested in what turned out to be the work she cared most about. In fact, one of her French colleagues who had been curious about Haiti for a while decided to join her on the next service trip as an interpreter. Now,
that’s
a practical genius story.

The practical genius model works because it can be applied to every aspect of your life, especially when it comes to how you express yourself. The bottom line is that all of you is relevant and you shouldn’t continue to walk through life picking and choosing the parts of you to reveal. It’s
all
personal.

Do you remember the “themes” section of those saved-your-ass-before-your-final-paper-was-due CliffsNotes booklets? The themes tended to be things such as the Coexistence of Good and Evil (
To Kill a Mockingbird
),
the Death of the American Dream (
The Great Gatsby
), Adolescent Alienation (
The Catcher in the Rye
). A theme is the universal idea that rises to the surface of a good story. You should have one or two of those, too. If you know your themes, whatever story you’re telling will be connected to the last one and the next one. They’ll be unforgettable variations on your musical score.

The themes we unconsciously marry are accurate expressions of who we are and what matters most to us. Not unlike identifying and expressing your values, it is rare to have an occasion to name your themes. But themes are critical to your genius story, so let’s figure out what they are.

Get out your résumé and try to read between the lines, the way a prospective employer would. That intense business development job you had with a start-up? The two years you spent teaching fifth graders in the Bronx with Teach for America after college?
Fearlessness Builds Character.

The trajectory from an urban neighborhood development director to chief diversity officer of a major corporation?
Leads with Beliefs.

Next, do a review of the milestones of your life. Were you first in your family to graduate from college but became a social worker instead of a banker as your mother would have preferred? Do you volunteer with a community music program even though you can’t read a lick of music? These milestones bring you to approximately the same themes.

Your themes tend to be descriptors, including adjectives and adverbs, and should encompass all sides of you. And they should certainly reflect your values. For example, I had an amazing intern, Atalia Aron, who was both a talented artist and a scientist. She has two master’s degrees, one in international business and the second in bioengineering, and is a true logical left-brainer who also possesses an amazing talent for painting. For years her themes felt jumbled to her and it was difficult for her to identify ways to marry her artistic
passion and strengths in the sciences. To help her accept both, we worked on a tagline to help quiet down the inner battle between the soft and hard sides of herself. “A scientific mind of artistic design” is what we eventually landed on during one of our weekly painting classes together. (She taught me how to paint.) This tagline—her theme—became her personal tagline on everything from her e-mail signature to the header of her résumé.

The theme is the thread that connects all the chapters or versions of your story. Remember my gifted-class story? My themes in this case are Fierce Determination and Adversity Is an Asset. Every time I tell my stories, my themes are like powerful little “remember this chick” thought balloons over the head of the person I’m talking to. Do you have some of that?

Note that you must select your themes wisely and selfishly, and understand that you have to invest in their growth, reinforce their truth, and nurture your own ability to deliver on them in real time. This is also known as being prepared to walk the walk on your practical genius. If you don’t do it, you starve your genius of oxygen and it dies on the vine. If you
do
do it, your themes become blogs, creative ventures, community partnerships, profitable businesses, kick-ass conferences, masterpiece speeches, spellbinding adventures, op-eds and lectures that change people’s lives, and deep-into-the-night discussions that sustain you like the air you breathe. Top that.

All good messaging begins with the truth. And the words you choose to represent your genius spell out your truth. To begin to refine your story, I would ask you first to put away the language of your parents and your childhood, put away the language of your company or your circle of friends. Your story requires a vocabulary that is unique to you, that sustains and supports your narrative, expresses and supports your themes, and provides a perspective for the way your story is illustrated.

Your vocabulary is related to, but distinct from, your narrative, themes, and illustrations. The keywords in your genius vocabulary are uniquely yours. So what are they? Well, if Fierce Determination is one of my themes, “resourceful,” “vision-driven,” and “boundless” are a few of my vocabulary words. Those are the terms that describe my practical genius and are the action words that make my story a part of my genius practice, every single day.

I discovered my unique vocabulary through my writing. Writing is my greatest passion as well as my greatest challenge, so I really work at it. Through journaling, writing letters to myself and others, and the daily work of writing, I have discovered my vocabulary. These words are the recurring notes in the song of me that I see in everything I write.

Another important resource in identifying your vocabulary is being an active reader and reading everything you can get your hands on. It’s about really consuming and absorbing all content, whether it’s graffiti on the side of a building, a good novel, or an op-ed you read in the newspaper on your way to work. Read with a mind toward actively searching for the words that don’t just speak
to
you but truly speak
of
you. Once you become conscious of this process, a core collection of words that resonate with and reflect you will form. They can be found in a menu, an ad, a verse of scripture. The more you excavate in this way, the more you will see the trends emerge in the words that find you.

These words—whether spoken, written, or silently acknowledged in the quiet of our own minds—really do shape who we become. For me, change has always started with my vocabulary. When you are purposeful and select the words that become your vocabulary, you are using them to jet-fuel your trajectory into the future. When you let the words form around what you have allowed yourself to become by attrition, well, that’s another story. The words you pick versus the words that pick you? Hmmm. Let’s see. I’ll take the words
I
pick!

Identify your words. Commit them to your heart. Live them every day. Make sure they are the action words of your story and give heart and soul and energy to your themes.

The illustrations in your story are the visual bits and pieces that reinforce, educate, entertain, and otherwise help to make your story compelling.

I’m a proud, card-carrying member of the visualization movement. My favorite places in corporate America today are conference rooms where graffiti covers the walls, illustrating the brainstorming, strategic planning, and complex problem solving that happen when smart people are in that room. In this setting, visual note takers “transcribe” the dialogue to provide another dimension of meaning to the participants. I am in awe of the people who are able to make this visual leap because I have seen the power it has to transform the way people think about their work.

GINA RUDAN
GINA, SELF-PORTRAIT

I’m not an artist, nor are most of the executives and managers I work with. But the tools of art are tremendously valuable in the process of developing, refining, and ultimately illustrating our stories. I keep sketch pads, charcoal pencils, and big fat erasers always at the ready. Having the gear isn’t going to turn me from a wordy person into an artsy person. But it does remind me of the necessity to illustrate my thinking while I work, and over time it has helped me develop a visual habit and sensibility that are tremendous assets. I have become an avid
collector of colors and shapes, photographs and symbols, diagrams and icons. My illustrations are unique to me, but I am endlessly inspired and energized by the illustration of genius I see all around me every day.

David Sibbet is a visual visionary, a founding partner of Grove Consultants International and the author of
Visual Meetings.
David says that if thinking and visualizing is a process, the simplest thing you can do is keep a visual journal to force yourself to try to apply a graphic to breakthrough ideas you have while you work. Though this seemed like a baby step to me (and a painful one at that, for someone who’s not an artist), he convinced me that over time I would be able to go back to my journals and see patterns in my illustrations that would allow me to gauge my growth spurts or identify where I was stuck. Damn, was he right.

My grandmother Jovita is one of the greatest storytellers I have ever known. Part of her magic is in the way she draws you into the intimacy of her stories, which are often about when she was a young girl growing up in Puerto Rico. This is a woman who was never allowed to go to school and still cannot read or write. Yet she is a natural wordsmith and can take me from shock to laughter to tears in a single stroke. It is also the cadence of her delivery that makes it work.