Here are a few good reasons why business leaders need to be able to get to the essence of things:

• “The essence” is the major key to creativity
• “The essence” is the core required for better and best communications
• “The essence” is the hinge to problem solving
• “The essence” of Leadership…makes sense each leader will want to figure that one out.

 

There are more reasons why leaders need to know how to get to the essence of things, however, those first 4 reasons are more than enough to justify working on this.

 

Now we have good reasons…which answer the question, “Why get to the essence of things?”

 

The next thing we need to do is make sure we have agreement on the answer to,

 

 

We will work at creating a definition. Now, the best way to start working on that is providing some examples of ‘essences’.

 

WARNING These examples are not intended to be ‘facts’. Rather, they are people’s viewpoints on the essence of various things. Of course, we could debate whether or not these people have accurately identified the essences. In fact, there are many views on the essence of things, including the essence of business leadership and the essence of the role of the business leader. We will discuss that later.

 

Here are some folks’ beliefs about the essences of things:

 

“The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.”

Confuscius

 

“It is better to create than to be learned, creating is the true essence of life.”

Barthold Georg Niebuhr

 

“The essence of true friendship is to make allowances for another's little lapses.”

David Storey

 

“The essence of Government is power”

James Madison

 

“The essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience.”

Anonymous

 

“Self-trust is the essence of heroism”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.”

William James

 

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.”

Walter Bagehot

 

“The essence of poetry is will and passion.”

William Hazlitt

 

“The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force.”

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

 

“Duty is the essence of manhood.”

George S. Patton

 

“Desire is the very essence of man.”

Baruch Spinoza

 

“Thinking is the essence of wisdom.”

Persian Proverb

 

“The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That's real glory. That's the essence of it.”

Vince Lombardi

 

“The essence of all art is having pleasure giving pleasure.”

Mikhail Barishinikov

 

“The essence of childhood, of course, is play.”

Bill Cosby

 

***

 

Here’s a hint about essences…the fewer words the better. ‘Getting to the essence’ is a starter exercise for teaching creative thinking. For example, “What is the essence of a lamp?” “Can you boil the essence of a lamp down to a single word?”  (The essence of a lamp is __________.)

 

 

When we have that tool of genius we can apply it to our business thought and communication.

 

We can:

• Benefit from creative thinking, putting it to use daily (in our marketing, as just one example)
• Quickly get to the true root of problems…so solutions jump out at us
• Understand the Leader’s Role…and communicate it well
• Expand Business Success

 

Getting to the Essence of Leadership…see #2 next Thought Post

I re-read the notes I made a few years ago while reading Dr. de Bono’s book ‘Water Logic’.

 

In that book Dr. de Bono describes 3 types of questions.

 

Here is an excerpt from my notes…

 

 

Straightforward…and I like the metaphor style.

  

A sampling of de Bono quotes:

 

Quotes that fit our Seek Simple philosophy…

 

 

 

Quotes that fit our views of the value of Humour…

 

 

 

 

 

  Edward de Bono

 

Some folks are horrified by the thought they will be placed in a sales role. Some folks are horrified to have the word sales on their business card. Some folks are horrified to have the word sales at the top or in the body of their role description. “What! I have to show people I am a salesperson – what a stigma…what an embarrassment!”

 

The energy sector got around the problem by calling its commercial folks ‘originators’. [That sure cleared things up.]

 

Other folks argue everyone does sales. “You wanna talk your kids into doing this or that – well, that’s sales.” Or, “You and your spouse disagree about your next vacation spot – well, that’s gonna require some sales too!”

 

Gitomer says something like, “People hate to be sold, but people love to buy”. And, he has written many sales-help books, including a Sales Bible.

 

Anyhow, the debate - to sell or not to sell - rages on.

 

Regardless of all the stress and strain around being called a salesperson or the logic around selling versus enabling people to buy, the root question remains – Am I a salesperson?

 

If that is your question then you will want to answer it!

 

You will want to know whether or not you are a salesperson.

 

But, how will you know for sure?

 

Here’s a way to start: you can take ‘The Am I a Sales Person? quiz’:

 

It goes like this…

 

 

The perfect scores are 0 and 100…ie, extreme scores, one at each end of the spectrum. 100 means you really are a salesperson. 0 means you really are not a salesperson. [So, if you score below 0 you must round up to 0. If you score over 100 you must round down to 100.]